Practice Project

Part of Pre-Serving Training involves doing a practice project with a local facility or organization. I did mine with another Trainee at a pottery cooperative outside Nyanza. The co-op is really cool – it employs locals who make traditional pottery and relies primarily on natural resources that come from the surrounding area. And, the pottery they make is really nice.

During our first visit to the cooperative, we talked to three of the employees and learned about the work they do and how their organization is structured. We also talked to them about their problems – the main one being a lack of customers. In fact, they said sometimes a week or more passes without any customers coming – which is really a shame, considering that the pottery is beautiful, unique, and reasonably-priced, plus you can watch the potters at work and see where their materials are extracted. So, our project was to work with them on ways to attract more customers.

After brainstorming and doing some research, we returned to the co-op to give a presentation on marketing and advertising. We focused on creating more and better signs and working more with hotels to sell the pottery and travel agencies to have their tour groups make a stop at the co-op. We did our speeches entirely in Kinyarwanda, which was a little rough, but people seemed to understand us for the most part, so I considered it a success!

The co-op’s employees seemed receptive to our ideas, but it’s hard to know if they’ll actually put any of them to use. All the current Volunteers have told us it’s sometimes really difficult to motivate people to change how they do things or to try something new. Regardless, though, it was great practice and a really interesting experience. Plus, I bought an awesome mug and candleholder for about $2.50 each!

Some samples of the pottery: