Don't forget the little guys

Since last week...

The new YCI volunteers arrived in Zanzibar last Thursday and we had a meet and greet in the office on the 16th. They will be working with ZANGOC Executive Committee and member organizations on the following topics: 

• Environmental improvement campaign in the Chumbuni District
• Health outreach around The International Day Against Drug Abuse - JUNE 26th
• Youth career development program (involving youth from ZANGOC member organizations)
• Small enterprise development workshops
• Establishing a one-stop youth information and resource centre at the YCI office in Mwanakwerekwe
• 10 workshops in Professional Communications for ZANGOC members
• Establishment of a Gender Equality Team within ZANGOC

My role with the volunteers will be minimal but I did meet with them again yesterday to share my ideas on professional communications and youth development. Since I already have a good insight into what the member organizations do and what they want in terms of capacity building, I was happy to share my information to help make their workshops tailored to the actual needs of their participants. 

Another aspect I will be assisting with is in the establishment of the Gender Equality Team. I feel it is important for me to be involved in this team as I am currently writing ZANGOC's strategic plan and gender should be a cross cutting theme throughout all areas of intervention.

Currently, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Youth and Women’s Development is in the final stages of preparing a policy on mainstreaming gender issues in their programs.  In order to prepare for compliance with this policy, ZANGOC and its member organizations want to begin promoting awareness of gender issues within their organizations and in the communities with whom they work. The purpose of the gender equality team will be to strengthen the capacity of local partners to integrate gender equality into their programs including: promoting leadership amongst women and girls and promoting active participation amongst women, girls and youth in decision making processes and public governance. 

To follow the work of the current volunteers in Zanzibar check out the YCI blog

In other news...

I was informed via email last Friday that there would be a meeting at the ZAC office in regards to writing the concept paper for the USAID funded project in Zanzibar (remember my blog "USAID - From the American People"?). As a good Canadian I showed up on time...early in fact, only to find out that the meeting was canceled. I had a feeling this was going to happen based on the tone of Friday's email, however, with English being a second, and sometimes third language, it was hard for me to decipher the language used in the email! So, to play it safe I showed up anyways! Madame Nuru, the Executive Director of ZAC told me upon arrival that there was not enough support from all the identified partner NGOs, as only ZANGOC and ZAPHA+ replied to the email to confirm their attendance at the meeting. She informed me that I should go ahead and submit my ideas for the concept paper to Stephen at VSO (who would compile the concept paper) and wait to see if UMATI and WAMATA (2 NGOs operating at the national level) would also submit their concept paper ideas. 

Unfortunately, this morning I received an email back from Stephen at VSO saying that he has his reservations about this concept paper as UMATI and WAMATA still have yet to submit, therefore we are lacking the regional coverage, strength and partnerships necessary to proceed. Without these components we will be unable to apply for this funding opportunity, as full coverage of Tanzania is a criteria stipulated by USAID for this project. So, it is a shame that without strength in regional partnerships from larger NGOs, Zanzibar has lost this opportunity.  It's too bad that the larger, more established NGOs hold the decision making power and leave the little guys to continue chasing after donor dollars to even keep their organizations a float. With that being said, I am not turning to cynicism just yet :)

Just write a letter

Before I get into my letter frustrations I want to remind you all of the potential USAID funded project that I blogged about a few weeks ago (Refer to link for a reminder!). I am happy to announce that we got the "go ahead" to write the concept paper which is due on June 23rd. I told ZANGOC that I wanted to be fully involved in writing this paper and they agreed so I emailed the coordinator from VSO and told him that I would be the ZANGOC representative in drafting the paper! So now I am in the loop on this great opportunity for Zanzibar and I am really excited that I will writing to USAID, definitely something that is resume worthy!

On another note, I have figured out why it takes so long for things to be accomplished within ZANGOC...because for every idea you have you have to "write a letter" and submit it to the Executive Committee for approval. For example, during the ZACP workshop I met a lady name Frida who works for ICAP in Zanzibar and since they fund ZANGOC I thought perhaps it's a good idea for me to have a chat with them and show them the workings of the strategic plan. Since I have Frida's contact information I sent her an email yesterday and we set up a meeting for Tuesday of next week. However, I also had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday and told him about this meeting and by the expression on his face I thought he was going to tell me I couldn't go, until finally he told me..."well you have to write a formal letter on ZANGOC letter head and submit it to the Executive Committee for approval." I just think this process is a waste of paper (and time) considering they are going to approve the meeting anyway.

I hope you remember ZIFYA - Zanzibar Initiative for Youth? I have blogged about them a few times, the first time was in ZANGOC Member Orgs and the second time was after I facilitated a workshop for ZIFYA on Monitoring and Evaluation and effective group and team work. I am visiting with ZIFYA again this evening to discuss collaboration with them, ZANGOC and YCI in the formulation of youth groups within the area. The idea for these youth groups will be to work with YCI volunteers, similar to the mentorship program with the YMCA in Ghana, as well as to get youth discussing issues that affect their lives and how we can move forward in addressing these issues at the community level. I told my supervisor about this idea and he thought it would be beneficial but again, I was told to "write a letter." I do intend to write this letter, however I didn't tell them that I was meeting with ZIFYA this evening to hear their inputs and ideas about these youth groups. Oh well, at least I will have the ball rolling on this by the time the letter gets "approved"!

One more thing...ZIFYA has constructed a website which is pretty cool, I am hoping maybe they can teach me a few things about website design! Check them out here: Zanzibar Initiative for Youth

"Yes we can".... Can we?

Some interesting things have transpired this week during the ZACP workshop (round 2!)...

Monday was the beginning of round 2 for the ZACP strategic planning workshop. The last ZACP workshop I blogged about was in regards to a performance review of the previous ZACP strategic plan. During this 3 day workshop we reviewed the strategic activities, achievements, challenges and gaps in responses. From the  gaps we created new strategic issues at each identified intervention level that need to be addressed in the next strategic plan (2011 to 2016). 

This week's edition of the ZACP workshop is 6 days (Monday June 6 to Saturday June 11) during which time we are taking the identified strategic issues from each intervention level (ie: BCC, Home Based Care, Key Populations, etc...) to create outcomes, outputs and activities. This has been an amazing learning experience for me because I have been able to put my Results Based Management (RBM) skills to the test with the help of some really great minds. I ended up working with the Director of ZACP and an M&E Consultant who works for UNAIDS, to name a few. The M&E consultant was great as he was able to pin point the exact phrases and words that needed to be use to make each sentence either an outcome, output or activity. It may sound easy, but it's really a lot work! 

During Tuesday's workshop there was an American lady present who works for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Dar es Salaam. She made a little speech regarding the topic "yes we can" stop HIV and AIDS transmission in Zanzibar. I added "Can we?" to the title of this blog because I don't necessarily agree with her theories on this topic.

The theory was that since Zanzibar is a small island with an already relatively small rate of transmission, if we were to scale up prevention methods (focusing on early treatment) we could eventually stop new infections. Ok, that makes sense, but her implementation process would never fly especially in Zanzibar due to cultural and religious sensitivity.

She compared the implementation process of halting new HIV infections with the same tactics used to control malaria in Zanzibar which was achieved through 2 methods:

1. Prevention - providing bednets to everyone
2. IRS - indoor residual spraying 

She went on to say that we can use the same methods to stop transmission of HIV thus being

1. Prevention - providing condoms to all 
2. Door to door HIV testing

Both of these methods would never work in Zanzibar. First of all, I have spent the past 5 days discussing how highly regarded religious leaders are in Zanzibar and how difficult it is for them to allow the distribution of condoms in the public, an issue that was discussed heavily in my behaviour change communication (BCC) group. Second of all, it is difficult enough to get people, especially those who fall in the "Key Populations" group (MSM, IDUs and FSWs) to be tested for HIV due to the stigma and discrimination surround the disease. Therefore, it is in violation of a person's human rights to be forced into testing, even if it is in their benefit to know.

These were my opinions on her "yes we can" speech and I was curious to know what people from Zanzibar thought about her theories. I decided to do some reconnaissance work and ended up speaking with a few different people to hear their views. The first was a Zanzibari nurse who works for ZAPHA+ and she also said that it wouldn't work due to cultural factors. The next man I spoke with was a Zanzibari gentleman working for the Department of Substance Abuse. He said it would never fly because you would never be able to go door to door and test people as it's a violation of their human rights. Lastly, I spoke with a Tanzanian man who works for CDC in Dar es Salaam (a colleague of the lady who made the speech). He didn't agree with her and he told me that she had pitched the same idea to other people within the Ministry of Health and no one would really back her ideas. His issues were:

1. You will have a hard time convincing health people to go on ARVs at a young age for the rest of their life
2. There are 1.4 million people living with HIV in Tanzania and not even half of them have access to ARVs. Once funding is gone how will Tanzania be able to afford to keep 1.4 million people on ARVs for over 20 years.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed her optimism and if you do your research into early treatment as prevention for HIV you will find a lot of information. I just think that before she pitched this idea she should have had more support from Tanzanians in order to address cultural issues within this theory.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, please share with me!

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Quick Research: Early treatment as prevention

Treatment as prevention works

New Support for "Treatment as Prevention" Approach to HIV

Early treatment reduces HIV transmission in heterosexual serodiscordant couples

You do the Hokey Pokey...

...and you turn yourself around, that's what it's all about!

Yes, I did the hokey pokey yesterday with an after school youth group and it was so much fun! I had all the kids dancing around me and learning how to say their body parts in English!

The after school group is called "New Vision Class" and was started in 2007 with only 10 youth participants. The aim of the group is simply to practice their English through various methods other than text book learning. I think is a fabulous idea, considering I've been trying to learn French for years now from a text book and it clearly hasn't help me all that much!

"New Vision Class" has now expanded it's participants to over 30 youth who meet every evening from 7:00pm to 8:30pm. Due to the increase in class size, "New Vision Class" had to split into 2 different groups, section A and section B. Last night I went to the class with colleagues from ZASO,one of ZANGOC's member organizations. ZASO attends the "New Vision Class" every Wednesday evening in attempt to bring a different style of learning for the youth. Last night the lesson took the form of a debate and I and got to listen to the youth practice their English while speaking on the subject "Getting married and having a family is better than not." The debate was between speakers representing section A (supporting argument) and speakers representing section B (opposing argument).

1st speaker from the Supporting Team

1st speaker from the Opposing Team

My role in the debate was "Dr. Grammar" which basically meant that I had to listen carefully to what they were saying and take note of incorrect sentence structure, miss use of words, etc. After the debate was over I pointed out some of the mistakes I heard and wrote the proper sentence structure on the board. Overall, I was very impressed with the level of English amongst all the speakers. Some of the mistakes I was able to pick up on where: the use of the past tense and the use of slang words.

"Dr. Grammar!"

A lot of the speakers were really confident in presenting their opinions and projecting their voice. While others were still nervous and either talked very quickly or very quietly which meant that sometimes I couldn't understand what their main points were. In the end the Opposing Team won by only 2 points, judging was based on clarity of points, presentation style, confidence and their use of the English language.

After the results were presented I did my second part of the evening and taught the students the "hokey pokey!" I started off by explaining that it was more of a dance with English words as opposed to a game which I think got their attention, especially after I started dancing in front of them...everyone likes to see the "muzungu" dance! First I got a small group of participants together at the front of the class and had them tell me how to say "arm" "foot" "leg" "hip" (etc) in English, as well as "left" and "right"...all key words to know when you do the hokey pokey! After a few rounds inside we all moved outside into the school court yard and sang and danced the hokey pokey and it was such a fun time!

You put your right hand in...

You put your left hand in...

All the little girls were really into it and wouldn't leave my side, when it was time to finish they didn't want to stop! It's funny how some aspects of children and youth transend borders! For instance, all the young girls were up dancing with me and the older kids kind of stood back and watched, even though I know they really wanted to jump in and hokey pokey with me! Maybe next time I'll get them dancing.

Since my ZASO colleagues attend this class every Wednesday, I told them I would love to come back and help to bring some fresh learning material. I will have to dig back into my primary school days to remember what teaching aids helped me learn English. If anyone has any suggestions for more English song or dances that I can use, please let me know!

Me with some of the Section A Class

Me with some of the Section B Class

"Put your left foot in!" From left to right: Ali (from ZASO), me, Mohammed (Section A teacher), Matthias (ZASO volunteer from Germany)