Bragging

November 9th.

The rainy season has finished.

The harvest is also almost done.

I organized an evaluation meeting for compost effect.

Until now, 3 workshops have been held where about 70-80 YANTA women participated.

I could have visited each woman's house and asked the effects individually...

But first of all, there are too many to do it...

Plus, collecting the results wasn't the only purpose of holding the meeting:

1．Bragging (sharing with) their own effects or results to other women ;

2．Hearing other women's stories to know different effects or results ;

Through these 1.2．, I wanted that they stimulate each other to continue the compost making.

3．Inviting other YANTA women who haven't participated to workshop but been interested in compost to give a chance to hear such positive effects and to creat their motivation to start.

To have as many women as possible at the meeting, I tried to pass the information everywhere by visiting several YANTA associations' leader's house and telling about the meeting at YANTA center every time I passed there.

On the day, at the time to start the meeting...

Well, as usual...

There were only a couple of women...

I thought that maybe the information hadn't passed well...

I waited for 30min, 40min...

Little and little, women started to come over.

One hour later, there were about 50 women in the room.

I had expected a bit more but we started the meeting.

Gradually, more and more women were coming in the room.

At the end, the room was pretty packed !

I could feel that it the compost was a big interest for them.

The bragging their results went well.

Many workshop participants spoke out the effect of their compost :

Better yield of cereals (maize, millet, peanuts, beans, etc) than last year ;

Income source (a woman sold her compost to another woman) ;

Creation of small vegetable garden at home (planting tomatoes in the garden, adding compost around mango/papaya trees) ; etc

At the end, a group of women who are volunteer to become compost promoters was identified in front of all.

Next day, promoter workshop took place (to next blog...)