We have had several interesting meetings in the last few days.
On Wednesday (the 23rd), we met with Mr. Govinda Naga, who was a manager at Farmer Service Corporation in Mauritius for several decades, to discuss possible agricultural programs for Fellows to conduct with kids. He recommended that we consider agricultural entrepreneurial projects, which can teach children about agriculture and give them a career possibility. Programs like this are of great interest to us, because Fellows can use these frameworks to think of creative ways to coordinate agricultural projects and to work together to brand and sell them for the kids. Possible projects that Mr. Naga mentioned include goat herding, and growing “niche crops” that have yet to be introduced large scale in Mauritius.
Our second meeting took place on Thursday, once again with Bernard at ANFEN, to discuss our new direction. He was very positive about both our decision to work with more than just orphans, and our focus on providing hands-on education outside the classroom. He offered ANFEN’s support for our work, and showed great enthusiasm for working with us in the future.
Today (Friday) we went to our second Social Welfare Center in Wooton (center of the island). Kyle and Vedant introduced the program to around 50 social workers who were gathered in the hall, after which Vedant answered questions from the audience. We had some very good queries about how we would work with the community to set up the Fellows program, and what kind of programs we would run. In the end, the social workers wanted to make sure that our programs will address the needs of the community, which is something that we have always set out to do. Thus, we requested that each person in attendance write down the programs they think would work best in community centers around Mauritius, and do the most good for the community. We will analyze the results over the weekend and post them here.