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What were some of the processes that you had to go through,
in order to reach a lot of children very quickly?
What we did is to bring together a large number of stakeholders,
partners for implementation.
We had the Minister of Education,
who was responsible for mobilizing the teachers;
we had the Postbank, which was going to provide the banking services;
we had a separate organization called K-Rep
to develop macro enterprise projects.
So by bringing together a large number of implementers
we were able to move this forward very quickly.
What were some of the challenges
to sit at the same table people from different sectors?
First of all, you have to manage expectations.
The banks were looking for this to be a commercial product.
Eventually, we let them know that this wasn't going to be a commercial project,
and probably the returns were not going to be immediate.
The macro enterprises...
They understood their objectives,
but it took a long time for them to appreciate
what their contribution would be.
Ultimately, what we did was to bring them...
We spent a lot of time on consultations prior to going to implementations,
so by the time we did,
we managed everyone's expectations.
Although we use the basic curriculum of Aflatoun as our reference,
we then had to customize it.
As soon as they all understood what the expectation, the objectives were,
that process was very well managed and we moved very quickly.
What were some of the things that you had to do
in order to make sure that the Programme got into the schools?
We had a hundred and fifty schools as a target,
and in each school we identified two teachers.
First of all, we trained one teacher from each of the schools,
who, in turn, trained the other teachers.
We also had a very important partner,
a Teacher Training College,
and they were able to train with us all the teachers.
One of our favorite stories
was that, when we went in, we expected to create new projects for each school,
so that they could generate income.
What actually happened
was that the already existing clubs that were generating
immediately chose to join Aflatoun,
so that we already had clubs that were generating income
just by making sure that the existing clubs converted themselves into Aflatoun!