Dear Friends,
As some of you may know, I’m “tweeting” little nuggets of information while I’m in Zambia working on our community development projects here.Whilst tweeting is all very jolly – I thought it might be interesting for some of you to read a bit more about what I am up to this week – for those of you with little time or short attention spans (!) I will continue to tweet!!
BACKGROUND
The object of this trip (my third visit to Zambia) is to review the progress on the construction training project and the classroom build which started nearly two months ago at Kawama; meet some partners who we think may be essential supporters for our projects and most importantly meet a range of people, especially the key staff at the Kawama Widows and Orphans Project (KWOP) to firm up on as much details we can for the prospective Community Development Projects at Kawama.
Many of you are aware of the COINS Foundation’s strategy of 360oInclusive Community Development – in a nutshell for those of you who are less familiar –
- We don’t do ‘Aid’ our projects must all have a ‘route to sustainability’.
- We work with people in the community – hear what they need and then develop a plan to deliver it with them.
- All our plans ‘hunt out’ and include the most disenfranchised in any community – this almost universally turns out to be disabled children and children with mental health problems.
Before I left for Zambia we had just received a report from Richard Mwanza. We had commissioned him to do two things –
- Conduct a ‘baseline community needs assessment’ for the 22,000 people of Kawama
- Suggest a project programme in response to the identified challenges
This report has been discussed, revised and augmented; going back and forth between me, the researcher and the community members at Kawama several times. By the time I left for Zambia I was pretty familiar with it!
The main reason for my visit to Zambia this time was to agree concrete plans with our partners in Kawama and begin to turn the ‘outline’ plan in our report into real projects on the ground.
The Report came out to highlight two very broad streams of work. They were:
- Strategies to strengthen the infrastructure of the Kawama Widows and Orphans Project (KWOP) – our partner of choice through whom we hope to deliver our programme.
- A Project Programme to meet the development needs of Kawama.
Zambia Diary Part 1
FRIDAY
I left Heathrow for Lusaka at 7pm last Friday evening and froze for eight hours whilst revising notes and watching movies into the night –I always dress for Africa and then forget all about BA’s air conditioning and totally inadequate blankets!
SATURDAY
I arrived in Lusaka at 6am – I have a long wait at the airport before my connecting flight to Ndola so I’ve arranged a couple of meetings to make best use of the time. Steve Powers from Care International had agreed to meet to see if there were any Care projects in the Copperbelt which could be linked with our plans for Kawama. It’s always good to talk with really experienced workers in Africa – you can learn a lot. We were discussing the implications of partnership working in post colonial Africa.“Intervention is always a disturbance.”, he said, “You just have to manage it as best you can.”
We agreed that I could visit a project for orphans and vulnerable children in a rural village called Mwange later in the week.
I love the internal flight to Ndola – it’s always in a small twin prop plane – it feels like real flying. I mean you never forget that you are in the air and it requires rather more effort not to dwell on the combined effects of engine failure, gravity and a couple of thousand feet!
Ndola airfield is tiny. Disembarking there puts me in mind of the final scene in Casablanca. Different Ric, different time and the wrong end of the continent but you get the idea. I was met by Rex and Ellinor.Mother and son – she is the founder and driving force behind KWOP and Rex is a local Pastor but also administrator to the various projects they already run. It’s great to see them again, I think we are genuinely getting fond of each other and conversation is easy this time as we head for the car.
We have dinner together including our driver – the same guy every time who speaks little English and despite my best efforts never manages to relax with us. We talk late into the night planning the final itinerary for the next four days. I retire to bed pretty done in – it’s been more than 24hrs without sleep (thanks to the BA flying refrigerator); the mosquito net over the bed confirms what kind of hotel I’m in; “Gem of the Copperbelt” is their strap line, “But that’s not saying much.”, I mutter ungraciously as I slide into sleep swatting at every itch.
SUNDAY
The peacocks wake me. They sound for all the world like raucous and very indignant cats. Classier than cockerels I suppose but no less of a shock to the system.
Rex and Ellinor arrive at 10 – we have planned to spend the entire day going through Richard Mwanza’s report to draw out the key issues and air our views as a precursor to roughing out a programme plan – we have a meeting with the chairman of their board on the following day and would like to have a joint proposal for him by then. It’s hard going and by lunch we are only four pages in to a 20 page report – I have made eight pages of notes! Community development is complex. But it’s time well spent. I learn more about the realities of life for an orphan in Kawama and the dismal state of health care in the community. The desire to turn these discussions into some kind of action burns hot But there is good news too – I learn that the electricity supplied to the KWOP school is 3 phase and very reliable and the community is mobilised and already helping to build the new classroom block at the school.
By dinner we are done with Richard’s report – we have agreement on all points (by no means a certainty before I left from England) and we agree to meet the next morning to rough out a plan ready to present to the Chairman over lunch. Despite our tiredness the excitement is tangible – this huge, nebulous thing which encompasses so many problems and crosses our diverse cultures, is clearly coming together.
MONDAY
Another meeting with E&R – we start early to be ready for Mr. Moses Kazevu KWOP Chairman who we are due to present to at lunch. We previously agreed that Richard’s report suggested two areas of work –If KWOP was to stand any chance of delivering on the huge program we had begun to envision, they would need some additional infrastructure.To date, no-one at KWOP is paid, they have no income, no office space or place to meet, they have no means of transport, they have to combine their time between community work and the struggle to live. The second area was the Project Programme itself. We have identified ten priority projects for Kawama:
- A Community Health care programme to be extended from KWOP’s existing project and to include a Community Health centre
- To build a Secondary School in Kawama
- To build a vocational training centre and run training courses in carpentry, IT skills, tailoring and construction.
- To establish a sustainable agriculture project
- To remove the vulnerabilities from, and extend KWOP infant nutrition project
- To complete the build of the additional classrooms for the existingKWOP primary school and commission same with furniture, books andcomputers etc.
- To establish an internet Cafe within the school
- To establish a programme of micro-financed businesses
- To develop a Family-support programme for disabled young people
- To improve the water supply to the area and refurbish the school sanitation block.
We agree that Ellinor & Rex would submit applications to the COINS Foundation for these two strands of work. Clearly the infrastructure support should reflect the needs of KWOP to deliver the project programme.
We all realise and agree that our ‘route to sustainability’ hinges on a balance of health and social care projects and wealth-creation schemes which can grow to pay for them.
Despite the huge task, our optimism from the previous evening remains. We feel ready to face the Chairman.
End of part 1 . . .