This morning, we baked our muffins and pudding at the Betteh Bakery. Alex and Thuimu roasted/boiled our sweet potatoes and cooked our muffins in the oven.
As Kayla mentioned yesterday, we learned a lot from our data collection and were able to implement what we learned in our interviews today. We continued running taste tests with our initial recipe. Starting tomorrow, we will be changing our recipe slightly to see if their is any difference in how mothers and children like it.
We edited our questionnaire to ask more concise and relevant questions based on the feedback we got yesterday. We could not use our initial data from yesterday morning because of overcrowding. Mothers that were being interviewed would listen to the opinions of other mothers around them, instead of giving us their own ideas. This was a flaw in our data collection that we have since fixed. Now, mothers and children being interviewed will be separated from those that are waiting in line (Pictures to come when we get a stronger internet connection!). We also refocused our research to consider funding proposal and future paper outlines in each of the interviews that we do.
Before we conducted interviews this morning, Jawara helped us get two new translators- Abubakarr and Ibrahim. Yesterday, a lot of the mothers that tried our food said the foods were “fine,” but didn’t give us enough information on the taste, texture, or what they would change. We sat with Abubakarr and Ibrahim to communicate how important it is that the mothers convey all their thoughts with us. If we want our product to be successful in Makeni in the future, mothers and children need to enjoy it and be willing to purchase it for their child. Both of them were very understanding of this and really took interest in our products. Each member of our team noticed a difference in the interviews today thanks to Abubakarr and Ibrahim. We were able to get lots of information from mothers. Our interviews were held at the World Hope compound, in a similar manner to yesterday, but we had a much smaller turnout. Momoh helped us invite mothers back to the compound, but he informed us that many of them did not have the time or money to travel to World Hope even if they realized how important our research is. At this point, we have 30 total data points, so we have to continue to get as many successful interviews done as possible.
(Mothers feeding the pudding to their children)
A few days ago, we assigned team roles so everyone is responsible for a different aspect of the project, and I think it has really helped our team come together. Each person has really grown into their role, and each of us and Khanjan has noticed that our team has become more productive and adaptive to changing plans. Even when we were hit with another setback today, we regrouped and devised a plan for each day until Sunday to make up for the small turnout at World Hope. Even still, it was very frustrating that yet again we couldn’t get the data we needed. Matt said it best when sharing his insight tonight; we have learned that it’s always important to have a plan A, B, and C in order to get the data we need. Our team has a goal of reaching 150 successful surveys for each of our two foods before the end of the trip. Over the past 24 hours, we have only been able to get around 14 and 16 surveys for the pudding and muffin, respectively. Over the next few days, we will need to work extremely hard and take advantage of all the time we have left. Luckily, our contacts at the Wesleyan Church, our translators, interns, and employees at World Hope continue to be great resources.
We are continuing to enjoy our time in Makeni and have really grown to appreciate each of the people we work with. Everyone at World Hope has been extremely willing to drop everything and help us advance our project. We have also loved the chance to get to hear about the success of the other GSIF teams and their projects. We are eager to see what the next week will bring!