I am currently working on 3 year budgets for the organisation. Stimulating stuff eh?!

It’s one of the most important parts of my job – knowing where we are trying to get to, and working out what that will cost, so that we can attract funding from donors. You have to know your numbers.

But it’s a tough ask – a huge task, and for me, not my favourite one!

One thing that is really helping me get this done without expiring before 10am is some simple advice I received from my Grandfather Fred. He was fond of saying “10 minutes rest every hour”.  It’s something that he learned in his days in the infantry, fighting in Burma.  After 50 minutes of activity his troop would stop for 10 minutes rest.  The belief was that this rest would allow them to recharge in order to carry on a lot longer.

This idea has been around for a while.  In his famous book “How to win friends and influence people” Dale Carnegie talked about a study with workers who lifted pig iron. These guys were responsible for lifting large amounts of iron on their backs from one place to another during the course of a working day.  They were strong lads and had to be since this kind of physical labour is punishing.  An experiment was carried out in which each of the workers was asked to rest for almost half an hour out of every hour (26 minutes).  The results were astounding.  Rather than seeing productivity go down it actually exploded by a factor of 500%!

This result is due to a simple fact – if you rest before you get tired, you can keep going a lot longer and with a great deal more quality.

A great application of this principle is the Pomodoro technique.  This is a simple system which dictates that you work for a time interval (in my case, 25 minutes) and then rest for another (5 minutes for me).  The rest can be doing anything – walking around the garden, making a drink, but anything that simply means that you step away from your desk. After a few cycles, you take a longer break. There is even a cool app that you can set up to time your work and rest periods.

Whatever it is that you do at work that requires focus, this simply can’t be maintained by sticking at it for a long time.  What I and others have found through using this technique is that breaking away from being focused at regular intervals actually extends the amount of time and sharpens the focus with which you can work for a longer period.

Of course being able to implement this depends on which kind of boss you have!  If you are unfortunate to have the sort of boss who watches the clock and associates activity with productivity, or worse still long hours with effectiveness, then you are sunk.

However, if you are fortunate enough to have a boss who is prepared to try the above techniques, then the result will be a more effective, productive and less tired you, and and organisation to which you have added greater value.

Give it a try?

John Hinton and the latest road renovation!

Life here in Tanzania is a little different.  We’re experiencing the ‘long rains’ at the moment and it’s fair to say that even if cars could have an autopilot feature – it would be useless here at the moment as the rains are remodelling  all but the major, tarmac, roads with every fresh downpour.  I’m gradually  becoming an expert at navigation improvisation.  I can’t pretend that it isn’t frustrating, but sometimes, just sometimes, it can lead to discoveries which otherwise I’d never have made.

Tyres and sandals

This week – whilst taking an enforced detour en route to visit Suzanna & Mary to support them in their new business start up – I found some wonderful new sandals.  My flip flops had just flopped and I was in need of replacements when my newly improvised route took
me past a chap selling really cool sandals he’d fashioned out of old car tyres.  Back in the UK I doubt there’d have been a second thought about giving the tyre a second chance.  It’s really inspiring to see that initiative and entrepreneurial flair are blossoming here.  I’m also delighted to report that as well as being imaginative and eco-friendly, they are really comfy too!

-John Hinton

Back in the Autumn of last year I was very excited to secure a position with B2A having just left a UK Bank after 23 years. At almost the same time I was rather annoyingly diagnosed with breast cancer. This did not come as a huge surprise as I had had Hodgkin’s disease, cancer of the lymph glands, when I was 19 and due to the radiotherapy treatment used at that time, had a higher risk of breast cancer in my 40s.

So, my family and I absorbed the information and options available and I had a mastectomy and reconstruction in October. My recovery was really helped by the fantastic support and positive messages I received from family and friends.

Having cleared this hurdle I was then able to start with Bridge2Aid fully in January and now work a 27 hour week. This has been a terrific opportunity to be a part of a really successful charity and be a part of its growth going forward. Again there were challenges here as I had to learn new systems, get to know a new team and also new ways of working. It was very strange being the ‘new girl’ again.

What made this all achievable though was how lovely and supportive the team were. Everyone was really understanding and really didn’t expect me to know everything straight away. The only person who got frustrated with not knowing exactly what was going on was me!

So what is it I get up to each day? Well the core ethos of the charity is to help people who have no access to dental care, get treated, but also provide a legacy of dental care afterwards. What makes this possible is the team in Tanzania who organise the training and logistics of the volunteers coming over, and the UK team in recruiting these volunteers. So I, with my job share partner Nat, make sure we have a simple application process, we interview the applicants and then arrange training days in the UK for them. In addition we book their flights and provide them with the information they need to go out to Tanzania.

I am completely sold on the core values of this charity but was interested to know what others thought and have had some terrific feedback from the volunteer dentists and nurses. Their keenness to be able to make a difference to people who just do not have access to dental care is key. The fact that having trained the medical officers, and also treated the patients, the dentists and nurses then know they have left a legacy of trained medical officers is completely fulfilling.

In addition, volunteers also get to experience a very different culture and way of life. This can be a real eye opener and reality check on the conditions that people work and live in day to day, and how these compare.

So having settled into the job I have also decided I ought to get fit again. I am not a ‘runner’ but I try to do the Cancer Research Race for Life each year for obvious reasons. Now, last year I ran the whole race, the first time I hadn’t walked any of it, start to finish in 35 minutes. However, this year will be rather different as the mastectomy and reconstruction have meant I have to be rather careful.

So, what have I done to give myself a challenge, signed up for a 5k? Yes, I will do the Race for Life again in July. But I thought I would go one step further and have also signed up for the Bupa 10k in London on 27 May – and yes, absolutely running for Bridge2Aid. In terms of training, following a horrible cough and cold which I know the world seems to have had, I am now starting to run a bit. So this will not be a fast 10k by any means but hopefully one that I will get around in not too long a time. So watch out if you live nearby as you might see me ‘zooming’ past, in my jogging gear. Not a pretty sight!

So, as I had said at the start, this has been a very interesting few months. I do consider it has been a race, with some pretty high hurdles which I have cleared. How have I managed to do this? Finding the right people to advise and help me when needed, and ensuring I have a really strong network of family and friends available to keep me positive and really help push me through. Whatever life throws at you, keeping positive makes it much more manageable. And finally, sheer stubbornness that I will not be beaten. So trainers at the ready, I’m off for a ‘walk-jog’…

It was a great event to be invited to and as well as presenting on the work that Bridge2Aid is doing in Tanzania, it was a great opportunity to meet with other people involved in oral health across the continent of Africa.

The workshop was opened by His Excellency President Kikwete of Tanzania.  The President has a particular interest in oral health and indeed was one of the protagonists behind a side event at the United Nations Summit on Non Communicable Diseases in 2011, which led to the inclusion of oral health as a major focus area for prevention of non communicable diseases in the future.  The delegates of the conference were invited to attend dinner with the President on one night of the event at the State House in Dar es Salaam.

This was a great opportunity for Bridge2Aid to be profiled at a high level in the country in which we started, and I was determined to try and get an invitation to the President for him to view one of our emergency dentistry training programmes later in the year.

After a very pleasant dinner and a couple of drinks with the other conference participants, I somehow managed to find a way to get a private meeting with the President, at which I was able to tell him about the work that we were doing, and invite him to visit Mwanza later in the year.  It was one of those evenings where you pinch yourself the next day and have to ask yourself “did it really happen?”

I recently read an excellent blog post on the difference between people who succeed in getting others on board to support their cause, and those who don’t.  It was simply this – ask.

Mulling over this simple advice, I came to five conclusions on things that I learned from getting to meet the President, which I believe are useful pointers as well.

1. Have a plan – at the beginning of the evening I set out with two objectives.  One was to get the President to come to Mwanza to look at the programme, and the second one was to get a photograph with him.  Both of these I managed to achieve largely because I set out with the intention to do so.

2. Seize the opportunity – if you don’t know what your plan is then you won’t be able to take the opportunity to achieve it when it does present itself.  Fortunately, I knew a few people at the dinner who had links with some of the President’s staff and so when the opportunity to ask one of them for a private meeting came up, I was ready.

3. Be prepared – there is little point in having a plan, seizing the opportunity and and then falling flat on your face! Thankfully I have had lots of advice on this and my “elevator pitch” was well and truly ready and polished.  The last thing you want to do when you get into this situation is to fluff your lines!

4. Execute well - once you have a plan, the opportunity and you know what you are going to say, you need to get relaxed, and also be confident.  It’s amazing how many people go to pieces when they are faced with a famous or a powerful person. And yet I believe the way to engage with these kinds of people is simply to be yourself, know what it is you want to say, and be convincing.  If you don’t have confidence in yourself, why should others?

5. Don’t blow the easy part – once the pitch is done, and you have your ‘Yes’, you mustn’t blow the easy part!  And this is the point that we find ourselves at the moment.  Thankfully the President accepted our invitation to come to Mwanza later in the year.  Now having done all the hard work what we have to do is to make sure that he actually comes.  And this involves lots of follow up, making sure that everything that his office needs in order for him to come is supplied, and that we follow up relentlessly.

The evening back in March was a great time, not only for me personally but also for us as an organisation.  However, without being ready and knowing what the possibilities were from such a strategic evening, it could simply have passed us by as a nice memory to file away for the future.

One of the things that I’ve learned over the last few years is that being shy and waiting for the opportunity to come to you will get you nowhere.  Of course it’s important to ask, but if you struggle with what that takes, and how to increase the chances of getting a ‘Yes’, then I hope that the above will prove useful to you.

Too often, in my daily job, I forget that this is exciting – that helping to relieve people from dental pain is a big deal. And preparing for the June DVP, in these new areas, has reminded me of this. We’re all involved in something that is a big deal.

Visiting centres in Musoma to choose the training locations

Think about it – in Musoma Rural District, the District Dental Officer (the government representative in charge of Dentistry in the District) is the only Dentist around, and to make it worse, he spends a good portion of his time on administrative duties. And guess what else? He’s only been there for two months – prior to that, there was NO dentist available to help people.

When we’re finished training in June, up to six Clinical Officers in Musoma Rural District will be able to provide dental pain relief to people in this District. And as our partnership with them continues, more Clinical Officers will be trained and more people will have access to pain relief.

That’s why this is a big deal and why we’re looking forward to the June DVP!

The B2A Dental Team will be updating you on how the preparations are going over the next month, so stay tuned to our website, blog and Facebook!

-Tara

We have had an annual celebration since we began as Bridge2Aid and it’s always good to see all the different members of the team assembled together in one place for a celebratory meal.

As we looked back over the past year, it was great to see how successful Bridge2Aid has been thanks to the work that the team has done.  The Dental Training Programme has continued to expand and is now working in the centre of the country as well as the north west.  Hope Dental Centre continues to grow with more personnel and more patients being treated than ever before, and there is also great success with the development of our work at Bukumbi.

As I said to the team on Monday, organisations are very much like bodies.  Each part of the body has a different role to play (this isn’t my idea by the way, it goes back 2000 years in scripture!).  It’s easy to think that some parts of the body and some roles are more important than others, but without the support of everybody, nobody can fully do their job well.

So the work that each person has done has been very important in helping us to achieve our goals.

What is also important and what I am particularly proud of is the way that the Bridge2Aid team has worked.  Each person has put in a great deal of hard work, and shown commitment to the task, dedication to their fellow team members, and above all a desire to work in a way which achieves excellence in everything that they do.

One particular section of the team that doesn’t receive as much recognition as it should is the all important security and domestic team.

I was delighted to be able to present certificates of recognition and a small gift to each one of these team members.  Their role is key in keeping the offices and buildings that we run safe and secure and making sure that everything runs smoothly.

The looks of appreciation on everybody’s faces when they received their awards was a great thing to see, and full credit to Jackie, our Operations and Finance Manager in Tanzania, who came up with the idea of awarding this particular team and celebrating their achievement as part of the wider Bridge 2 Aid organisation.

A great afternoon together.

Over the last month we have been busy visiting all the students to hear their news, stories, challenges and experiences from their first term.

For many students, the new year meant staying at the same school, moving up a class to more challenging subjects and different teachers.  For other students, January brought some bigger changes; moving from primary to secondary school and being taught solely in English, or the move from primary to vocational and learning a new practical skill whilst living away from home for the first time, or transferring from Government to Private schooling, or going from vocational training into the big world of work.

Each individual faced a new situation, new experiences and new challenges which, once again, altered their own personal benchmark of what ‘success’ means or looks like to them.

Catching up with students, as I have mentioned previously, definitely grounds me and reminds me why B2A do what we do.  It allows you to see changes that can have a significant impact on an individual and their ambitions or expectations.

Each student had a personal achievement to be proud of, however big or small, yet at the same time they all spoke about challenges that they continue to experience on their journey to them being ‘successful’.  Not one of them considered themselves as being wholly ‘successful’……yet!

Each of them continues to aim for something higher.

Jackson, who in January, had transferred from Government to Private secondary school celebrated as he achieved some amazing exams results; an average of 89%, which put him, not at the top of his class, but at the top of his year of 89 students! While he was obviously very proud of his achievements there were still challenges that he is yet to overcome and he explained how he has to work even harder next term in order for him to achieve success.  For Jackson, success means achieving 100% in his next exams and ultimately being able to get a good job so he would be able to support his family back at Bukumbi.

Success is a hugely personal thing, and every single student is working towards their own goal.  Things have come a long way from the time when B2A first visited the community at Bukumbi where there was a collective feeling of pity and dependence and an acceptance they were never going to be ‘successful’ .

These students and their fighting spirit will, without doubt, be successful in their own ways. All it took to get the ball rolling was a little belief.  Belief in ourselves and in others; -not a particularly well guarded secret to success, but definitely something worth reminding ourselves of once in a while.