New Year, New Adventures

It's crazy to think that this time last year I was on a bus somewhere in Ghana heading back to Accra from the Northern Region and just yesterday I booked my flight ticket back to Accra; talk about going full circle!

As amazing as last year was, I think that 2012 will top it. I am heading back to Ghana for two short term jobs with YCI which are ideal for my personal career development. The first one, I will be taking the lead on a program development team and through the YMCA, we are to scale up the existing mentorship program in Koforidua. The mentorship program exists to increase youth livelihoods in Ghana and my team will be responsible for scaling up this program so that it becomes sustainable and replicable. Ideally, in 3 years time the YMCA and YCI would like to have the mentorship program operational in 3 other cities in Ghana.

In the second job, I will be working as a M&E Advisor with YCI's other local partner, Youth Empowerment Synergy (YES). The vision of YES is: a world where every young person has a real chance to benefit from and participate in the development process at local, national and international levels. For the month of November, I was studying M&E at the AMREF International Training Centre in Nairobi and I am very excited about putting these skills to practical work experience with YES. As an Advisor, I won't be evaluating  the programs of YES but rather, taking a critical look at how the organization currently monitors projects and then setting up an M&E system that can be carried through to multiple projects. Based on the information I was provided with by YCI, this is what I envision myself doing but of course, I am going in with an open mind.

I have just over 3 weeks left in Canada before I depart again for the long journey across the Atlantic. This time I am taking a different route. Normally, I fly with KLM through Amsterdam and have a ridiculously long lay over in Schiphol Airport. This time I am flying with Delta via JFK and Atlanta straight across the Atlantic Ocean to Accra. This means I have 2 stop overs but each are just over an hour, although I might have a frantic jog through JFK to reach my connecting flight; I still see this being better than waiting around for 8 straight hours. Time will tell!

Week 4 - Graduation

The final week at the AMFRE M&E training course was bitter sweet. We spent the week having some final wrap up lectures followed by only 2 days of compiling an evaluation report for our field work the previous week. By Thursday afternoon we were all unattentive and very tired. Nonetheless, the final report was submitted by me to AMREF on Thursday around 4:00pm; enough said!

On Friday morning we all gathered at AMREF for the graduation ceremony where we were presented with our certificates in M&E joined by the students of the Masters of Public Health and the Nursing students. This ceremony was special as it marked the 25th AMREF graduation. Between the 3 classes there were close to 200 graduates from across Africa, Europe (x3 people) and North America (just me!) with family members in the audience.

Me and my Tanzania flatmates; yes it was a coincidence!

Harriet (Uganda), Tayo (Nigeria), Jill (UK working in Liberia)

Jeff (Kenya), John (Tanzania)

Valerie (Switzerland), Jane (Kenya), Michael (Nigeria), Ruth (Kenya)

On Saturday after graduation I said a last farewell to all the wonderful people that I met, hoping that we will cross paths again in the future, and went back to pack my things. I fell asleep early on Friday as my journey home was to being with an 8am flight back to Zanzibar which meant that I had to wake up at 4:30am and be in a taxi to the airport by 5:30am. After 3 days of traveling, I have arrived safely in Toronto

• Saturday morning: Nairobi - Zanzibar
• Saturday afternoon: Zanzibar - Dar es Salaam
• Sunday evening: Dar es Salaam - Amsterdam
• Monday afternoon: Amsterdam - Toronto

The worst part of the journey was crossing the Atlantic Ocean for more than a few reasons:

1. The plane is always jam packed; thus, not conducive to sleeping
2. After 9 hours on a previous flight the movies are no longer new and interesting
3. Crossing multiple time zones is not fun ie: leaving Amsterdam at 2pm and arrive in Toronto at 4pm and it was definitely longer than a 2 hour flight!
4. Jet lag. Enough said.

So, now what? I am back in Toronto and already looking for my next flight back to Ghana in February, which I cannot wait for! I will be back working with YCI on a short term contract doing two different jobs. The first one will be for Program Development of the YMCA mentorship program that started in Koforidua. The YMCA wants to scale up this successful program to be initiated into YMCA's across the country. The second contract will be for M&E with YCI's other partner YES Ghana (Youth Empowerment Synergy). Throughout this contract, I will be working with YES in order to set up an M&E system to monitor and evaluate program implementation.

As for now, I plan to do a lot of visiting with family and friends before setting off again. I wish I could said I also plan to enjoy the weather but, lets be serious! What I really need to do is start planning my return to Canada for the summer time and not the winter.

Week 3 - Updates from the Field

Week 3 of my AMREF M&E course proved to be very long and tiring as it began with all 7 groups completing their evaluation tool in order to prepare for our field evaluation day at Saint John’s Community Centre (SJCC) on Tuesday. As promised, here are my reflections from the field evaluation in Pumwani District.

Outside the SJCC

Of course I knew the day wouldn’t run as smoothly as planned, especially when you try to mobilize 50 people. We were instructed to meet at AMREF by 8:30am and head to Pumwani by 9:00am, of course almost one hour later we actually left the training centre. We arrived at SJCC around 10:30am, disembarked the bus and were welcomed by the 2 staff members of SJCC and the participants whom we were to be conducting our evaluations with.

Our stellar bus! I was able to relax...because God was in control!

The SJCC project that we were evaluating was a child development program whereby satellite schools, home work clubs and talent clubs were established throughout the communities of Pumwani. The overall goal of the program is to improve the quality of life for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) by the end of 2011. The program is currently in its 3rd year of a 5 year program so our work was to be used as the midterm evaluation.

My group spent the previous week designing a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) tool in order to evaluate the Club Patrons whose main responsibility in the program is to ensure that children’s talents are nurtured in order to keep children off of the streets and in school longer. When we arrived at SJCC there were many Club Patrons available to join our FGD. However, since the structure of the day was unorganized and another group from class was supposed to conduct structured interviews with the same set of participants we kept losing participants for our FGD and ended up with only 4 when the recommend amount is between 6-12 participants. Nonetheless, we collected a lot of information from only a few participants but were unable to conduct a second FGD in order to compare the findings. The Club Patrons who were a part of our FGD were very forthcoming with our questions and as a group, we felt like we did learn a lot about the program. However, when all 7 groups discussed their findings on Wednesday we realized that there were some gaps in the information which has thus lead to challenges when analyzing the data and writing the report!  

FGD with direct beneficiaries of the SJCC program

So now you have all of this qualitative information and what do you do with it? As a class, we spent the remainder of the week learning how to analyze qualitative data which is not as easy as it sounds. Thankfully, for this session of the course we have a lively and very intelligent Kenyan facilitator who is Kikuyu and has a hard time differentiating between the letters “r” and “l” when he speaks ie: apparently cows chew “glass” not “grass”! On top of the fact that he is very knowledgeable, I get a kick out of listing to him speak which also holds my attention throughout 8 hours of class!

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As for this past weekend, on Saturday I had a fun filled day of analyzing our quantitative data in SPSS in class. It was a long and full day of staring at a computer and I had to leave around 4pm in order to have my afternoon siesta which turned into a 4 hour sleep on a counter of staying out too late the previous night...Oh Nairobi!

On Sunday I went to Hell’s Gate National Park with two girls from class and Mike and his friend. I have to say that being a Tanzanian/East African resident has come in rather handy in Kenya as I get a discount on all park entry fees which adds up to a lot of money if you have to pay the regular foreigner price...thanks TZ! Hell’s Gate, known for its hot springs was really cool. Our journey started out via a 10K bicycle ride from the entrance to Hell’s Gate Gorge where we hiked through the Gorge to see the hot springs. We intended to bike back to the main gate but daylight, pending rain and tiredness were not on our side. As much as we made fun of Mike for not biking and driving to the Gorge we ended up eating our words at the end of the day. Pole Mike!

Hell's Gate Gorge

View from the bottom

I was officially the dirtiest at the end of the day 

View from the top

Pondering life!

Week 2 - Sampling, Statistics and SPSS. Oh my!

Like most of my time on this continent, my time in Nairobi is flying by and in 2 weeks time I will be back home in Canada frantically visiting everyone I possible can while preparing for my second journey to Ghana in February! 

Last week we finished week 2 of the M&E course at AMREF and the topics covered were a definite learning experience for me. The week started by discussing types of sampling such as probability and non probability sampling which I am familiar with. However, by mid week we were recapping some statistics formulas and learning about the computer software program for data analysis SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Sciences)...both of which I had little to know prior knowledge on! Using SPSS to input data and create tables and graphs is very straight forward but when it comes time to analyze what the tables and graphs tell you, that's a different story! Wow, I was very lost when the facilitator started talking about standard deviation, sampling variance and the list goes on! Thankfully enough, there are people in the class who have studied statistics and are willing to give me a very quick crash course. 

The week ended by doing some group work to create qualitative and quantitative evaluation tools for when we go to the field to conduct an actual evaluation of a current project. I think this will be the most useful part of the course as it gives us a chance to analyze a project logframe, create an evaluation tool, undertake the evaluation, analyze the data and even write a final report for the partner organization. 

My group members and I creating our qualitative evaluation tool

AMREF's partner NGO for AMREF training courses is the St. John's Child Development Project and the project is based in an informal settlement in Nairobi called Pumwani. St. John's lets AMREF students come to practice their skills in return for AMREF students helping to achieve the objectives of the organization. In our case we will be conducting a mid term evaluation of the St. Johns Child Development Project and producing a full report for them in order to provide an analysis of the successes and challenges of the project implementation. 

Relaxing after a hard day in class!

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As for this past weekend, it was very busy but very fun. I feel like I never have enough time on the weekend because there is so much to do and see in and around Nairobi that I forget to just relax. However, there will be ample time for relaxing (aka hibernating) when I return to the cold Toronto weather. This past Sunday was especially busy...I woke up around 7am took a bus to the Nairobi National Park with one of the girls from class. We met up with some fellow Canadians that I know from my post graduate program at Humber College and we went on a 4 hour safari. Although I had went on a safari the previous weekend in Lake Nakuru, the unique aspect of the Nairobi National Park is that is literally in Nairobi city so when you are driving around looking at all the animals you also have an amazing view of the Nairobi sky line. This picture doesn't do it justice but to give you an idea....

After a successful safari (categorized as "successful" [by me] after seeing giraffes, zebras, and lions) I went straight into the city center to wonder around the Maasai Market to buy some (more) Christmas gifts that I am hoping will fit in my luggage somehow! After shopping, my friend from class and I were invited for a home cooked Nigerian dinner. A hand full of the people from class are from Nigeria and a few of them invited us for dinner to taste their local food which was so good and flavourful compared to the bland food of Tanzania. It was very delicious... Please help me think of an authentic "Canadian" dish that I can return the favour with! I never know what to say when people ask "what is Canadian food." Really, what is it?!

Jill and I enjoying some Nigerian home cooking!

Stay tuned for next week's AMREF edition -- Updates from the field!

The Center of East Africa!

Nairobi...where the magic happens! Living in Zanzibar, it is easy to get wrapped up in your own little world and I forgot how much I miss big cities.

Nairobi...or rather, what I have seen of it thus far is pretty alright! When I was in Kenya back in 2007 studying at Kenyatta University (KU) I didn't really get a chance to explore the city as I was ushered around, with 16 other University of Ottawa students, in a KU bus. We stayed on campus which was outside of the city centre and the trip into the city from KU with a car, during rush hour took about 1.5hrs (on a good day!) Without traffic the trip should only take about 20 minutes...that's how crazy traffic is in this city. The first thing I have learned is how to cross the street in Nairobi...first, you look both ways, then when you realize there won't EVER be a break in traffic, you just start walking and hope for the best. My trick has been to wait for someone else also crossing the road and follow their lead!

Nairobi, and its people have been treating me well. For starters I haven't been called "muzungu" once in one full week (not blatantly at least!). In Zanzibar that would never happen so it's very refreshing to be able to walk down the street in peace! Last Saturday when I arrived, I met up with an old friend from KU, he was studying at KU when my group was there and he was our "go to" person for anything we wanted to know or do! He's pretty much played that same role for me this time around as well...thanks Mike :) On Sunday we drove around the KU campus just to reminisce...I forgot how beautiful the campus is and there have been some major improvements including the construction of more than 6 new buildings including a massive library. We were nerdy enough to want to go into the library but they only allow access to current students so we had to convince security that we are alumni and just wanted to look around.

KU Post Modern Library

For those of you who don't know, my main purpose of coming back to Nairobi is to studying Monitoring and Evaluation at the AMREF International Training Centre. The course runs for 4 weeks after which time I can hopefully call my self a specialist in something, or at least on my way to becoming a specialist! 

The main entrance to the AMREF International Training Centre

The first week has been good even though we have just been reviewing the basic terms and concepts of M&E which can be a bit tedious if you already know these concepts! However, the really interesting part so far has been the group dynamics and group discussions.  

One of the facilitators: Dr. Frederick Chelule

I didn't know what to think of the make up of the group before I started. I mostly figured that it would be all men however, in a group of close to 50 participants the gender ratio is pretty much even. Even more interesting is the fact that there are people from all over the continent including 4 "muzung's" (myself, a girl from the UK working in Liberia with Merlin, a Swiss girl working in Switzerland with Medair and a Bulgarian guy). I'd say that half of the participants are Kenyan's and the others represent the following African countries:

• Tanzania
• Ethiopia
• Burundi
• Sudan
• South Sudan
• Uganda
• Liberia
• Nigeria
• The Gambia
• Cameroon

If you pull up a map of Africa, you can see how dynamic the group is and the experience is very rich. Most people are managers at NGOs or work in government institutions, some people already work in M&E and others want to be able to train people on M&E. The funniest thing is is that I moved from Tanzania and I am staying in a guest house with the two Tanzanian men along with the guy from Burundi...at least I get to keep practicing my Swahili! Speaking of which, when I attempt to speak Swahili here people look at me like I have two heads as the language is spoken far less here than in Tanzania. For example, students in Kenya are schooled in English right from the primary level where as in TZ they are schooled in Swahili until secondary school.

So, I think that's all for a first week recap. Stay tuned for the coming weeks!

The AMREF Training Campus

Reflections from Zanzibar

I can hardly believe that it has been a month and a half since my last blog entry, I feel as though I have accomplished a lot in a short time, including relocating to a different country (Kenya) to start a one month training course with AMREF (African Medical Research Foundation) in Monitoring and Evaluation as well as accepting an M&E position back in Ghana starting in February 2012!

Like the past 7 months, my last month in Zanzibar flew by. In early October I took a trip to Morogoro on the mainland to visit the two YCI interns that were based there working on environmental projects, including water, sanitation and hygiene projects in rural areas. In mid October, I traveled back to the mainland to Dar es Salaam to attend a CIDA intern networking event which was hosted by CIDA country representatives at the Canadian High Commission. This event was really beneficial for me as it happened at the very end of my YCI placement which gave me a good opportunity to actually sit down and reflect on what I have accomplished in the past 7 months. My presentation to CIDA and the other interns was based around "my accomplishments" which I summed up to 3 major achievements:

1. Working with the ZANGOC Executive Committee to complete a final draft of the new ZANGOC strategic plan.
2. Facilitating capacity building workshops on project design and proposal writing to 30 out of 45 ZANGOC member organizations (including travelling to Pemba Island to reach the 5 member organizations based there)
3. Working with YCI and ZANGOC to establish the ZANGOC Gender Equality Team and then providing the team with a basic gender awareness training session which included a guest facilitator from the Gender Unit of the Ministry of Social Welfare. I am also in the process of securing funds from the United Nations Population Fund in order to have the Gender Team trained by a Gender Consultant on auditing and mainstreaming.

After the Gender Awareness Training with the GET

My work contract with ZANGOC and YCI ended on October 21st after which time I was officially on vacation which included me going into the office to finish end term reports and various other tasks. Last week was also busy as I was packing and preparing for visitors and saying goodbye to my Zanzibar friends. I felt like I was finally ready to leave Zanzibar and it was nice to have such a wonderful send off last Friday. ZANGOC had invited me to the office for 4pm when I met with some members of the Executive Committee and Shaib, the YCI coordinator in Zanzibar. They presented me with a certificate showing the work I did and a few people said some words. Then I was asked to speak at which time I actually started crying even though I tried my hardest to hold it back! I think I blubbered something along the lines of how happy I am with the way my placement turned out and how much of a learned experience it was for me....blah blah blah, through the tears I don't really remember!

Me with some members of the ZANGOC Executive Committee

That evening I had one last amazing meal at the House of Spices in Zanzibar with the friends that were visiting along with some expat friends whom I will miss terribly. This was followed by some drinks and lots of dancing which made the night absolutely perfect and summed up the wonderful experience I had on the island for the past 7 months.

I intend to post an update this week about Nairobi city life and the AMREF M&E course, I just wanted them to be separate thoughts, separate blog posts.