Through GlobalEyes

Dear Tobias:

Many thanks for the photos; they are wonderful! Also, thanks for getting the needs spreadsheet back so quickly. Regarding the communication log, beyond the problem with entering the date, did you find you were able to include everything you wanted to communicate using the form? I may add more space to each line item if you think that would be better.

Best,

Veronica

Hi Veronica,

Thanks for the revised forms. Meanwhile find attached filled communication log and needs form. I have included needs for school feeding within the raws for CRM. We'll transfer these information as we do the revised ones next week. Also find attached some of the photoes (excuse me they are really many. I still have more) during distribution of the mosquito nets. Otherwise, regards,

Tobias

microfundraisinglist spread sheet 240207.xls

TropFocusCommunication spread sheet 240207.xls

Hello Tobias-

Please find revised monthly communication log and financial statement form attached. I have not yet changed the log to report separately on CRM, orphan feeding and school feeding and left tropical focus updates and questions together. I did however add lines to the space for Tropical Focus reporting to accommodate additional items.

Please do use these forms and inform me of any concerns or recommendations.

I plan to revise the communication log so that there are separate reporting spaces for the different projects by next week's reporting.

Best, Veronica

Hello Tobias-I will make your recommended changes to the spreadsheets and resend by Friday. Best,Veronica

Dear Veronica,

Hope all are fine. We received the formats you prepared for communications log and financial reporting. They are quite relevant and well designed. They will really simplify our communications. The idea of using particular day is also quite important. Friday is Ok for us as by then, we shall have had time to source any informations that require week days. We have few recommendations though: -

1. Within both the financial statements and communications log, there should in addition be space for School feeding programmes.

2. The outreach feeding should be refered to include orphan - "outreach orphan feeding" to distinguish it from school feeding.

Otherwise we shall start using them this week - probably we send the first weekly communication on Friday while the financials at end of February.

We are still working on the needs sheet, so that we also send it by Friday this week.

I will send you the findings of the survey and photoes for distribution of mosquito nets as soon as they are ready.

For the internet, we concur that Scott handles it.

Bye for now and best regards,

Tobias

Dear Tobias: Thank you for the update. I am so glad to hear the feeding program has resumed and that you arelooking into the needs at Caren’s new school. It will be interesting to know the findings of your survey to determine children in need in the area. We look forward to seeing the photos of the mosquito net distribution. Regarding the internet systems, I suspect Scott may provide better insight on that.I have a few items for you:

1. Though we already communicate several times a week, we would like to have a set day when we send each-other formal weekly reports that will standardize and record our communication. For example, you could send to us each Friday and we could respond by each Sunday.I have attached a “Trop Focus Communication” spreadsheet – the first tab is a weekly communication log that provides space for us to update and ask questions.The second tab is a monthly financial report form intended to be completed throughout the month or at the end of the month.Both sheets are designed to begin on the first day of the month and end on the last.What is a good day for you, considering your access to internet, to send the report each week? This does not mean we will no longer reciprocate emails during the week.

2. I attached another spreadsheet with space to enter line items for the micro-fundraising project I wrote to you about last week. I entered a few sample items, but please populate the list as you seefit.Also, please assign overall priority to each item.

For example, I would assume all the needs of the orphans at CRM would be first priority, followed by the outreach feeding programs and the two entrepreneurial projects would come last.I know you have provided us with a lot of information over time that could fill this list, and Katherine and I will help complete it – just please get it started for us. Also, please offer feedback on changes to or concerns with the spreadsheets.

Kind regards,Veronica

Hi everyone-

Thanks so much for participating in the call and I'm sorry it was so painful.
Hopefully things will move more smoothly next time…

Just to recap what we discussed and decided and please make changes and
add items if I’ve left out:

Structure of Activities with Trop. Focus:
– Orphanage and school feeding programs funded by GE
– Business program launched by GE (micro-financing) and maintained by Trop. Focus

Micro-Goals and Micro-Financing will be our major sources of funding for Trop. Focus

Jerry Hildebrand to do micro-financing assessment for Trop. Focus in March

Digital camera to Trop. Focus with Margee in March

Standing Board meeting 1st Sunday afternoon of each month

Communication protocol with weekly communication and financial statement forms

Jessica AHS Swim Against Malaria April 5
– Need info. from Tobias about mosquito netting needs and other malaria prevention/
treatment related items

Scott working on micro-goal donation page to post before new website rollout

Veronica owes Scott outline and content for new website

Veronica prepare document of agreement w/ Trop. Focus

Veronica and Katherine to get line items for micro-goals from Trop. Focus

Thanks again,
Veronica

Hi Gang

Since my time will be so limited on the call, and I apologize for that, here are some of my thoughts and an update

1) Looks like Rotary is not ready yet for this. I just got an email late last night from Jerry Reed (Jessica's grandfather?) that this is not possible at this time

2) My most immediate concern is for the orphans who in my opinion are the most vulnerable. I think it is important to get a clear idea of the monthly cost for them (food, books, school fees) etc I have committed to George's salary and need to know the monthly for this as well as how much I have covered

3) Here is my cut on the projects:

• orphans
• school
• micro-finance so they can start their own projects

4) Jerry will go with me to Kisumu in March (just confirmed an hour ago) He could assess how we could best go forward with this-if you all agree. We can then get this out to Firelight and perhaps Omidyar who I presented to a few weeks ago. They are possibly interested in funding a project in Rwanda and I would add this to that proposal

5) I love the micro-fund-raising idea and if we agree on a few projects we could get the pictures associated with each attached to the site

Look forward to chatting with all of you soon. Sorry I have to get off at 4:30 but am at office with people needing to see me at that time

Best, Margee

Hey everyone!

Please find the board meeting agenda attached. I'm just finishing up a spreadsheet that combines Tropical Focus's financial docs over the past few months so I will send that in a moment as we will review it in the meeting.

Talk to you all soon!

AGENDABoardMeeting2.10.07.doc

Please find Trop Focus financial summary attached for June - Jan 2007.

I whipped this up really quickly so it is a little rough on the formatting but hopefully it gives a good sense of where our $ has gone...

TFFinancials.xls

Hi all:

I hope everyone is having a nice week. I wanted to check in to see if everyone will be available for the board meeting tomorrow or Sunday.

Please visit the timetomeet schedule I just updated (you should have just received the link again) to view the times the rest of the group is available and to select the times you are available. We will be using Skype to conduct the meeting so please also confirm that you have this service.

Happy Friday!
Veronica

Dear Veronica,

Thanks so much for your last communication. I have in did been transfered, but so far things are quite fine. We still need to maintain support to these communities. Infact, the school I have been transfered to is not very far from the other one. However, it is very near my home. I want to evaluate the situation in the school so that I identify needy areas. Due to malnaurishment in the community, the feeding program should still continue.

If funds allow, even at Obede, although since I was coordinating the activities, I would like to understand the new person first. I will soon then inform you how we need to go about it. We are also very pleased to hear that Scott and Jessica are joining GlobalEyes board - they are such nice people just like you and Margee. Thanks alot also for the cash you sent. It is going to help us sort out alot of issues here.

Bye and best wishes,

Caren

Dear Veronica,

That idea on disclosure is quite fine. It is probably advantagious as it would promote our activities among people willing to support. I,ll find out about costs of installing internet facilities and inform you soon. Meanwhile we can still be relying on commercial cybercafes, although costly especially interms of time. I'm currently available to maintain the follow ups and communications. We could also train other person such as Scolastica to assist. I have a personal digital Camera which I used to take those photoes but it seems to be having some problem in that on click, it takes about 2 minutes to load into memory - something must be wrong, so I think it is better to get one for Tropical Focus together with video camera. We arer so happy to hear that Scott and Jessica are joining GlobalEyes board - at least this means more forces.

Best regards,

Tobias

Greetings Caren and Tobias:

I was so glad to receive your confirmation of acceptance of the funds. I hope they will be of help in the short term.

We're doing serious planning and making some big changes at GlobalEyes and we have some ideas to run by the two of you:

We are considering implementing a full disclosure policy and an accompanying full disclosure campaign that will post all of the "goings-on" of our business on our website. This would include publishing our communication with you to the web. We may even ask representatives from Tropical Focus to blog on our site. This idea is very much in the development stage, but do the two of you think Tropical Focus would be comfortable with this?

An idea that Scott came up with is "micro fundraising," which is basically a continuous, goal-based fundraising effort. How it works is (and Scott, please interject if I am not describing this adequately) we would post a list of line items needed for specific programs (like trainer salary for x number of months for the school uniform tailoring business or x months supply of seed for the Food for Yields program) and donors can pick and choose where to apply their money.

A crucial element to this program is follow-up; we want to show the donors where their money is going - both with words and images. We would like to know if it is realistic for someone on your end to commit to following up with us on a regular basis. For example, if a fundraising goals is to purchase enough fabric to sustain the school uniform tailoring business for six months, once that goal is reach the funds would be sent and someone from Tropical Focus would take pictures/video of the reams of fabric, maybe even of Tropical Focus picking up the fabric, of the ladies tailoring and also tape/write an interview with one of the widows.

This will not only require a time/effort commitment, but also equipment! I know you sent me digital pictures in the past, but does Tropical Focus actually have a digital camera? If we were to supply a digital camera, which would be more efficient and economical, an electrical or battery charger?

Do you think someone at Tropical Focus would be comfortable taking on this task? Also, once electricity is flowing at the Tropical Focus office, will you be able to get internet access? Do you know how expensive that will be?

As I said before, at this point we would just like to know your opinions about these ideas and we will provide more details about the projects before we expect any definitive answers from you about participating.

On another note, Caren, I was surprised to hear that you were transferred and hope everything is ok. Please let us know the fate of the feeding program and if you would like to pursue a new program at the school you were transferred to. Also, please let us know how you are doing in your new position.

Finally, I am very pleased to inform both of you that Scott and Jessica Chacon were invited to join our board of directors and have accepted!

Moving forward, please copy Scott (schacon@gmail.com) on all of our communication.

Warmest regards, Veronica

Greetings:

I hope this note finds everyone well.

There are a few changes that I felt you should be aware of regarding our projects with Tropical Focus:

• Caren has been reassigned to another school in the area. I do not know the details of the transfer but I have inquired with Caren and Tobias. I do know that the Obede feeding program is on hold at the moment and they are considering reinitiating the program at the new school.

• Janet Achieng, the young woman who was volunteering at CRM, has left and a woman named Agnes has replaced her.

• I’ve attached Tropical Focus’s financial statement for December 2006 through the beginning of January 2007 — it details all of the items that were purchased with funding from Jessica’s students.

Also, there are some new things going on with our organization:

Basecamp

Scott has so kindly set GlobalEyes up with a Basecamp account. Basecamp will be a great project management utility and I plan to use it regularly. I will post all important documents on this, including archived and updated financial statements, business plans and also communication archives. Basecamp has a chat capability and discussion forum (writeboard) that we will be using to conduct ongoing virtual communication.

In the “To-Dos” you will find tasks for the organization. Anything filed under a person’s name is assigned to them, tasks assigned to “anyone” are up for grabs and those assigned to “GlobalEyes” are group tasks that everyone should review and contribute to.

Right now, tasks are split between two main projects, one titled “operational” which has administrative and business development materials, the other is “GlobalEyes Actions” which has all the exciting fundraising and new ideas/projects stuff.

Everyone should have received an email in the past few days describing how to login to our Basecamp account. If anyone has problems, let Scott or I know.

Board Meeting

I’ve tentatively scheduled a board meeting for next Friday 2/9 to review (briefly) the 2007 plan and introduce the blog, micro fundraising and sponsorship program ideas. This meeting will be conducted using skype, iChat or traditional conference call...I’ll confirm which soon.

Could everyone please let me know if Friday works for them, and if so, what time(s) is/are convenient.
If Friday is not good, perhaps Saturday or Sunday? Please let me know.

In the event that all board members cannot attend (which I suspect will be the case more than once throughout the life of GlobalEyes!) Scott and I are working on setting us up so all of our board meeting are documented in audio and maybe even video.

Many thanks to all!

Veronica

Dec2006-Jan2007TropicalFocusFinStatement.xls Google Spreadsheets