Basket audits

Yesterday I spent about 3 hours in a store room auditing baskets. This is the first time our ladies have had to deal with an international order where they need to really pay attention to quality. So I spent some time going through them, so we could help them think through how to handle these issues. It was both an inspiring and saddening exercise. Inspiring because you can see and feel the hope that this business provides in so many things - in the piles of baskets, the carefully written name tags, and hand deliveries to our field office to make sure they make the delivery time. Sad because you realize just how disadvantaged they are. A lot of these ladies are illiterate. Maybe they can write their own name. You can tell those name tags which are written with care and pride, but they are so hard to read because their handwriting is so poor. The others have someone write their name for them. The scribes are also proud that they have a skill others do not have. But when someone else writes your name and you can't really read, then your name gets misspelled. So you can imagine trying to track and audit 300 baskets when last names are about 10 syllables in Rwanda and first names are spelled a number of different ways (or in some cases changed completely!). It certainly reminds me why I am needed here. Its also sad because some of these baskets we simply cannot send overseas. The quality is too poor. In order to help them learn and incentivize them to be more careful, we have to send some back. I get a sinking feeling thinking that the lady who made this basket will earn a whole dollar less for her mistakes. When you only make sixty cents from crops in on a good day, earning a dollar less is the difference between eating dinner and not eating at all.