May 3rd

I did my sector placement presentation today. This was basically the most stressful part of the week I think. A lot of people stayed up really late and got something like 45 minutes of sleep beforehand. I hadn't really finalized my presentation plan until a few minutes before I had to go up so it was just a wee bit sketch =P

My presentation was on organizing farmers groups. While I didn't quite get the full strength of my message across, I think it was a pretty solid learning experience. I'll give the low down on my actual presentation and than what happened.

A) So in my mind I broke down organizations into three categories:
1: Social Input: These are the things that group members bring with them when joining the group. So for instance, when organizing a group of rural farmers, you have various things to take into account; ethnicity, race, class, social status, prestige, age, religion, etc.

2: Organization: Basically the methods you use to organize your group. so whether your a diplomacy, tyranny, oligarchy, etc. or a cooperative, corporate, or unionized entity. also, does one delegate, volunteer, etc. roles, or even share them communially?

3: Linkages: those parts of your group that extend beyond its boundaries and attach to its important contemporaries - e.g. the market, collaborative institutions, other groups, etc.

B) When I went around talking to the three discussion groups, some interesting ideas came up. for instance;
1: the skills and physical resources people bring to a group alter their status in it and in society. so someone with a plow or a diploma of some kind may be given much more influence in the group.

There were probably more but I was in the process of entering a coma at the time.

In any case, the presentation made it pretty clear I need to make less presumptions about what people know and how they can think. A lot of people commented on how they had difficulty understanding what I was asking about because they couldnt understand it from a social context but more from a technical aspect, which is probably why they went to saying things like the physical capital individuals could bring to a group, so maybe they misinterpretted me and i in turn misinterpretted them, but I think people got the jist of what I was going for, in that there was definitely discussion about the thick myriad of social issues preventing a group from functioning smoothly. so for instance, is it better to have all men, all women, or a mix in your farmers group? this has various repercussions and implications depending on context, method, and goal, but also in inputs, organization, and linkages. an all male group has different inputs, a different thought process of organization, and a different priority of linkages. this is crucially important to people looking to work with farmers group in Ghana i think.

gotta head out for food =)