Partner's Forum

Last week we were a bit out of our routine in that we were in Kampala the whole week for World Renew Team planning meetings, and a Partner's Forum.  The meetings were a good chance for us to get to know the staff better and learn more about how World Renew works.

The Partner's Forum is a gathering that World Renew puts on for all of its partner organizations.  The bulk of the time was spent on training the partner staff.  The theme this time was accountability, governance, and accounting, and the teaching was very well done.  It was educational, but Sara and I are both glad we are not accountants!  God gives us each different gifts. 

There was also time for each organization to give a presentation about the development work they are doing in their communities.  All of World Renew's partners right now are church organizations connected with PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) or Church of Uganda (Anglican).  Here is a photo of KIDO's presentation.  Remember that KIDO is the partner organization of World Renew that we work with the most. 

Here is Simon Opolot, the manager of KIDO.  He is a good friend and we have the opportunity to work with him regularly.

After the partner presentations, Sara had the impromptu idea to give a presentation about how to make presentations.  She showed the good and bad ways to use PowerPoint (such as don't fill a slide with 400 words, the exact words you are going to say).  It was short and fun and we heard from many people that they learned a lot from it.  It's funny how it can be so helpful to teach about things that we take for granted that people know.  We grew up using PowerPoint all the time for school, but that is not the case for most people in Uganda.

At the end of the forum, we were able to play our Bible trivia game with some of the World Renew staff and members from other organizations.  I was the host asking the questions, and it was the women versus the men.  The women handily won both games we played even though there were more people on the men's team.  Come on men, we need to get into our Bibles!