Project Update – My Intended Add Value

So we have finished compiling the interview results from the Manyemuyemu Dam community and are moving ahead with preparations for the community mobilization meeting. This work, however, can be conducted by locals and, as you know from the last post, EWB volunteers are trying to do more than gap-fill. So where is my add-value?

I’m going to take a minute here to make sure everyone reading this has a decent understanding of the Junior Fellow program. It is an 18 month position starting when you are selected. There is a lot of “foundation learning” we do before going to that pre-departure training session. The overseas volunteering is not the beginning of our development education, it’s the culmination. But I don’t think that’s very accurate because of course it doesn’t end there and you learn a lot by being on the ground. The idea is we come overseas with minds jammed full of development theory and field techniques so that we are effective contributors to our partner organizations. The Junior Fellow program as three goals:

1. Having impact overseas, with our partner organization, host community, and Dorothy!
2. Personal learning to become effective “Development Champions”
3. Impact in Canada

If you were wondering what we Junior Fellows will be up to for the 8 months remaining after our 4 months overseas ends its sharing the experience with our chapter and community in Canada so that Canadians are aware of the development issues. As you can guess from my Motivations post, this is one is something I am really looking forward to!

So, impact with my partner organizations. What’s my add value? It may seem like I am stating that question a lot… that’s because it’s a question that haunts us volunteers. No one tells you what your add value is, its impossible to know ahead of time. It takes a good month or so of working with an organization before you can figure out where you, a young Canadian student, can add value to this organization which has been around for years. For some placements that impact is more obvious, for others I am sure they are still figuring it out. But its of prime importance so in the mean time we are wracking our minds trying desperately to figure it out as the time remaining in our placement slips by. EWB tries to push us to become the most superb agents of change possible to do this job, pushing us to identify and overcome every weakness and build on our strengths [that pre-departure training is very intense let me tell you]. One fellow-JF commented that EWB is the only place he has felt challenged and I understand why. EWB is the only place where we have been challenged to challenge ourselves. I can’t speak for the rest of the volunteers, but I certainly ever felt our work was a matter of doing a good job. You never really think of it in terms of whether you have done a good job… only could the job be done better? Could I be having more impact? Is there anything I am not doing that Dorothy would want me to do? Quickly you realize the hardest boss to work for is yourself!

Anyway, back to the add value! With my placement I was told at the beginning my task was to verify this manual, “Mobilizing Communities to Maintain Earth Dams”, which Nick Jimenez produced during his placement the year prior. That was all the direction that given. As you know from the other updates first a verification that it worked at Mulabalaba was undertaken. It was found to have worked the first time, so now Kantu and I are using the manual in another area, Manyemuyemu, to see if it is useful for extension officers other than Nick and Ernest and applicable to another location. So far there is very little that can be improved in the methodology. There a few areas which need adjusting, but certainly not the same contribution as creating this comprehensive, 50+ page, participatory manual. I was really aghast at the enormity of the accomplishment Nick made. We learn about participatory methodology, but to write a participatory manual… quite the achievement. But my improvements to the manual can not come close to the contribution of its creation. Where is my biggest add value? But our impact is supposed to be long-term, so the fear begins to creep in that at the end of august there will be an improved manual and it will just sit on the shelf. Will it be used? A-ha! This manual needs to be more than a manual containing a good field methodology… it has to be a useful tool! If the methodology works the next task is to make sure it is presented in an extremely efficient and use-friendly manner so that it will actually be used. So while we continue the mobilizations of Manyemuyemu I will conduct some research amongst the field officers as to what participatory manuals they have used in the past, what made them effective/ineffective, and how they would like to see this manual structured so that it has the greatest utility for the intended users. Furthermore, in the process of including a stakeholder analysis to the methodology to identify what programs other NGOs might be running in the area that could compromise our activities [this is something that happened during the Mulabalaba mobilization – an NGO was offering a food for work program to the community, paying them to do maintenance that MACO was asking them to do for free] it became clear that NGOs and MACO [the government] do not have the best coordination with each other. In fact there doesn’t seem to be an established method of communication with them despite the fact that MACO should know of all NGO activities. At one time MACO held stakeholder meetings where all the organizations working in a certain area, or maybe within a certain sector, would come together and meet so their programs could be harmonized. But organizations didn’t like this harmonizing it seems and stopped coming. As a volunteer from an NGO working with MACO who will be leaving at the end of August – I am in a very good position to do some mediating. I am planning some research – perhaps it will only be preliminary research – into identifying what communication is supposed to be taking place, what is taking place, and what the concerns and issues are – from both side’s viewpoints. Hopefully from that some groundwork can be made in terms of establishing a format for communication. It may be as simple as an organization preferring letters rather than emails or the other way around. Right now there is nothing. There are some really convenient advantages to these two [manual utility and NGO communication] activities… they don’t require any resources from MACO! My co-workers are really incredible. They have lot of knowledge and many of them have a passion and care about their work instead of it just being another job. The biggest thing hold MACO back – as far as I can tell - is how terribly under funded they are. They just don’t have the money to conduct the work they are mandated to do. This research can be very beneficial to MACO without drawing resources such as overnight allowances and fuel costs that it takes to get me into the village [we have enough of those costs with mobilizing Manyemuyemu which is far enough away its cheaper to spend nights between days in the villages at a nearby town of Zimba]. Also, these activities do not require the help of the extension officers beyond being interviewees. The officers I work with have many other tasks they are working on beside the community mobilization that my placement focuses on, and this research can take place when they are required elsewhere or circumstances out of our control [ie the fuel truck doesn’t show up so the petrol station has no gas, the electricity is out in the city, the vehicle we hope to use is needed to take people to a funeral, etc.] prevents us from carrying out the mobilization activities that day. These ideas have been met with positive reactions from my co-workers and the DACCO [the head of MACO for this district] so it appears as if this is what I will be working on for the remainder of my placement.

So, in conclusion:

1. Continue mobilizing the Manyemuyemu dam community and using that exercise to further refine the methodology contained in the manual.
2. Conduct research amongst the field officers to find out ways to make the manual as user friendly as possible.
3. Do some research [as much as time permits] to better establish modes of communication between MACO and key NGOs.

There you have it. That is a lot to do in the time remaining so I better get busy!