…not that I’m counting but it’s definitely time for another rant.
So what do I have to show for the past four months?
One of the first things I decided to do when I arrived at my placement was a baseline survey/needs assessment kind-of-thing. It was obvious that the peer educators had huge potential but they lacked focus. They choose the activities that they think are most effective and deliver the same old messages. Before I could argue that these were outdated and weren’t based on what was actually happening in their communities I figured I needed some evidence. I also needed to get the coordinators thinking about how they could evaluate the effectiveness of their programme activities beyond counting the amount of people who were watching their drama performance. So…two months behind schedule the results are finally in and some are pretty interesting.
We asked over 150 young people aged between 15 and 26 what were the most important issues that affect them and their friends. Many gave answers that you’d expect from any teenager no matter what continent they lived on, things like ‘lack of good friends,’ ‘boys/girls,’ ‘peer pressure’ and ‘lack of recreational facilities’. But, overwhelmingly (and thankfully in support of our projects) issues related to HIV and sexual health came out on top. Other popular answers reminded me that we’re working in one of the world’s poorest countries, things like unemployment, prostitution, inability to pay education fees, early or forced marriages, lack of adequate shelter, water sanitation and medication.
But, some of the answers had us in fits of giggles. One question on the survey asked ‘Do you feel you need to gain more knowledge and skills? If so, what?’ One respondent answered ‘I want to be a Kapenta.’ Kapenta are small, really really smelly, dried fish that are sold by the cup load on the side of the road. I only hope he meant that he wanted to be a Carpenter.
Another survey asked bar owners ‘Is there any educational literature in the bar?’ One person answered ‘No’ but to the follow-up question ‘In what language is the literature?’ they answered ‘Nyanja’. The same questionnaire stated that the bar employed no staff but in answer to ‘Who will attend the bar workers training course?’ the respondent answered ‘the bar owner and the bar worker’ – utterly confusing.
Almost everybody could give three ways in which HIV is transmitted confirming that ten-or-so years of awareness raising campaigns has been partly successful but the challenge now is to turn this knowledge into a permanent shift in attitudes and sustained behaviour change. Over 75% of the young people asked admitted that they were sexually active, little more than 50% had used a condom and less than half had been for VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing). What this now means is that I have my ammunition – young people in Chipata ARE having sex, promoting abstinence is important and has its place but condoms and other prevention methods must be part of the solution.
Since Christmas, I’ve largely been working to develop project plans for each of the groups I work with based on the results of these surveys. This has meant having to explain what the difference between an aim or goal and an objective is over and over – each time I launch into an explanation I manage to confuse myself a little more. After narrowing down the objectives from a possible twenty or so to four or five, we’ve been thinking of activities that will help us to achieve them and have been setting some measurable targets. Now, everyone has agreed to the programme plans, knows what the activities and targets are, but still someone tells me ‘next week we want to go to a school in x to talk about y.’ Now, this would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that ‘x’ is usually not in our agreed catchment area and ‘y’ does not fit into our agreed objectives ..arrggghhhhhhhh!
Now if this kind of thing happened with one organisation then I think I could take a step back, breath deeply and calmly explain where it’s gone wrong. But it happens with ALL THREE of the organisations time and time again. I could understand it if I’d gone ahead and planned the projects without their input and fallen foul of the ‘know-it-all Westerner syndrome’ but all I did was put what we’d decided together into legible English. …I’m half way to giving up.
No…that’s not true I’m no where near giving up but am ever-so-slightly frustrated (ok, very frustrated) but determined to get everything running half way to smoothly before my time is up. The biggest thing in my way seems to be working for three organisations at once. I can’t do anything to the standard I want, or support the coordinators as much as is necessary. I decide every other day that I want to stop working with one and concentrate on the other but those I choose to stick with are never consistent day to day. More positively, if I’ve had a rough day at one place there’ll be something good happening the next day at another.
I’m sending off my first funding applications this week. The programmes still have no money in the budget apart from the measly volunteer allowances and I hope that some decent equipment and money for transport, photocopying etc. will make all the difference.
Having said that one group have completely baffled me. From October to January they were my star group, always turning up to meetings, eager for something to do, enthusiastically carrying out any task I set them. But in January their donors released some funds for their allowances (these had been frozen at the beginning of last year because someone had emptied the organisations bank accounts into their own pockets). Since then the numbers who have been turning up to meetings and activities has halved. Where’s the logic in that? They worked really, really hard when they were getting absolutely nothing and then when there’s money up for grabs half of them disappear.
Have I already mentioned I’m a little confused?
So what do I have to show for the past four months?
One of the first things I decided to do when I arrived at my placement was a baseline survey/needs assessment kind-of-thing. It was obvious that the peer educators had huge potential but they lacked focus. They choose the activities that they think are most effective and deliver the same old messages. Before I could argue that these were outdated and weren’t based on what was actually happening in their communities I figured I needed some evidence. I also needed to get the coordinators thinking about how they could evaluate the effectiveness of their programme activities beyond counting the amount of people who were watching their drama performance. So…two months behind schedule the results are finally in and some are pretty interesting.
We asked over 150 young people aged between 15 and 26 what were the most important issues that affect them and their friends. Many gave answers that you’d expect from any teenager no matter what continent they lived on, things like ‘lack of good friends,’ ‘boys/girls,’ ‘peer pressure’ and ‘lack of recreational facilities’. But, overwhelmingly (and thankfully in support of our projects) issues related to HIV and sexual health came out on top. Other popular answers reminded me that we’re working in one of the world’s poorest countries, things like unemployment, prostitution, inability to pay education fees, early or forced marriages, lack of adequate shelter, water sanitation and medication.
But, some of the answers had us in fits of giggles. One question on the survey asked ‘Do you feel you need to gain more knowledge and skills? If so, what?’ One respondent answered ‘I want to be a Kapenta.’ Kapenta are small, really really smelly, dried fish that are sold by the cup load on the side of the road. I only hope he meant that he wanted to be a Carpenter.
Another survey asked bar owners ‘Is there any educational literature in the bar?’ One person answered ‘No’ but to the follow-up question ‘In what language is the literature?’ they answered ‘Nyanja’. The same questionnaire stated that the bar employed no staff but in answer to ‘Who will attend the bar workers training course?’ the respondent answered ‘the bar owner and the bar worker’ – utterly confusing.
Almost everybody could give three ways in which HIV is transmitted confirming that ten-or-so years of awareness raising campaigns has been partly successful but the challenge now is to turn this knowledge into a permanent shift in attitudes and sustained behaviour change. Over 75% of the young people asked admitted that they were sexually active, little more than 50% had used a condom and less than half had been for VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing). What this now means is that I have my ammunition – young people in Chipata ARE having sex, promoting abstinence is important and has its place but condoms and other prevention methods must be part of the solution.
Since Christmas, I’ve largely been working to develop project plans for each of the groups I work with based on the results of these surveys. This has meant having to explain what the difference between an aim or goal and an objective is over and over – each time I launch into an explanation I manage to confuse myself a little more. After narrowing down the objectives from a possible twenty or so to four or five, we’ve been thinking of activities that will help us to achieve them and have been setting some measurable targets. Now, everyone has agreed to the programme plans, knows what the activities and targets are, but still someone tells me ‘next week we want to go to a school in x to talk about y.’ Now, this would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that ‘x’ is usually not in our agreed catchment area and ‘y’ does not fit into our agreed objectives ..arrggghhhhhhhh!
Now if this kind of thing happened with one organisation then I think I could take a step back, breath deeply and calmly explain where it’s gone wrong. But it happens with ALL THREE of the organisations time and time again. I could understand it if I’d gone ahead and planned the projects without their input and fallen foul of the ‘know-it-all Westerner syndrome’ but all I did was put what we’d decided together into legible English. …I’m half way to giving up.
No…that’s not true I’m no where near giving up but am ever-so-slightly frustrated (ok, very frustrated) but determined to get everything running half way to smoothly before my time is up. The biggest thing in my way seems to be working for three organisations at once. I can’t do anything to the standard I want, or support the coordinators as much as is necessary. I decide every other day that I want to stop working with one and concentrate on the other but those I choose to stick with are never consistent day to day. More positively, if I’ve had a rough day at one place there’ll be something good happening the next day at another.
I’m sending off my first funding applications this week. The programmes still have no money in the budget apart from the measly volunteer allowances and I hope that some decent equipment and money for transport, photocopying etc. will make all the difference.
Having said that one group have completely baffled me. From October to January they were my star group, always turning up to meetings, eager for something to do, enthusiastically carrying out any task I set them. But in January their donors released some funds for their allowances (these had been frozen at the beginning of last year because someone had emptied the organisations bank accounts into their own pockets). Since then the numbers who have been turning up to meetings and activities has halved. Where’s the logic in that? They worked really, really hard when they were getting absolutely nothing and then when there’s money up for grabs half of them disappear.
Have I already mentioned I’m a little confused?
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