SL Networking Conference January 2008?

Since Wilfro amd Chielo finish their contracts on the 24th of Feb and White Moon Festival is on the 8/9th Feb this leaves us with two periods that would, I think, be sensible,

Between 14th Jan and 24th Jan
Between 16th Feb and 22nd Feb.

Please add comments or email David with thoughts.

Secure Livelihoods Networking Meeting

(Wednesday 20^th June 2007)

Agenda

Day	Time	Activity	To meet objective	Led By	Comments
June 20th	8:30	Leave VSO Office for Conference Venue		Urnaa
	10:00	Meet and greet. Coffee		Urnaa
	10:30	Introduction to Conference.		Alison
		Feed back from last June		Alison
	11:00	Get it off Your Chest	Volunteer to Volunteer networking	David	Talk about our good and not so good placement experiences and to elicit help from Colleagues.
	12:00	Vision Fund	ICN	Tim Hooper	Introduction to micro credits availability.
	1:00	Lunch Followed by energizer session	Well Being!	Urnaa Duya
	2:00	Web based information sharing.	Volunteer to Volunteer networking	David	How to progress the information flow/communication.
	3:00	Secure Livelihoods Focus	ICN	David	Progress the document started at the last meeting.
	5:00	Walk/Meditation/Games	Well Being!
	7:00	Dinner and Disco Social Evening	Fun		Evening fun- pub quiz/ karaoke

Get it off Your Chest

Members of the group shared their frustrations and successes. From the last SL conference, Maija and Wyzta have successfully collaborated together to help the Women Farmers market their products. A good and enjoyable session.

Vision Fund

Tim Hooper from Vision Fund gave a very informative talk on opportunities for micro enterprise funding in Mongolia. Vision Fund (VF) was set up to finance World Vision projects but is now looking for ways to expand it’s area of lending to projects outside of the World Vision organization. VF is seeking suitable partners which have projects in need of funds. Khan Bank used to make loans as low as $400 but has recently moved the minimum to $1,200. VF are hoping to support projects of the type formed by business incubators with much smaller, unsecured loans.

Tim’s contact numbers are

Office 345323

Web tim_hooper@wvi.org

Our thanks to Tim for taking the time to be with us and for sharing his extensive experience of Mongolia’s development with the group.

Web based information sharing.

Work in this area is on going, with programme office moving to electronic distribution of information. But progress is slow. A concerted effort to collect the base line information is needed to kick start a meaningful and useful database. Ub tourist websites are to be trawled for useful information for new volunteers.

Secure Livelihoods Focus

The paper from the last SL conference was briefly discussed but in the absence of the Programme Area Manager, no progress was made. A tidied up version of the paper is on the way to the group via email

Conference April 2007 - For next time

For the next networking conference in June,

1. Feed back on items raised in 'get in off your chest'.
   
2. Follow up on the three diagrams.
3. Review the working of the blog.

Next meeting is the 20th June, venue yet to be decided.

Conference April 2007 - Concerning Placemets

There were 4 sessions ,

1. Identfy information needs of SL Programme area placements
2. UB vis-a-vie countryside SL placements - Differences and similarities in needs and challenges.
3. Identify common purpose between our differing projects/work placements.
4. Review SL programme area definitions/documents. Including how partners recruited and placements evaluated.

A bit ambitious in hindsight. But each session did roll on into the next, and as a result we came to a view which we documented in three diagrams. Unfortunately, a blog is not the right media to show them, so the diagrams will be sent to you by attachments on an email.

Conference April 2007 - About Blogging and the Web

The blog is to be used to promote networking between us, with the posts being classified according to content. The blog is a first step towards building a web site to store and delivery volunteer related information.

A new term enter our language - the ECHO seminar. I.e. people returning to base after attending a conference deliver an 'echo seminar' to interested colleagues covering the basic topics covered.

A 'how to do' blogging session was suggested and run on the Monday night after our return to UB. There are now 4 more bloggers out there!!!!

Conference April 2007 - Get it off your chest.

The first session of the day. And a really good exchange between us, all very positive, with help being offer and accepted.

A few things to follow up on,

1. A review of our own placement description documents, comparing their placement outlines with what we are actually doing.
2. Frequency of PO visits to placements. Do a survey amongst volunteers to assess how often and why visits were made.
   
3. Pressure in short term placements to come up with the goods too early - instant answers as opposed to considered solutions. Perhaps develop a check list apply to short term placements to assess viabilty (might already exist.?)
   
4. Are we feeling the benefits of VSO capacity building?
5. Are established volunteers always present during needs analysis sessions with potential partners?

Ok, we will follow through with some of these for the June SL Prog Area meeting.

SL Networking Conference. 26th - 29th April 2007

The conference was divided into three parts,

• workshop sessions
• a visit to Erik's placement
• a visit to Hazel's placement

And, of course , a bit of fun which is shown on www.davidvso.blogspot.com
The workshop sessions will be dealt with in the next couple of posts. The visits are covered by this post.

Erik's office and home are housed in an ex-hospital block near Arvayheer airport. Erik works in a business incubator unit as a small business advisor.

We visited one of Erik's clients. A lady who had set up a felt making and felt product manufacturing unit. The unit produces not only items for the tourists that visit the town but products for the local market. All kinds of fiber are used in the manufacture including, to Zoe's delight, yak.

Hazel's school and home. The school educations 32 young lamas between the ages of 11 and 17. It is one of only three such schools in Mongolia.



Apart from getting general education, the young lamas are being trained in the principles of Buddism to fit them for a life as lamas.

Another project which Hazel has been involved in with Erdene Zuu monastry involves work in the local prison. No photo's for obvious reasons!!!! Here they are working with the inmates to develop felt based manufacturing.

I also had a few words with the prison governor to explore the possibility of running construction skills training for the inmates. Left it that I would get back to him with a yes/no decision by the 11th May.