chaotic success

Under the agreement between Discover Hope Fund (the org. I am contracted with) and AFIDER (our Peruvian conterpart) we held our first meeting together with most of the village bank women. My goal was to clarify my work with them and gather their ideas of a starting point. We had a turnout beyond my imagination. All 100 plus chairs were full, women, kids, babies, and their knitting projects were all there. We had an agenda, and followed it, but when it came time for me to lead the "brainstorming" activity it got a little crazy. Maybe I didn't explain it well, we had too many women, or it was just too interactive/new/weird for the women? This is where it became chaotic, but at the end of it, the women had made long lists of themes that they wanted to learn about this year (both to help them with their business and personal life). Some of the most popular ideas were exporting goods to the U.S., women's health, and learning how to read and write. We also inaugurated a new village bank and held elections for the "comite" of all the banks. We ended the afternoon with coffee and cachangas (yummy fried bread treats), which put the whole room into total chaos. And I am thinking to myself how can I make this more organized?, when really we all agreed at the end of the day that everything turned out just as it should. No the coffee didn't arrive on time and not every women participated in writing down her own idea, but I felt an intense energy that great things can happen this year. Here I am with Soledad and Vanessa, outside of the "reunion," happy with the turnout.