First posted 20 Sep, 2012 - by Jennifer Geier
Working for an international training company, I have the pleasure of seeing new parts of the world as a part of my job. Two weeks ago, I facilitated two 1/2 day workshops for an audience of women entrepreneurs in Central America. The client was the Vital Voices Global Partnership which is the preeminent non-governmental organization (NGO) that identifies, trains and empowers emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe, enabling them to create a better world for us all.
On day one, we covered accounting basics which includes doing the 3-dimensional BaSIS Framework with the buckets. Because I had a group of 50 women we depended on group work and the room quickly filled with discussion and debate as to where to post the sales transaction. I could see screwed up eyebrows as people resisted their instinctive urge to address inventory in this transaction. At the end of the 3-hour session, people were coming up to me after class telling me how they never knew how easy accounting was.
On day two, the syllabus was slotted to be financial analysis but first we redid the transactions. This time it took 20 minutes to get through all the credit and debit postings. Then we linked the Cash Flow statement to their understanding of the Balance Sheet and Income Statement that we had been working with. Then we reviewed the case study in the book and broke up into groups to come to a consensus about whether or not we should invest in this case-study company. Then 11:30 came around, the end of the session, and everyone was alive with chatter about how their own company categorizes expenses and when they consider a sale to be a sale.
I learned some Spanish on this trip, using the Spanish words for the curriculum on the board work for everyone to see. This is probably the first time that a workshop was simultaneously translated into another language, while I taught in English there was a booth in the back of the room where translators broadcast my words in Spanish for 70% of the participants.
I learned some Spanish on this trip, using the Spanish words for the curriculum on the board work for everyone to see. This is probably the first time that a workshop was simultaneously translated into another language, while I taught in English there was a booth in the back of the room where translators broadcast my words in Spanish for 70% of the participants.
One of the other facilitators was so excited about the response and engagement of the students that she and I have started discussing her accreditation so she can take this into her organization. Teaching to auditors around the world. I'm excited to add a passionate, bilingual trainer to our family of accredited Color Accounting trainers.
You can see more and read the WEAmericas initiative at www.VitalVoices.org.
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