Minutes of the African Proverbs Working Group Executive Committee Meeting on Sunday, 7 February 2016 at Maryknoll Society House, Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya

Present

• Joseph Healey – The Moderator of www.afriprov.org website, jghealey@aol.com +254 723 362 993 — Directing the meeting.
• Cephas Agbemenu – cyagbemenu@yahoo.com +254 723 307 992 – Assistant Moderator
• Elias Bushiri Elie — e.bushiri@yahoo.com +254 701 391 149 – Assistant Secretary
• Margaret W. Ireri — margwireri@yahoo.com +254 722537 774 – Secretary

Opening
The meeting started with a prayer said by Elias Bushiri in the Bembe language.

The Way Forward

Following a review of the APWG meeting held on 30 January 2016, the committee made several proposals.

• Develop criteria to control realistic membership.
• Establish tougher measures to facilitate supervision of the grants.
• The committee to be able to evaluate the commitment of members.
• To revise existing guidelines in order to incorporate guidelines on the exit by members.
• Control of the number of projects being approved for grants to fit the annual budget.
• Consistently include training workshops in all meetings to improve knowledge and writing skills of the members. For example, the layout of the African Proverb of the Month.
• Stress the main objective of the proverbs writing. i.e. for Christian religious and evangelical purposes.

Verification of projects

The members agreed that in the verification process various these issues should be considered:

• Speak directly to a member of the specific ethnic group in order to verify the correctness of the details in the collection presented.
• Use the internet to confirm the correct ethnological name of the language and other statistical facts.
• In case a collaborator cannot be reached, an alternative member of the ethnic group will be asked to assist with the verification process.

Payment of grants

The meeting agreed that payment for grants should be made during the next full APWG meeting.

Editing of the electronic and printed work

The committee agreed to thoroughly scrutinize all the projects presented by the members. Serious errors such as omission of pagination would require the member to re-print the booklets. All corrections required will be communicated to the individual writers of the projects.
The committee proposed that each individual member be requested to pay a 10% charge for the editing of individual members’ work. Some of the work was poorly done, and required a lot of editing before it could be accepted for presentation. This suggestion would be tabled during the next full meeting.

Finances

Income

Mieder Wolfgang Ksh.15,000 ($150)
Member contributions 2016 Ksh.26,000
TOTAL Ksh.41,000

Expenses

Committee costs 15,000
APWG lunch costs 11,200
Committee travel costs 3,000
TOTAL 29,200

Cash at hand Ksh.11,800

Date of the next meeting

This would be communicated as soon as possible.

Closure

There being no other business the meeting ended at 3 p.m.