Five months ago, I sat with Gardens for Health International (GHI)’s leadership team and laid out big sheets of white paper across the GHI ‘farm table’—a long outdoor table in the middle of the GHI farm, overlooking the rolling hills of Rwanda and the sunflowers planted around it.
On that morning we began our first strategy session of many more to come. Our goal: to double the size of GHI’s program by the next agricultural season.
Over the next twelve weeks, we dissected and re-strategized every aspect of the program, delving not only into how we would tailor our operations to the needs of a new district, but using the expansion as an opportunity to look into GHI’s current systems of operation–what could be improved? What should be changed as we rolled out the program anew in a new district? What aspects did we want to make sure were maintained in this new environment?
Our timeline was set– the rainy season waits for no one. We were determined to be ready to expand by the time the rains came in August. Strategy meetings and presentations were squeezed between health trainings and programming; interviews happened while hiring decisions were being made in the next room; orientations occurred while new equipment was ordered; government meetings were attended in Kigali while new staff were being trained on the farm in Musave. Each component of the process had to keep rolling in order for the expansion puzzle to fit together. We kept moving forward. With each new challenge, the GHI team came together to quickly turn out a solution. Focused on the mothers we serve and determined to serve more, each team member gave 110% to their role.
And guess what? We did it.
In fall 2013, GHI will proudly serve 320 families, over twice the number we served in the last agricultural season.
As a GHC fellow, I could not have been more grateful for this experience. I have had opportunities to learn-by-doing and dive into new things, to fail and start again, to work hard for a cause I believe in, and to be surrounded by the most committed, hard-working, smiling community beside me.
It’s been an incredible year.
