First blog post in a while…and recent events in Lusaka

Well, it has been nearly 2 years since my (Ryan) last post. I’m quite prolific, I know.

The point of this particular blog is to revive my participation on this blog that Justine has carried on in my absence, as well as to catch you up on the interesting events of the last month – which apart from getting the VSL program headed towards start up also saw our family head to Zambia for the completion of a certification training program and the Global Savings Groups Conference 2015.

Both events turned out to be rather genius.

Four things stood out as particularly interesting to share with you all

• The certification was the best educational experience I’ve potentially ever had – due to an extremely competent instructor as well as fellow classmates and practitioners from around the world from whom I learned a good deal as well.

• The conference re-enlivened my hope for humanity and the world in that practitioners and brilliant researchers, big and small, came from all over the world to discuss best practices and current innovations in the field of savings groups.
• It helped to learn that savings groups is now development “best practice” in most of the world for quite a number of reasons.

• It was interesting to note the diverse ways in which Christian organizations are implementing the same – some quite well and some not so well, respectively. I promise, we’ll try to fall into the ‘quite well’ category.

Anyway, enough of that news, from here on out – we (Justine, A and I) have decided to write about what it is that we’d like to read if we were reading this blog – which for me might mean theology, culture, development or the like but for A’s more refined tastes, it might more likely mean owls, Fancy Nancy, watermelons or puppies (though our other commonalities include a rigorous fascination with two books – Stringfellow’s “My people is the enemy” and Chadwick’s “Early Church History” – no doubt we are “training her up in the way she should go so that in the end she will not depart from it”…)

Either way, what I’m trying to say is that I am (sometimes) convinced that I can do better and write more often. But all the same, I would also ask our 3 ½ readers to be patient with us as well…