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Participants to this workshop were drawn mainly from the three project areas of Bayamose, Tiwi, and Tsunza. However for purposes of learning participation was invited from other groups with whom the Center has done work in partnership with Ufadhili on locally driven development using local resources. It is this initial partnership that concretized into the poverty project in the three principal sites. This was to stimulate learning and peer review. The other participants were drawn from the pilots with Ufadhili namely Siaya, Kisumu, Nairobi (Uhuru and Kangemi). The learning workshop was essentially a forum for discussing community development processes and activities. (See workshop program and list of participants, in appendix one and two respectively).

The workshop began with ice breaking; this was to make participants feel freer with each other in the workshop. Ice breaking also helps people to forget about their families and start making new friends. The program was adopted without any change, and everyone agreed that it looked flexible enough. Each person recalling the names of their neighbors who had introduced themselves before saying their names did introductions. This was also done during the prayer session where every individual was requested to say only one word to construct a prayer workshop. It was so participatory and no one was left behind.

Facilitators Name Organization

Chief Facilitator           Otieno Ombok               Chemchemi Ya Ukweli
Facilitators                  Andrew Hongo              Green Development Group
                                    Aggrey Omondi              Ugunja Comm. Resource Center
                                    Patrick Ochieng             Ujamaa center
                                    Mumo Kivuitu                 Ufadhili
Rappoerteur                   Saul Amwomo

Organizers Ujamaa Center & Ufadhili (It is with Ufadhili that development conversation in the 3 communities in the coast originally commenced. Whereas the HBF project picked up the coast sites Ufadhili carried on with others outside coast. This made learning very rich. Ufadhili took care of costs for its members and travel)

Representation

Women 4 People
Men 12 people

Participants expectations

The participants were asked to write their expectations on a small piece of paper and present it to the plenary. The following were expectations from the participants.

1.       To share information with others
2.       To come out with more knowledge at the end of the workshop
3.       To understand and share our differences
4.       To network with other organizations
5.       To feel satisfied at the end of the workshop
6.       To pick new ideas while anticipating to go back to the community and share this experience with them
7.       To learn more about community work
8.       To learn more about our natural resources
9.       To acquire more knowledge

Norms

Ground rules are important where people gather together with a mission; it guides people during the workshop or meeting. Below are the ground rules set by the participants.

1.       Time management
2.       There was to be a prayer team
3.       Cell phones were to be put on vibration during the session
4.       We should respect each other’s opinion
5.       We should use only English and Swahili in the workshop room

Workshop objectives

1.       To share lessons learnt from experiences of the project and document best practices while sharing challenges faced and methods of mitigation employed
2.       To bring together active participants in the field of participatory community development
3.       To enable participants to share ideas, exchange and discuss
4.       Participants to leave the workshop with practical tools that can assist them in development work

Community development theory and practice

Development is a very popular word everywhere but what does this word mean in our country Kenya? The facilitator began his session by asking; where development came from? and Where it was going? Those Questions were challenging, but on referring back to Kenyan history before 1970, it was said that to get development Kenya committed itself to have the following.>

·         A good economy
·         A healthy Nation
·         Education for all
·         Agricultural country
·         Ignorance, disease and poverty were to be done away with.

Participants agreed that overwhelming evidence exists to suggest that we are far from achieving the lofty goals we set for ourselves in the 70’s. a lot remains to be done if real development is to be realised.

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