Where teamwork and preparation lead to...

Tuesday, April 24

Normal start of the day with a very good shower, delicious breakfast and time to start last preparations for the Leadership Summit.

An introduction to the team, followed by a briefing and division into different groups, made the expectations clear to us.   Some were involved in a dry-run of presentations, others needed to fill the goodie-bags, set up a Caring-together promotion table, put up banners and posters, arrange name badges, press release to send out, …  Everyone was assigned to a task.

All of a sudden Martine came to me and told me: “Heidi, I think “your son” has arrived”.  And there he was, Moses.  I was so happy to see him again.  After being in close contact over the last 10 months, it really felt “right” to give him a big hug.  We had so much to tell to each other.  Person to person is so different from messenger or WhatsApp.  His colleagues introduced themselves and all of them told me how much he was talking about me, about “us”. 

Since most of communication and marketing material was still being printed,  we looked ourselves for other jobs where we could help.  This meant that in the morning, we did not really have the feeling to be very efficient but when in the afternoon (4pm) all materials arrived, we started arranging everything to have a smooth organization of filling goodie bags.  I will never take a goodie bag for granted anymore since we filled them ourselves.  Good we had a “system” to fill 😊  Afterwords we sorted all the name badges in a good order, we thougt…  Our reception desk was ready, at the entrance of the stairs leading to the main conference room.   

Our job for that day was done, but the Pepal-girls kept on working all evening.  That is when you are in the lead - you can delegate things, but not everything.  Unfortunately they could not join us that evening for dinner.

We gathered to leave for dinner in an Ethiopean restaurant.  We ate like a big sour pancake, topped with fish, meat or chicken.  One could eat from another one’s plate by tearing a piece of its pancake and using that piece to take fish/meat/chicken from the other ones’ pancake.    It was a fun and social activity.

When getting back at the hotel, I went to my room..  Some were still planning on going out, but tomorrow would be an early, busy AND important day…

Goodnight!

Heidi