After two small business meetings and several focus group sessions, the Bangla Business Network (BBN) had it's first large group meeting on February 9th 2013 at the St. Patrick Hall.

Based on previous meetings 5 facilitators were chosen, representing Community Health Works, Youth, Elders and Men's and Women's businesses. Moblization for this meeting was done by these facilitators.

The 165 Business that attended the meeting consisted of:

• Water - 6
• Transportation - 2
• Hardware - 1
• Soap - 1
• Services - 17 (including tailoring, clobbering, manual laborer, house builders, salons, mechanical and electronic repairs, and porting)
• General Shops - 23 (Selling a variety of local and non-local items)
• Food Services - 49 (Selling cooked or processed food, on the road or in restaurants)
• Raw Food - 21 (Including fish, meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits and grains)
• Farming - 3
• Energy - 21 (including charcoal and lamp oil)
• Education - 1 (Primary and nursery school)
• Clothes - 4
• Drinks - 3 (including alcohol, soda and fruit drinks)

The Agenda included:

• Plenary
• Welcome and introductions
• Warm-ups.
• Brief Introduction to the program.
• Reading of an information sheet. (Here in swahili .pdf )
• Discussing design of vouchers.
• Open for initial thoughts and questions.

Small group demonstrations and discussion

• People were broken into five groups. Each facilitator described the program and facilitated a demonstration.
• Each demo participant was given 200/= of Bangla Pesa (represented by colors paper 2-5's, 3,-10's, 3,-20's 2,-50's)
• Each demo participant was also given white cards where their goods and services were listed along with the cost.
• 1. They should try to buy and sell as much as possible but stay within trading limits
• 2. When they have less than 200 they should sell more
• 3. When they have more that 400 Banglas they should buy more.

Plenary Discussion.

• Registering the BBN. It was decided that the current 5 facilitators should continue as an interim board and register the network.
• Moving forward. Business registration would start in the next month with a launch after the National Presidential Elections.
• At the launch each business will be given vouchers representing 400/= Bangla Pesa and half of this will be retained as a membership fee.
• Membership fees will facilitate the 5 board members with a monthly allowance.

TheBoard of Directors (5 people): 1 Youth Representative, 1 CHW Representative, 3 Business Representatives (1 man 2 women) will perform the following functions:

• 1. Accounting and Administration
• 2. Networking
• 3. Care Taking
• Organizing Community Service Work
• Security printing of the vouchers for businesses will take place in March 2013, and distributed publicly at the Launch event.

#complementarycurrencies #bangla