Knowledge Multiplication

I'm an engineer (technically), which makes me, by default, a big fan of math and machines.  While my current job doesn't involve too many machines of the mechanical kind - except when my car falls apart - it does involve the creation of mechanisms that attempt to maximize the effectiveness of the resources that CARE for AIDS has at its disposal.  I love the idea of an exponential curve applied to growth of any kind, essentially a process where something multiplies then multiplies again and again and again...and never stops.  This shows up in all kinds of ways through CFA.  For example, if we can help one mother live an extra 20 years, she can keep 4 kids from becoming orphans...then each of those 4 kids can grow up empowered to give THEIR 4 kids a better life...and so it goes. 

Another way this idea of exponential growth shows up is in the proliferation of knowledge.  Last year, the Central Baptist center in Kisumu held a seminar hosted by an outside facilitator in which clients were taught how to use cheap or free materials to make baskets, which they can sell for people to use when shopping, carrying products to market, storing items in their homes, etc.  One client, Mary Ochieng, took this skill and ran with it.  She collected construction waste like the wrapping on bundles of materials and created baskets that sold well and provided a much-needed income.  The workers at Central told the workers at a different CFA center in Nyalenda Baptist Church about Mary, and last week she visited the current group of clients at Nyalenda to pass on the basket-making skills that she learned last year.  Not only is this a great encouragement to the new clients - they get to learn from someone who was in the EXACT same position that they are - it's an empowering experience for Mary.  She gets a little extra income from spending a day teaching, but she also receives the confidence and hope that come from realizing that you have something to offer and knowing that you have helped other people. 

Now the simple skill of basket-making has "jumped" from one community to another, and the training of one client at Central has multiplied to a whole group of clients at Nyalenda.  That's engineering I can get excited about...

Mary teaches basket-weaving at a Nyalenda seminar