For years I've been trying to make this dream of Africa work out for our family and the biggest obstacle has been trying to build a business that will not only sustain itself in my absence, I want it to grow.
This simple concept has been extremely difficult to attain and only through the amazing assistance and persistence of my team members has the dream finally appeared to be possible.
We have made amazing strides within Allen Technology Advising. We used to be a break fix computer company and now have almost completed the transition to become a managed service provider, providing partial and full outsourced IT services to small and medium sized businesses. Our new web site, http://www.allenit.com , is setup to help explain the changes that our business has gone through.
There are now 10 staff members, including Kathleen and myself, working on the Allen Technology Advising team and we are focused more than ever on customer service, customer appreciation and technical prowess.
While I've setup my business to hopefully grow in my absence I do intend to communicate weekly with staff hopefully using Skype and to monitor africa@allenit.com (my e-mail while in Africa) while I am gone (ATA staff will be reviewing my business e-mail in my absence).
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Communicating with Our Childrens Schools
We are working with our schools to get homework assignments scanned and e-mailed to us while we are gone. While in Africa we will be home schooling our children with those materials.
Jessica may have an opportunity to attend some of the schools that Africaid helps support. She would probably be a huge distraction to the girls who attend these schools, who are usually brought in from different regions of Tanzania supported by scholarships that are provided by westernized nations.
We also will be visiting the International School of Arusha where, if we were to come for an extended period of 6 months or more in the future, we would probably have our children attend. There are 250 kids from 45 countries when I last visited in 2002.
We will be setting up both Wilmot, where Mackie and Zoe attend, and Evergreen Country Day School , where Stephen and Jessica go to school, with video conference capabilities so that we can visit our schools virtually from Africa. We will be using Skype software for this purpose. We've been warned that the bandwidth is nowhere near sufficient for this purpose but we can hope!
While Evergreen Country Day is fine with the older kids leaving the public school has an interesting way of tracking attendence for us. As long as we e-mail every weekday that will count as attendence...pretty cool!
Jessica may have an opportunity to attend some of the schools that Africaid helps support. She would probably be a huge distraction to the girls who attend these schools, who are usually brought in from different regions of Tanzania supported by scholarships that are provided by westernized nations.
We also will be visiting the International School of Arusha where, if we were to come for an extended period of 6 months or more in the future, we would probably have our children attend. There are 250 kids from 45 countries when I last visited in 2002.
We will be setting up both Wilmot, where Mackie and Zoe attend, and Evergreen Country Day School , where Stephen and Jessica go to school, with video conference capabilities so that we can visit our schools virtually from Africa. We will be using Skype software for this purpose. We've been warned that the bandwidth is nowhere near sufficient for this purpose but we can hope!
While Evergreen Country Day is fine with the older kids leaving the public school has an interesting way of tracking attendence for us. As long as we e-mail every weekday that will count as attendence...pretty cool!
What We'll be Doing in Arusha
There are two software applications, an accounting system and a medical records system, that Dr Mark Jacobson is trying to implement in the original Selian Hospital as well as the new hospital in downtom Arusha. In a volunteer capacity I will be assisting their technical staff to help implement these systems. What that probably means is that I will be:
- Working underneath Mr Mungure and Mr Moye, who both work with technology at the hospital, to help them accomplish their goals
- Assistance in documenting your entire technology environment
- Providing networking and server assistance with new and old hospitals
- Assistance with implementing your Care2x and WEB ERP software programs
- Assisting in the process of building training materials for software and system usage
- Helping to setup a reliable environment that, if and when it breaks, we will have documentation and processes in place to ensure that it continues to work smoothly
- Meeting as many people as I can in the hospital and making strong relationships as I try to understand the needs of everyone
- Prioritizing my time to best accomplish their biggest goals as I learn about them
- Having lots and lots of fun!
My family will also be volunteering for AfricAid (http://www.africaid.com/ ) which will entail visiting the schools and sharing donated school supplies from Wilmot Elementary where Mackie and Zoe go to school and supplies from Evergreen Country Day School with Jessica and Stephen go to school.
Monday, October 20, 2008
History of Selian Lutheran Hospital
In 2000 I worked with Mark Williams and many other Evergreen Rotarians to raise money for the Selian Lutheran Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania. Mark had helped build this hospital with his friend, Dr Mark Jacobson, in 1985 when child mortality was extremely high, 3 out of 5 kids didn't make it to age 5 primarily due to preventable issues. Since then child mortality in this region has dropped to 1 out of 5 kids by age 5 but by our standards that is extremely high.
The total amount raised was almost $400,000, it was the bigget project ever done by Evergreen Rotary and much of the funds were raised through mathing Rotary grants.
Since then Dr Mark Jacobson has embarked on building a larger hospital in the middle of Arusha in addition of the current hospital several miles away. It has been an enormous undertaking and we expect to be there for the grand opening of the hospital at the end of November.
The total amount raised was almost $400,000, it was the bigget project ever done by Evergreen Rotary and much of the funds were raised through mathing Rotary grants.
Since then Dr Mark Jacobson has embarked on building a larger hospital in the middle of Arusha in addition of the current hospital several miles away. It has been an enormous undertaking and we expect to be there for the grand opening of the hospital at the end of November.
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