In-house production starts tomorrow

Well tomorrow is the day, the girls officially start working for me. I am not sure yet if this is a good thing yet or not.

If you are wondering what I am talking about here is the story. The NGO that I am working for used to have a company that assembled our products. After going back and forth with them since I arrived in my town about several fair trade issues it was decided that we would no longer use them to make our products.

When we told them of our decision we also offered the workers (the girls) the option of coming to work for us directly and having me be the manager. They all started to dance and asked if they could start working for me the next day. I told them that they had to work it out with their current managers and then get back with me.

It has taken us about two weeks to get everything straightened out and tomorrow is the girls first day. I am now hoping that all of the work that the interns did to help me get ready was enough. I am also hoping that I have enough supplies to keep them busy and that they will listen to me and follow the changes that I have made from the way that they were doing it in the other location.

I think that the first few months will be them testing me out, like at every job but they are also on probation and will be getting progress reports from me. I am hoping that this works out because our bead sales have increased so much that this business can be really profitable for the workers and the bead makers.

Let's just keep our fingers crossed that I can make it through the first week.