Laura Leach ‘95 is working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. She is sending updates to KWConnect about her experiences in Africa. Click here to read her story from the beginning.
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A Big Move
Although I was excited that the VSLA was doing well, I was still feeling very isolated from my organization and underutilized. In December of 2009, I went and spoke to the director of MIFUMI about how I was feeling. He agreed that the physical distance between me and the office was serving as an obstacle, and they would look for a place in Tororo town for me to stay.

I was pleased by how our talk went, but I refused to get my hopes up because at one point there had been discussions of moving me to Nagongera, and that had fallen through. Most things tend to take quite awhile to organize and execute here, so I was really surprised when I was moved into my new apartment in Tororo town before the end of the year. Everything was about to change.

Laura's home in Tororo: "The middle doorway with the gate is mine, and it is a small front room that I use for my kitchen. The back part of the room is where my bed is, and I have a bathroom with a Western style toilet, shower (cold water only) and sink."

VSLAs Expand
When I made the move to Tororo town, they switched my counterpart at MIFUMI as well. Now I was going to be working with Dinah Atim, who at the time was the head of organizational development, but soon was switched to the head of enterprise, and later was promoted to the programming officer for the organization. Dinah and I worked together to get VSLAs started within each women support group MIFUMI works with.

 When I came to MIFUMI there were only 10 advice centers, but during my first year here, they expanded their service so that there was an advice center in each sub-county. This meant there were 21 women’s groups that needed to start saving. I ended up doing most of the VSLA training because Dinah was busy working to transition the groups to community based organizations.

 Instead of my earlier fear coming true of not having enough members interested or able to save, the opposite actually occurred. By the time I got one group trained and underway, they would have the next 30 women lined up to start another group. This is a terrific problem to have because it meant the program was popular and spreading, but it also created a challenge for me because I couldn’t disengage from one center and move on to the next.

 So far I have made it to 14 sub-counties and am working with 37 VSLAs. One of the highlights of my service was when that first group in Nagongera completed their first savings cycle last September. I got a gomesi – the traditional dress worn by women of Uganda – made for the occasion. The women laughed and clapped when I arrived and stepped out of the vehicle in my gomesi. It was a fun day with a lot of laughter, hugs and a few tears of joy as well.

A Ugandan woman named Betty hugs Laura during the ceremony marking the successful conclusion of the first savings cycle of the Nagongera VSLA.

As I sat there and watched each woman receive her savings, I thought back to that first meeting I had in Nagongera and how overwhelmed I had felt that day by the weight of the women’s problems. I’m sure many of those problems still exist, but they weren’t there that day. I am so proud of the women of Nagongera mostly because their accomplishment was their own. They were not given the toolkit – they bought it. They were not given any money – all of the money saved and used for loans was their own. They just needed me to give them a little guidance, and I needed them to find my sense of purpose here in Uganda. In the end, we all walked away a little richer from the experience.
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Laura Leach ‘95 is working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. She is sending updates to KWConnect about her experiences in Africa. Click here to read her story from the beginning.
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VSLA
During our pre-service training, two volunteers came to talk to us about a program called VSLA which stands for Village Savings and Loan Association. This program is designed to give people who live in a rural area and do not have easy access to formal financial institutions the opportunity to save money and borrow money.

Here’s how it works: around 30 people get together, buy a metal box with three places to lock it, and meet regularly to save money and give out loans to group members from their savings. There is a separate fund that members contribute to weekly that exists for emergencies that pop up such as sickness or death in the family. Loans taken from this emergency fund are not charged interest. Members choose a base amount for savings, which we call their share value. Then at each meeting, members are supposed to save from one to five shares per meeting.

The good things about the program are that it encourages savings in a culture that typically does not save, it gives members access to loans that they can put into business ventures, the interest paid on loans stays within the group rather than going to a bank and it is self-managed. I was pretty much sold on the concept by the time the volunteers left our training session, so I was excited when the women of Nagongera mentioned that they wanted to learn how to save.

The Toolkit
Despite the good sales pitch by Josh and Eric, I was still nervous starting the VSLA. The last thing you want to do is start a project that flops, especially when you are dealing with someone’s hard-earned money. The toolkit consists of the metal box, three locks, 30 passbooks, two bowls, ink pens, a record keeper journal, an ink stamp pad, a bottle of ink, a stamp and a ruler. It all costs 90,000 shillings (about $45), so I was worried about the women having the money to get started.

A standard VSLA box kit

I quickly discovered that my worries were unfounded. These women were serious about saving. They had their money collected for the box kit and all of the members recruited and in place at our first meeting. The first few meetings you have, nobody saves, because you are training and setting up the VSLA. At each of those first few trainings, the members were so eager to start saving. They elected officers, and soon saving was underway. I came to all of the meetings I could make during the first few months, but soon the women needed very little guidance from me.

Next time: A big move … and VSLAs expand!

Annessa Babic ’98 is a current college professor. Read Part 1 of her advice to freshmen here. _____________________________________________________________________________

When someone makes a late night run to Steak N’ Shake, go. The food might not be the best in the world, or remotely good for you, but those late night conversations will stay with you longer than the calories on the plate. When the World Series occurs, and people start converging in the common areas to root and watch, hang around. You may not like baseball, or either team playing, but in the end you will be richer for a communal moment that is harder to come by in a technology based world. For the record, in 1996 the Yankees played the Braves.  I am a diehard Yankees fan, and I took more grief than I care to remember for yelling for the pinstripes. Memories of watching those games, amongst my roommates, football players, random people from class, and those I still call friends still bring excitement and joy to me.

Use these same acquaintances along the way to battle the hard classes and laugh at the great ones. Embrace study groups, but don’t pester professors for review days. More often than not, those don’t happen. Instead, rely on yourself and your cadre of friends to amass the understanding needed for the task at hand. I firmly believe ninety percent of the college experience teaches you to make decisions on your own, stand your own ground and learn how to maneuver this thing we call life.

Notice, I did not say ace the exam. Why? Much like life, academic scores come from understanding. If you understand the material, you will show that in your answers. If you try to dryly memorize the data your answers will show a lack of understanding with jumbled and convoluted phrases sloppily laid on your page. This sense of understanding should carry you through your days. Do not worry if you don’t have a major in your first year. Do not worry if you still don’t have one in your second year. If you reach your junior year and still have no direction, then you should certainly seek some guidance. Why shouldn’t you worry? Those pesky classes called the deck requirements aren’t put there to drum you into submission. They give you a sampling of skills, subjects, and tasks. They should help you find what your true passion is. I have to say, if your true passion is history, don’t worry about how much money you won’t make. Instead, relish in the fact of how you will do something you love and love what you do.  

I see that this year the freshman class logo is “Your future is so bright you gotta wear shades.” What was mine? I transferred to KWC in 1996, and I think we were “Foundations.” Honestly, I cannot remember. What I do recall is that within a matter of weeks – like many college coeds – my wardrobe became a poster board for KWC. My friends were a hop and skip away.  Watching the football team lose wasn’t so bad because we knew them and knew they had heart. The basketball team brought up bragging rights for that blue and white school on the other side of the state. And . . . dubbing my favorite professor Captain History, later to be named “The Grinch who Stole My GPA,” and when he turned thirty, we painted Minerva in his honor.

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Annessa Ann Babic ’98 majored in English and History at KWC. She earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stony Brook University in 2008 and currently teaches at New York Institute of Technology and SUNY College at Old Westbury. She is the co-editor of The Globetrotting Shopaholic (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), has written scores of academic pieces and uses a pen name to write fiction. She lives in Astoria (Queens), NY.

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It’s that time of year again, when young and old all across the land head back to school.  Back in the day, I stood in line as a new kid to get my polyester gym shorts and white tee. You could smell the fear in the room. Ugh, gym class and middle school. Neither were good combinations, particularly those polyester shorts. Ugh, gym shorts.

The power of literary technique allows me to jump forward seven or so years to my days at Kentucky Wesleyan. Those first days for new freshmen are always filled with wonder and awe, and in many cases a lot of angst arises. Unfortunately, this angst does not necessarily dissipate with the swing of the new semester. More often than not, though, this angst can pass rather seamlessly like the turns of the seasons. These are the things I often try to convey to my own timid freshman, or drifting and worried upperclassmen.

I graduated college in 1998, and yes we had the internet. My college days were shortly before the birth of Google, long before the advent of internet blackmail known as YouTube, at the beginning of cell phones becoming commonplace, right before the installation of key cards versus keys, when the computer lab was the only place to do your work, and at the end of the era when cable was not in dorm rooms. We gathered in common rooms to watch South Park and yell at ESPN games. In the midst of this, course work fell and campus legends loomed.

First, professors do not sharpen their pencils with their teeth or grade your papers with their blood. Trust me. We do not idle away at our desks and computers looking for ways to make your life miserable, and when we say come speak to us you should. Course syllabi are like maps for the semester, and like any good road trip, things may change. So when a professor adds a reading, or changes a due date, he or she is doing it because the nature of the group calls for it. Believe it or not, we have lives. We like ball games, we like dinner with friends, and we like to do things non-academic. Hence, when something is due turn it in. When you have trouble, don’t wait until the last minute to get help. Emailing a professor at 1:00 a.m. the night before the final will not help your grade.

On that same note, but slightly different, college is about more than the books. My fondest memories of KWC involve strolling through the quad and sharing a soda with those I met along the way. There used to be an infant tree outside what is now the Old Grill. In 2000 a tornado came and took it down, and to this day I am still saddened. Why? I read Jack Kerouac under that tree, studied for my favorite class, and Melanie Basham, Sonya Martin and I planned how we would change the world.

My point: remember in the hustle and bustle to stop and talk to those around you. Those first few days you won’t know many or even anyone. Within a week you will certainly know at least twenty-five, and the beauty and joy of KWC is that it is a small campus. There is always a friend around a corner. Though too, the pain of KWC is that it is small. If you do something outlandishly stupid you will be reminded four years later after you walk across the stage. More so, remember to have fun.

Stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon …

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Katy Evans Harrison ’01 is a third-grade teacher at Cravens Elementary School in Owensboro (and the daughter of Joyce Ann Evans, KWC’s Director of Development).

Her class recently finished reading  Mr. Popper’s Penguins and decided it would be fun to build a milk jug igloo. Her mom helped round up milk jugs from faculty and staff at KWC, and 276 jugs later, her third grade class finished the igloo!

They plan to use the inspired creation as a classroom reading spot.

KWC president Cheryl King also visited Ms. Harrison’s classroom for ”I Love to Read” Day. She spent time reading  Teammates to the kids and explaining why reading is important for everyone.

–UPDATE–

The igloo had to be moved recently, and of course, this was the result:

But never fear. Ms. Harrison (and her husband) put the igloo back together again:

Follow more of the Cravens Elementary School third grade adventures at Katy Harrison’s blog: http://harrisoncravens.blogspot.com/.

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The high school girls basketball 9^th District Tournament Championship this Thursday night at Apollo High School has a distinctly Kentucky Wesleyan feel about it.

The game features Daviess County High School, coached by Pat Hume ’92, against Owensboro Catholic High School, coached by Ray Zuberer ’84 and Allison Estes Ross ’02.

Zuberer and Ross both played basketball for KWC. Hume’s mother, Ruthie, is a long-time employee of Kentucky Wesleyan.

If you’re a KWC fan or just a fan of basketball, come out to Apollo High School Thursday night at 7 to get a look at how KWC’s basketball tradition is trickling down to local high school programs.