march meeting madness

Although March is just beginning, I feel like it is already over! Well, lets just say, there is a lot going on and continues to be a lot of meetings and commitments on the schedule in the upcoming weeks.

me, oscar and ruth

Last weekend was the annual meeting for ACDIM and so we had a lot of things to prepare. Oscar and I gave a presentation on the current project with the 4 women's groups and a financial report. A new board of directors was elected and we organized new committees for intercessory prayer, development, agricultural projects, etc. Of course, moments like this are important for any organization and it is exciting to see progress. This is the first meeting of the "general assembly" of ACDIM in a very long time. But, after almost 18 months in my assignment, my optimism is also tempered by a good dose of reality!

Why so skeptical, you ask? First of all, Hondurans love meetings! They love free food at meetings (well, who doesn't ) and they are very intense about following the legal procedures for carrying out the meeting of a given organization (whether it be church, civil society, schools, private orgs, etc). It seems that many Hondurans feel that simply by filling their schedule with meetings, they are accomplishing a lot.

My problem with this is that I fail to see the "rubber hitting the road" from all these meetings. There are books and books of minutes, committees listings, and who voted for whom as the treasurer...but who is actually making something happen? When is there time outside of the endless meetings to get things done that you decided on?

I hope that this will not be the case for the new year of ACDIM. I hope that our current work motivates people as they see we are moving forward with the project; that they understand our need for other people to be a part of what we are doing. I hope that there will be new volunteers and fresh ideas for how ACDIM can continue in this project or in other new projects.

the new board of directors for ACDIM