Tuesday, August 18

This is the end…sorta

Everything is wrapping up. Quicker then I may be able to handle. This weekend the Vice wants to bring me to Paga to visit the crocodile pond, and then on Monday I’ll leave Pong-Tamale for the last time and head to Tamale to meet the rest of the JFs for a debrief. We have a few days in Tamale before shipping off to Accra. In Accra I’ll be meeting the National Director of the Human Resource Development and Management Directorate of MoFA to fill him in on all the work at the Vet College. We have one free day in Accra before we fly back to Toronto. I’ll spend two days in Toronto before flying home on the 25th of August and arriving in St. John’s at 11:59 PM.

These last two weeks were nothing like I expected. I’m not sure if ever formed a clear picture of what I thought they would be like, but most everything surprised me. For example, just when I had given up on getting to go on a village stay, Sarah helped me arrange one just outside of Tamale. A village stay is when a volunteer spends anywhere from two days to two weeks in an extremely rural village to get a first hand look at rural livelihoods. I am so glad that I was actually able to have that experience, since it truly deepened my understanding of the Dagomba culture and the attitudes of rural farmers. I stayed with an Assemblyman who represented his community and two others at the Tamale Metro Assembly, which is the local government body. He stayed in a compound with his father and his father’s three wives, his own wife, his brothers and all the younger children. I wanted to learn more about a woman’s typical day so I rose before the sun with the rest of the women, who began sweeping the compound and preparing the fires. They prepared the porridge known as koko that the rest of the family would eat when they woke up. After feeding everyone they bathed themselves and the children. Then they went to fetch water.

This was where I asked to get involved, and although they were shocked by the request they happily provided me with a bucket and a scarf to place between my head and the bucket. Walking towards the watering hole we were greeted by hoots of laughter and a cacophony of questions and exclamations about the white man joining the women to fetch water.

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It was I who was shocked when we arrived at the watering hole. The water we were gathering was actually the water that had collected around the foundation of a latrine that was still under construction. I knew the water was unlikely to be very clean, but the muddy brown water was more than I had expected. The women were extremely efficient at getting all the buckets filled and in no time two women were lifting a bucket to be placed on my head. I didn’t get six feet before I knew I was doing something wrong. The women noticed and helped me shift the bucket further back on my head so that I didn’t have to look up into the sky as I carried it. It was incredibly heavy, and terribly difficult to avoid spilling water all over myself. I got about half way before the left side of my neck started to cramp up. I was able to ignore it for about thirty seconds, but I had to admit defeat. One of the women came and relieved me of my burden.

Upon returning, a lot of my time was taken up with preparing the various reports and projects that EWB requires us to complete so that our experiences and lessons learned become part of EWB’s collective knowledge. I also participated in the colleges strategic planning process. They’re hoping to outline their priorities and make a five-year plan.

And so my work at the college has come to an end, and I’m heading home. It feels strange but it feels right. I have moments of wondering about what it would be like to stay longer, follow through on my work some more, build stronger relationships with the people who’ve shared the last three and a half months of my life, but in the end I really am looking forward to coming home.

And the greatest thing is, the work I’ve done isn’t simply going to be left where it is. Another EWB volunteer has arrived who will take my place at the college and continue my work. It’s a pretty great feeling to think that someone is going to be putting all their energy to take something you started even further.

Her name is Carissa Vados, she is 23 and she comes from the Vancouver Pro-chapter. She studied at McGill and now works for Aeroplan. She’s going to be putting the finishing touches on the entrepreneurship curriculum, learning about how extension methods are taught at the college and teaching a weekly ICT course. So to keep an eye on how things are going at the college you can follow her here: http://carissainghana2009.blogspot.com

As for me I’m not sure if I’ll continue blogging when I return. This blog will probably seem less interesting once I’m on the same continent as all of you. As well I am probably going to be fairly busy, and blogging may not be a priority. So I’d just like to thank you all for following my journey, and for commenting and showing interest. It has really helped to share my experiences and to hear your thoughts on them. Thank you so much, and please keep Africa in your minds.

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Tuesday, August 4

How to define success

Many projects in the world of development face a difficult challenge.

How will we define success?

Most of the projects that I've witnessed during my work here in Ghana struggled with this question. For example, one project focused on facilitating a planning process with communities so that they could leverage government structures to implement their projects. The end goal was originally seen as achieving food security for the communities. The project would assist the communities in choosing their priorities and in putting these into a Community Action Plan. Then the project would help the most local government structure, Area Councils, to incorporate the various Community Action Plans into its Area Level Plan. Then the project helped these Area Councils work with the District Governments to incorporate these Areal Level Plans into the Districts’ Mid-Term Development Plans. Once this process was completed, funds were released so that each community was able to implement one of the projects outlined in their Community Action Plan. The money would be channeled through the National Government, through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and finally to the District Governments so that they could work with the communities to implement the projects. Each of the projects selected were to address the food security needs of these communities. The projects helped some communities with crop production, with animal traction for plowing, or with things like market infrastructure and processing equipment. As the project continued, those who designed and oversaw the project began debating which was of greater value, the food security benefits of their projects, or the exposure of each community and district to this planning process that could be replicated in the future to meet future needs.

Another dilemma faced by the project was the question of targeting. Should the project aim to increase household food security or to increase community food security. Should it trade off having a larger overall impact for the community in order to benefit the most vulnerable households? Which initiative was more successful? The one that saw each woman in a community receive a goat that they could breed and raise, or the one that saw one individual receive processing equipment that she could make available to to community for a small fee? If the goal was targeting the most vulnerable than perhaps the goat initiative seems more successful, but if the goal was greater food security for an entire community than perhaps the processing equipment was the most successful. Yes, one person will be benefiting from the fees that she charges, but now an entire community is able to process a greater amount of food, allowing them to store it longer, making the lean season shorter. And maybe we can say that the processing equipment has had a household impact. If you examine one family, perhaps their food security has increased since the mother can now go next door to grind her maize, instead of traveling all the way to the next community. But then you have to ask, can the poorest household in the community afford the fee that is being charged for the equipment.

There are many questions and many challenges when trying to define and gauge success. And this is something I’m now facing as my placement draws to a close. Have I been successful? Well what did I hope to achieve? Maybe we can examine the goals of the JF program for some guidance.

1. Create positive impact overseas through our partners

2. Create positive impact in Canada through our chapters

3. Create social change leaders through learning and passion in individual JFs

Or to quote the more specific descriptions from the “Orange Book of Change” which could be seen as a sort of EWB manual:

1. To create change overseas by working directly with our partners to have real and direct on the ground impact with rural African communities and our partners themselves. While working with our partners the JF furthers the broader overseas impact and programming of EWB, augmenting the impact we’re already having.

2.To create change in Canada by providing returned volunteers who are able to educate and inspire Canadians to change the way they think, feel and act towards Africa.

3. To create change and learning for the Junior Fellow, allowing them to grow as much as possible. Junior Fellows will emerge from their experiences better equipped to act as leaders for change in Canada and overseas over the long term.

Having these three objectives raises the question of priorities. It isn’t clear which objective should take precedence over another, but it’s inevitable that for each JF there will be times where a decision needs to be made as to which one should be the focus of their energy. Looking at the order in which they’ve been outlined doesn’t even provide a clue to whether anyone has implicitly placed the emphasis on one goal over another since the order in which they appear depends on the document in which they are found. I’ve put these two descriptions in the same order so that it is easier to refer to them.

So looking at my placement up to this point, I’d say that I put most of my energy into objective number 1. My primary focus was on having something tangible to provide the college, or something concrete to offer to EWB’s strategy. I knew that this type of placement wouldn’t really lend itself to “real and direct on the ground impact with rural African communities.” I think I can say I’ve more or less achieved my goals. When I leave there should be a fairly clear plan for the creation of an entrepreneurship curriculum, and EWB is excited and committed to our partnership with the college. In fact there will be a JF from one of the organizations Professional Chapters coming to replace me when I leave. They will continue work on the entrepreneurship curriculum and explore other areas of the college’s work. It is possible to see the positive relationship that now exists between the college and EWB as real success as well. This alone could have huge payoffs that are yet to be imagined.

It’s hard to say whether I prioritized personal growth or connecting with Canada this summer. I definitely feel I learned a lot and the experiences that I’ve had have expanded my understanding of an incredible number of issues. And I also feel fairly happy with the level of communication that I maintained with Canada, through this blog, Twitter updates, and occasional phone calls with different individuals. But I have to be honest and say that I wasn’t very rigorous in either of these dimensions in terms of planning, or in analyzing how well I was doing. I sort just let them happen as they would. I was always aware of them, but I didn’t devote a great deal of brain power to really maximizing the potential pay-offs.

I have to say though, I definitely feel positive about the entire experience! Seen as a whole I feel like I’ve had the chance to learn an incredible amount, I feel I can really apply it all when I get home, and I feel like I’ve actually made a valuable contribution to our work in Ghana!

I’ll finish today with some pictures.

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