Today was our second full day in Makeni, Sierra Leone. While the day consisted of minimum outdoor excursions, it was full of logistical and practical meetings inside the World Hope office.
The first thing we did was meet with Katis Bangura, the project manager of the World Hope bakery and Catherine Kouroma, the World Hope bakery manager. We learned that the bakery is employing roughly 10 women (and men) and teaching them the practice of bread making. Katis and Catherine were extremely helpful during our meeting and are allowing us to use their facilities to cook/produce our products. As of right now, we are planning to start the beginning of the baking process at the bakery Monday August 12. They are also allowing our group to attend one of their training sessions for their employees tomorrow, Wednesday August 7. We are meeting them at 9AM to learn their policies, protocols, and just generally learn how their machines work. Catherine told us that most, if not all, the women that were employed in the bakery had children and we would be able to test our products and complete the surveys with them. She said that there is a possibility that we will be able to meet the children and the women at the training session tomorrow and even though we don’t have products for them to try, it will be a great opportunity to meet them and familiarize them with our products. This is really exciting for our team!
Immediately following that meeting, our team had another meeting within our group to determine specific goals and internal checkpoints as well as more concrete plans for the next few days. Tomorrow, Wednesday August 7, after the training session our goal is to go back to the markets and pick up the necessary ingredients and supplies that we need to start baking our products. Thursday August 8, our team is planning cooking at the resort we’ve been staying at from 10AM-12PM. With these finished products, we will hopefully be able to return to the bakery and get input on the products.
The last two things that we accomplished today was 1) setting up the project budget for this trip so we know where our money is going and 2) we could work with Jawara regarding our survey for the mothers/children. The purpose of getting Jawara’s help was to make sure that the questions would be easily translated and communicated to the people we intended to interview.
Our budget is as follows:
Food – 500,000 SLL
Translators – 100,000 SLL
Hotel Gas (cooking) – unknown
General Work (anything not accounted for) – 100,000 SLL
Bakery Payment – 100,000 SLL
We also were able to re-explore the markets and taste some local foods.
Today was a very rainy day, but we were definitely able to enjoy it! We are really excited to continue our work tomorrow with more in depth and active in field research.
