Bridging the Gap

Pharis leading the women through the process of translating the Self Help Group materials into their mother tongues.


The fourth day of the Self Help Group training took place at the beautiful Heart Lodge. After a short time of review, the day's focus was on record keeping. Each of the volunteer community facilitators will become trainers within Eastleigh enabling their neighbours to establish functioning groups. Understanding and having competency in accurate record keeping is essential for the success of the program. As part of their training, the women are translating the group and individual record books into their own language. This led to some very interesting discussions as the ladies wrestled with bringing concepts of savings, loans, and terms of repayment into their own culture. Rather than charging interest, Muslim Self Help Groups work on a fee based system.


The ladies also had a chance to apply some of what they've been learning about running a meeting as they tried to find words in their own language for the concepts of "setting an agenda" and "keeping minutes or a record of decisions". We thought Somali was a challenging language, but Oromo is quite a tongue twister too. Here is a little sample: "Galii Tarbaaningalu Bekkumssa waan bitamtte" (translation: "Weeks total brought forward").


This has certainly been a great opportunity to get to know these ladies on a deeper level. Yesterday, one of the women shared about her own struggle coming to Eastleigh as a thirteen year old girl hoping to be able to go to school, but instead being married off to a man who did not love her. By age fifteen she had the first of her four children -- she never was able to attend school. She lives with her children and an unmarried cousin in the dusty clutter of Eastleigh. She knows that she must depend upon herself to provide a future to her children. Tearfully she told us how she decided to accept this role "not only to help my neighbours, but... I'm here to help myself!"

Zahra, the Iftin Community Coordinator, helping the community facilitators work through the final translation of the SHG materials into Oromo and Somali.