Something good

With five members of the facilitation team, we spent the morning in the large and empty hall we had rented pretending that the workshop was actually happening. I facilitated the program with them as participants. We did a micro version of the workshop and it succeeded in making the design come alive for the team. They realized that cutting the workshop in two parts – one of our previous plans – would not have been a good idea as ownership and energy would have been compromised.

In the end we agreed that we should start afresh in July, after the government’s new fiscal year has started and the frenzy of end-of-year spending subsided.  We discussed how to move from alignment to leadership training and moving the common agenda forward. It’s an exciting combination of activities I love to do.

Rumors are circulating about the strike being extended even longer. I have heard of evaluation and fact finding missions that have come, and left again after having been waiting in hotels and guesthouses for the hartal to end, not able to see or interview any of the people on their lists.  One of those teams in town was from the ‘What to Expect Foundation’ (from ‘what to expect when you are expecting’ fame); such irony. I was told they returned home.

Now, after the brief training this morning and seeing the enthusiasm of the local team my trip felt not so useless any longer even though one could argue about the costs versus the benefits.

I was not the only one who had come from afar; a colleague from Johns Hopkins had flown in from Baltimore for the occasion. We decided to have our nails painted at a local spa so we’d had something to show for our stay in Dhaka.