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

ZIFYA Workshop

Outside the ZIFYA conference room

ZIFYA – Zanzibar Initiative for Youth Association contacted me a few weeks ago to ask if I would facilitate a workshop for some of the members of their executive committee. I wanted to say yes straight away but ZIFYA had to submit an official letter of request to ZANGOC to be approved by my supervisors. The request was approved last week and today, Monday May 23^rd, I facilitated a workshop for the NGO on the topics of effective group and team work, as well as Monitoring and Evaluation.

The group and team work section was no problem for me to design, having been involved in many group work activities over the past year with Humber classmates and YCI colleagues, I might be able to consider myself a “pro” at something!

However, I by no means consider myself a “pro” at M&E, so I had a little bit more difficulties designing this section of the workshop. It was especially difficult consider the topic is very large and I wasn’t sure of the baseline knowledge of my participants on the topic. I assumed that considering I was working with the executive committee that most of the participants had designed and implemented a project or two for their organization in the past. This assumption turned out to be correct. The assumption that I totally blew was that they were aware of the stages of the project cycle and what outputs, outcomes and impacts are...oops! 

 

I didn’t mind stopping to explain all of this as we really didn’t have a time schedule to follow. The project cycle is easy enough to explain and to grasp the concept and I explained where M&E comes into the project cycle. By drawing the project cycle on their white board, I was able to clarify that monitoring occurs on a continuous basis throughout project implementation and answers the question “are we doing things right?” While evaluation is conducted to assess the extent to which the project achieved it stated goals and answers the question “are we doing the right thing?” 

Next I explained the results chain and outputs, outcomes and impact; a concept to which no one had heard much of until that very moment. I did my best at defining the terms and then had someone from the group describe to me a project that they are currently working on in order to put the terms into perspective for them. The project they identified was a support project for most vulnerable youth in the community. With this information we developed the following on the results chain:

Activities/inputs: Identify 30 most vulnerable youth in Chukwani

Output: With assistance from community leaders, 30 most vulnerable youth are identified  

Immediate Outcomes: youth receive school support packages and engage in psychosocial support to combat risky behaviour such as drug abuse and crime

Intermediate Outcomes: increased school attendance rate of identified youth and an increase willingness to participate in group activities

Impact (long term result): To decrease school dropout rates and reduce risky behaviour such as crime and theft amongst 30 most vulnerable youth in Chukwani

From this point we discussed effective means of monitoring and evaluating the project throughout the project cycle and I feel as though the ZIFYA participants actually grasped the concept. I offered to come back another time and discuss M&E further as this was a topic that everyone was very interested in learning more about.

The workshop ended with a great discussion on how to mobilize youth in their community to participate in events and how to get the youth to talk about issues that affect them the most. My colleague suggested starting youth groups and identifying a few youth to become leaders and to act as a youth representative, someone who will bring their peers issues to the forefront instead of NGOs deciding what is important for youth to learn. 

Workshop participants

After this workshop I had a meeting with my country manager and discussed the formation of youth groups in the Chukwani area and I think this is something that YCI and YCI volunteers can be involved in order to make their own projects more sustainable.