Part II!

Hello again!

Time for a much-delayed update from Butare, Rwanda! I’m into the last two weeks of my internship here, and I have a feeling that the last push to get things done will result in many good things all smushed into relatively few days. The following is structured (for my benefit, really) as a sort of reflection on the experience thus far.

GOALS
As most experienced ‘development’/aid/volunteer workers—experienced, I am not—know, the goals you set in the first week of working in an organization are often too ambitious to be realized. I have had to scale down my expectations of myself and others over the course of this internship, but I’ll try to account for some of the successes and ongoing projects of the past several weeks.

SUCCESSES
Since I began my internship with Rwanda Village Concept Project on May 7, 2009, I’ve completed a number of my aforementioned goals, and many others are ongoing. For brevity’s sake, I’ll detail the major projects completed thus far.

For EPN:
• I wrote an article for EPN’s newsletter, describing my experience
• I continue to report back to EPN weekly (when internet access allows), and have written for this blog (perhaps not as regularly as is preferable, it seems!)
• I continue to collect receipts, photographs, etc as the project goes on.
• The evaluation is an ongoing process; I’ve interviewed the RVCP framers of the project, and have recently finished conducting formal interviews of several members of the women’s beekeeping cooperative (RWA).

For RVCP:
• I designed and implemented a management-training workshop. It was held on June 27, 2009. In addition to RVCP’s board, two other RVCP International Participants attended the workshop and their feedback was very useful; they deemed the workshop a success.
• I assisted in designing an implementing a nutrition workshop. This was a full-day endeavour, teaching basic nutrition—in an interactive format—to 70 foster mothers of L.L.C.C.M., the orphan centre that RVCP works with. There was a lot of field research preceding the workshop, including designing a baseline survey in order to assess the current nutritional needs and status of the women we would be working with.
• I’ve attended countless ceremonies, workshops, and inaugurations of new projects (Rwanda loves formalities)
• I am currently working on the English teaching manual for the pyramid teaching sessions. Unfortunately, due to the timing of the holiday for secondary schools, the teaching sessions will begin after I’ve left Rwanda. Regardless, I think this is one area to which I can contribute very tangible knowledge, and am looking forward to collaborating with RVCP’s new international participants from Britain on this particular project.
• As mentioned previously, the evaluation is for the benefit of both EPN and RVCP, and it is ongoing.
• As the longest-term RVCP volunteer this summer, I have had the unexpected pleasure of acting as a sort of ‘liaison’ for RVCP, introducing new International Participants to Rwanda and RVCP. Maybe it’s not really work—it’s been a fun ‘duty’—but it sure is time-consuming!

For RWA:
• I continue to visit the beekeeping site weekly and assist with beekeeping activities. I’ve found that a large part of my participation there is not so much the actual physical work, but rather showing interest in the women and their work.
• I continue to administer funding from EPN, especially by buying materials in Kigali and Butare.
• Assisted in the election of the new board.
• In the midst of organizing the cooperative management sessions, scheduled for two days later this week.

UPCOMING
Working with RVCP has been a very mixed experience. I fully recognize that everyone involved, including me, could better manage many of the problems RVCP faces. There are good days and bad days, and I try not to let my natural tendencies toward impatience and micro-managing get the better of me.
I’m truly looking forward to compiling the information I’ve amassed about RVCP and this project into the final evaluation. I feel that I have learned a lot about Rwanda, international aid work, NGOs, and this particular organization/project. One benefit of having lost nearly the whole month of May to the exam schedule was that I was able to do a lot of informal learning before beginning actual work.
I think the vast majority of my (tangible) work for this internship will actually be completed in the coming two weeks, and I’m eagerly anticipating the process and the feeling of accomplishment.

Year Two!

Hello everyone!

My name is Sarah Woolf and I am End Poverty Now’s intern in Butare, Rwanda, working with RVCP, for summer 2009. I have been in Rwanda for a little over three weeks now, and am excited by the work that lies ahead in the next couple months.

I’d like to thank Alyx for the excellent work she did last year, and for all the help she’s given me in my transition into this job!

 

My job this year, while still working with the lovely women of the Rwandan Widows’ Association, will be quite different from the work Alyx did last year. As the past blog posts have indicated, last year involved a lot of on-the-ground work: buying materials, training the women, building houses, etc. The project has now been up and running for over a year now, and there is little for me to do in the way of manual labour—shucks! I hope to go to the beekeeping site (outside Nyakagezi village) at least once a week, usually on Saturdays when the women work there, and maybe there will be more opportunities with the upcoming harvest. My main task on this project is to develop a sound business plan. I’ve met with Jean-Claude, the Co-Ordinator of RVCP (taking over from Hovaire), and I outlined the order I would like to do things in:

1. Collect all of RVCP’s information on the project. This will be easier said than done, as organization and accessible information are not exactly RVCP’s strong suits. I want to read up on this project, and on other beekeeping cooperatives in the area, as much as possible before I…
2. Design an evaluation. There are two other International Participants at RVCP, one of whom has a wealth of experience in monitoring and baseline evaluations. With her help, I’ll design an evaluation of the project so far; hopefully this evaluation can be used as a template for some of the other Income Generation projects currently running at RVCP.
3. Administer the evaluation.
4. Business Plan. As a microfinance project, the point is for the women (RWA) to be autonomous, running a sustainable project—independent of EPN’s money—as soon as possible. It is not in the best interest of RWA, EPN or RVCP, for the project to be on EPN’s dime longer than necessary. As such, my goal is to construct a long-term business plan, researching new markets for the honey and accounting for ways in which RWA will need to reinvest their own profits in order to eventually expand their capacity (which seems to be their desire).
5. Co-operative management training. Part of EPN’s budget stipulates an amount for training the women of RWA in “skill-building capacity such as leadership training, project management”. I will be working with Sam, project head of Income Generation (Mushuru’s successor).

 

In the meantime, I will be keeping busy helping RVCP with other projects:

1. Management training for RVCP. One thing I am particularly interested in is organizational effectiveness and internal processes—as it stands, RVCP is very centralized, unorganized, and laden with hierarchies. Many of the International Participants (IPs), past and present, believe that much more could be done if the newer members, of which there are many, were actually allowed to do stuff. I’m currently planning a management training workshop, mostly on effective delegation, for the program heads, plus Jean-Claude and Vincent, the vice coordinator.
2. Pyramid Project: one of the other six projects (Income Generation, Pyramid, Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Hygiene, Initiatives), this deals with the intersection between gender and HIV/AIDS. I can’t say I know that much about HIV/AIDS, but gender studies (well, feminist theory) is my “specialty”, so I really look forward to working on this—I gather it is a project that doesn’t get as much support as is required. Right now I’m working on designing/writing the English teaching manual for Sex Ed sessions taught in local secondary schools by RVCP members. This is going to be an interesting endeavour, largely because, as a Canadian and a Women’s Studies students, I have very particular ideals about ‘gender empowerment’ (a buzzword in the Kagame government). It will be a challenge to work with Rwandan values and heteronormativity; the program will also be tailored to the limited sex education received in Rwandan schools. I will hopefully also take part in these teaching sessions, but I think the British volunteer group BVDA, who will be working with RVCP here in July, will be doing a lot of this. I’m also interested to see what Pyramid might be able to do, aside from these teaching sessions.
3. Income Generation: the bee-keeping project is the most successful of all the IG projects, and I hope that through its evaluation, more lessons can be learned to benefit the other projects; again, hopefully the evaluation can be used as a template for future assessments of IG projects,
4. Organizational status: Both the bee-keeping project and RVCP are undergoing organizational changes. For the RWA, this means the transition into a government-recognized cooperative; for RVCP, the transition from student group to government-recognized NGO. I’m interested in both these endeavours (which seem to be kind of stalled) and might be able to help push them along.
5. LLCCM: One of the main initiatives of RVCP is support for the LLCCM orphan center (“Let the Little Children Come to Me”). I’ve now visited twice, and am quite interested in helping there, whenever possible. Unfortunately for me, the children visit the center on Saturday mornings, when I’m at the beekeeping site. However, Lindsey, one of the IPs is working on a nutrition program, and we recently conducted interviews with some of the foster mothers; this looks promising.

 

Additionally, I’ll of course be in regular contact with EPN, writing blog posts and an article for the newsletter to keep everyone in Montreal and Canada updated on progress—more pictures to come soon! I’m very excited and happy to be here, and look forward to the coming months. Now, off to the weekly RVCP general meeting!