Wrapping up the Fellowship

After the Forums, I couldn’t procrastinate any longer and began to write the policy paper required of the Fellowship. It felt Herculean, given that I’m not a policy analyst and hadn’t written anything of a similar scope since my college honors thesis on Virginia Woolf, and that was almost 30 years ago.

John and the girls were very supportive and were ably assisted by a warm and wonderful student from Victoria University, Ngahuia Leighton. I’d met her mother, Enid Ratehi-Prior, up the east coast, in Whakatane. She runs Ngati Awa’s Social and Health Services and is an inspired social entrepreneur. When I learned she had a daughter in Wellington, I took note. It didn’t take long before the kids were disappointed when anyone other than Ngahuia was picking them up from school.

I figure it took me around 250 hours to write and edit the paper – I’m a slow writer and, in the writing realized some gaps in my research. I was very fortunate, though, to have some great reviewers, (my primary mentor, my host agency staff, two foundation leaders, and three Māori development experts) and Fulbright hired a professional copy editor in addition to their staff’s final final edit.

The paper, Social Lending: A Tool for Grantmakers, An Opportunity for Communities was ‘published’ by going online at: http://www.fulbright.org.nz/voices/axford/2010_benedict.html
on 20 August, the day that I gave my Fulbright talk in Wellington, based on the paper.

I was incredibly gratified by the response.  I was invited to give a second talk in the Great Hall of Parliament to 80 community leaders and MPs. In the three months after the paper went online it was visited by 966 people!

I was also asked to stay on at the Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector (OCVS) and accepted a part-time contract to keep proselytizing about social lending and to convene, for the first time, the various people doing some sort of social lending already in New Zealand. Minister Turia sent a letter to the Prime Minister and his cabinet as well as other relevant leaders telling them about my paper and her interest in supporting the nascent social lending movement and asked me to follow-up with their staffs to assess their interest in the field. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Most Axford Fellows leave the country after they complete their papers and finish their 7 month fellowships. John and I, however, had decided to stay a year so that the girls could go through a full New Zealand school year and because John’s job with the University wanted him to stay through their academic calendar. I’m so glad we did as it afforded me the rare opportunity to begin to see some of the fruits of my fellowship work.