In our last update we told you about the open house. This took place last Thursday 26th of November. In the morning we had to do some last minute shoppings (fresh meat, fresh vegetables etc.) and make SRI open house-proof. We ordered 50 chairs from the little shop across the street, set up the music installation and transformed our house to a showroom.
The day started at 10:00, but as expexted people arrived a bit later. (T.I.A. – This Is Africa). When approximately 45 people showed up, we started with the tour around SRI. George, the manager, explained exactly what SRI is all about, what products are currently running and which ones will come in the future.
After the tour people were invited to have a look at the showroom. In the showroom all current products of the carpentry workshop were displayed. During the showroom, George was putting a lot of emphasis on the high quality of all products compared to other carpenters in the neighbourhood. At the moment the problem is that people go for cheaper products, in stead of paying a little bit extra but with higher quality. We hope that this message has been made clear to all the people that were at the open house, and pass it on!
Next on the program were the speeches. On the program we had 10 speakers, but as we have learned here, people like to talk and so a few speakers were added last minute to the list. (T.I.A.)
First Vera, Executive Director, talked about SRI in general. Ater that, the lead carpenter Steven, apprentice John and his mother were invited to talk about their personal experiences. Also Gordon, a board member, gave his opinion about SRI and the workshop in particular. Also Tina had a speech about the importance of SRI and that it is here for the community, but that they need to help build it as well. Then we, the students, made a short speech. Here we thanked everyone for coming, explained what our goal is these coming three months and what we see for SRI in the future. After that the assistant chief, the chief, the old assistant chief and the old chief of the area all spoke some positive words about the carpentry workshop. And all the benefits it can give to the community of Okana. George, the manager gave a final speech about all the products that can be bought and the importance of SRI for the community.
Lastly we organized a lunch for all the people that showed up, around 60 people! Thankfully we had some help from two woman in the area.
Looking back, we think that it was a succesfull day. A lot of postive awareness was created about SRI. The open house was a tool to help us achieve this goal. Also it was used to investigate the interest of the local community in buying products of the workshop. Together with Tina we discussed that we should investigate this, because there were only assumptions but nog certain facts about this subject. After the open house we received two orders from people in the community. One was from the chief and the other from the old chief. From this we concluded that only a small part of Okana is interested/capable of buying furniture from the workshop. This small part entails the people of Okana who usually occupy the higher jobs and have more money to spend. Therefore we feel that if we should involve the community of Okana, it is most beneficial to focus on these people in the future.
Best wishes,
Dominique, Bart en Katie