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Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

Child Friendly Communities

Posted in development, Mali, participation, smart aid, travel, youth media, tagged , , , , , on February 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I had dinner last night with those who had arrived for the meeting and then crashed. My luggage came around 3 a.m. so I had to go down to the lobby half asleep to get it! But yay!
Today we went out to the community were we had dropped the radio equipment off yesterday. First we went to a meeting at the Plan office. It was really interesting to hear their strategy which is centered around the concept of Child Friendly Communities. The cool thing is that they work with the community to define a set of indicators that the community is in agreement with. Then they measure where the community is at currently (baseline). Then they work with the community to improve their indicators. The interesting thing is that I have never seen it where the community is involved with setting and tracking indicators of their own development. Really really cool. We heard all the theory about it in the morning when the country director and program manager gave us an overview.
Then we all drove out to the village where the community representatives went through all their community indicators and explained where they were with them. So things like how many mothers are exclusively breastfeeding. How many kids are attending school. Percentage that have good hygiene habits. Etc. etc. We saw a few projects in the community – the early childhood care and development center, the nutrition center, and the women’s village savings and loan project. It was really interesting to see how they work, the impact the projects are having on the health and education of the kids, and also all the work that the women are doing to improve their community.
Photo: Community nutrition center where they weigh children to track their growth. They also work with the mothers to show them how to use locally available ingredients like sorghum, peanuts, herbs that grow in the area, to make high protein, high calorie porridge. The program is based on the concept of positive deviance — where the mothers who manage to have well nourished children are studied to find out how they do it, and then their habits are replicated/taught to the other mothers.
Stefanie asked the women in the savings and loan group what the men did, because she had seen mostly women doing all the work in all the projects. That really got a good laugh out of the women. The way the development process seems to work is that the men make the decisions about which projects and initiatives that their wives can participate in. Custom allows multiple wives. The men see the advantage of the improved health and education of their children, and the improved financial status of their wives. Mostly the men work in the fields and do the heavy work for project that require manual labor. Interesting dynamic though – when Stefanie asked her question there was a super long and animated conversation among several of the women and the men from the partner local organization that manages the project. None of this was translated for us! Then Thiekoro from Plan Mali just made a very quick summary. Stefanie asked for clarification later….and I’m not sure the real story was revealed then either.
After we talked with all the project groups, the radio project crew – Kids Waves – did a live radio show. The radio project moves from community to community, training the kids and then the develop a half-hour radio show on different topics. They were covering the issue of Violence in Schools. They had invited the local mayor and the director of the school to ask them about the issue and what they planned to do about it. When will children stop being beaten in schools? The officials assured them that they would not beat children any more. Many of the children laughed at that. I didn’t understand much of what was happening because the radio show is conducted in Bambara, the local language. But the kids and the community really really got a kick out of it, and the kids were great. Self assured and really professional.

Photo: Kids Waves radio program.

We stayed until around 4 and then drove back. We arrived quite late due to traffic and I was soooo tired by then. I went out for pizza with a few of the others, Messan from Togo, Carmen from Benin and Francoise from Burkina. Messan and Francoise had participated in the Kenya Social Media for Social Change workshop, and it was great to see them again. One of the best things about working for Plan is when you have a chance to see colleagues again and develop nice friendships and working relationships.

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YETAM Mali visit!

Posted in Mali, participation, protection, travel, YETAM, youth media on February 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I got myself up around 7 and showered. Put my same clothes back on and called Bedo. He and the guys from the Kids Waves radio program came to get me about 8 and we drove about an hour and a half out to the community. We dropped the radio guys off first in one community where we will visit tomorrow and where they will do a live Kids Waves show. The YETAM community was a decent drive down a pretty dusty road, but not really too bad. The kids were all in the school house. They had a whole program planned where they showed the theater and songs that they had made up during the project and since then. They also showed me the photos that they’d taken as part of the project. I took a bunch of video with my phone so that I could make some short testimonials for Nokia about the project. I was really impressed with the kids and the topics they chose – they did one play about female genital cutting, one about the dangers of selling bad meat in the community, and had a song motivating people to go out and vote. Really relevant stuff for community awareness and motivation.

Photo: kids who are participating in the YETAM project.
About 2 we finished the community program and they served lunch. It was rice with meat – goat I think. So as usual I was faced with the vegetarian’s dilemma (as opposed to the omnivore’s dilemma, ha) of how to avoid being rude. In the end I just ended up eating the rice with all the goat ‘juice’ on it. People crowd up and share a big platter of food. They wash up and then each person squats around the platter and uses their right hand to scoop out some rice and form a ball with it, and then eat it along with some of the meat and vegetables. It’s nice to have a communal plate like that. I’ve seen it in many countries and it really feels more like you are sharing the meal rather than each eating from your own private space. I just wasn’t sure how the meat juices and grease would settle since I haven’t eaten meat for so many years…. I was feeling a big woozy by the time we got back, but mainly due to lack of sleep and water since I didn’t drink any water all day and it was pretty hot. (Didn’t want to have to go to the toilet!)

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Travel Snafu. Ugh.

Posted in travel on February 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

After pizza we tried to watch Madagascar 2, which Clare’s husband had brought back from Morocco, but Dalila and I were falling asleep so we crashed early and slept for what seemed like forever… but which was actually about 8 a.m.! Had a morning coffee with the girls and took off for the airport for my 2.30 flight. Was sorry to leave. Maybe someday I’ll move to Amsterdam.

My flight out was delayed because of snow in Paris, and then the Paris flight was delayed too. We sat on the runway for 4 hours waiting to leave! Argh. So I didn’t get into Bamako (Mali) until about 3.00 in the morning. My luggage was lost of course (Air France seems to be notorious for that) so I had to report it, so I didn’t get to the hotel even until about 4. Bedo from the YETAM project is coming to get me tomorrow at 8…. Thinking twice about actually going. I kind of have to, but right now it seems like an impossible feat…. I’m just sooo exhausted.

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Arrival to Gatsibo

Posted in Rwanda, travel, YETAM, youth media on August 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

I checked out of the Ninzi Hill hotel around 9 and we spent the day at the office finishing up the first few days of the agenda, checking over equipment, installing software, etc. We left for Gatsibo around 3.30, stopping on the way to get some lunch…. talk about starch!! I guess that’s what I’ll be in for for the next few weeks: plantains, manioc, pasta, potatoes, rice were the main course. I added some peas for variety and so my plate wouldn’t be all white food! Photo: road to Kiramuruzi, near President Kagame’s residence.

The drive was beautiful – reminded me of the hilly areas of El Salvador or Honduras – really green (even though it’s the dry season) with red dirt. We went past Lake Muhazi, and the president of Rwanda’s private residence where he keeps cattle and spends most of his time apparently. We’ll be staying there on the weekend as a little break since the hotel is nicer and the lake is beautiful.

The ‘not nice’ hotel is in Kiramuruzi, and it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be. It is a pretty typical rural type hotel. I have a small room with a private bathroom off a large courtyard (most of the others have to share the bathrooms…). There are probably 15 rooms, so it’s quite small. There’s a mosquito net, small table, and then in the bathroom there’s a shower floor (no running water) and a toilet (no running water), and a yellow 5-gallon oil container type thing with water in it for bathing and flushing. So not much different than El Salvador except that the water is in the yellow container and not the stone sink. Photo: sunset over the roof of our hotel in Kiramuruzi.

I settled in and Joseph came out with some playing cards, so we spent the evening playing cards with him, 2 of the video guys (Olivier and Bernard) and Amina until we went to bed around 10. I taught them my family’s favorite game: oh hell, which is now “american cards”.

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2 weeks already!

Posted in Senegal, travel on July 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

I can’t believe I’ve been back so long and haven’t posted anything. There was a lot to catch up on at the house (as in my dear son Daniel didn’t clean for the last 3 weeks and there was no food except the moldy stuff that was still there from before I left….). Work was also a bit of a catch up, being back at the office and seeing what was up with the youth engagement team and the rest of the office. The first thing I did was try to sort through all the big initiatives that I’m working on to see if I can actually do them all in a quality way. Starting now I need to start saying ‘no’ or I will be in too deep with stuff.

We are almost finished with the 4 Virtual Visits that we’ve done through the US office. The Dominican Republic should be done next week and then we just have to finish El Salvador. It will be nice to have that off my plate as they were hanging there for awhile without being finished. Good experience though to know exactly what needs to be done for the new ones, and how long it takes, and some good ways of going about it. http://www.dotsub.com/, the website we use for subtitling will be moving to their new site next week, and it’s looking great. Michael called me tonight though to let me know that the virtual visit maps don’t show up on Firefox with a Mac so need to figure out what’s going on there….

Lots is going on in the US office with the plan to work in more new technology and social media so I’m happy about that. I worked with the new strategic operations vice president on a short concept paper linking constituency building, youth engagement and new technology together to present to the executive team to see how we can really get going. I think it’s a good niche for us as an organization because we have so much global experience with child and youth media.

OK more later, hopefully with photos so it’s easier to keep reading….

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Star Spangled Birthday

Posted in Senegal, travel on July 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »

We finished up the workshop this morning by watching the short videos we made the first day, reminding people what they had said their expectations were. It was a good way to really take people back to the first day, how they were feeling and to track what we’d all learned about the project and each other in the week of workshops. We all felt we’d come a long way towards a common understanding of the vision and attitudes required for successful implementation. So I was happy about that.

Went back to the office after lunch to tie up any loose ends and got home about 7. It’s my birthday today and Clare made me this awesome dinner and a surprise cake! She’s awesome and really loves to do stuff for people, especially on holidays. It’s always good to have birthday outside of the US because that way they don’t count and you can pretend they didn’t happen!

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Field Visit to Notto, Thies

Posted in Senegal, travel, tagged , , on July 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »

We had a field trip today to the Notto community in the Thies district where Plan Senegal is going to be implementing the project. I took Clare so she would get to see some of Senegal outside of Dakar.

Photo: Community notables with Papesidy (center) explaining the project.

We stopped at the Thies Program Unit (PU) Office first. (Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liX3VniQ11c for a video of the PU Office.)

Papesidy is the manager of the Theis PU. Within the Plan structure, most countries have a Country Office (CO) and then a few PUs which are district offices closer out to where the communities that we’re working with are. Each PU has staff (100% local people) that manage programs, sponsorship, grants, finance, etc., and that report into the CO. There are ‘community animators’ who have close relationships with the communities where we’re working on projects and who spend most of their time out in the communities helping facilitate the projects, supporting them to plan what they want to do and manage their projects, etc. They also spend quite a lot of their time managing communications between sponsors in the 17 Plan offices in the ‘north’ and the sponsored children in the communities in the ‘south’.

The meeting in Notto (the community in the Thies district that will participate in the YETAM project) was really long. When we got out of the car, we were surrounded by kids just staring at us for awhile and then we moved over underneath a tree and sat on some mats. The head imam from the village along with a few other ‘notables’ as they called them sat in chairs and addressed everyone in Wolof (one of the main local languages in Senegal) to start the meeting. We had translation in French and I realized I’m understanding pretty well actually! They gave thanks to God and prayed, saying that the prayers would be to the Muslim, Christian or Jewish Gods and we all pray to the same one God. Then we were welcomed to the community, and the children and youth were encouraged to put their total trust into the people from Plan who would come work with them on the project. We were told that we should to think of the community as our family – that we had mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles in the community and that they also had the same in us. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JkquUlusuk for some scenes from the meeting.

There was a really really long discussion then about the project. The community had been seeing it as an internet training project but after several exchanges and lots of interventions, it became clearer what the project is about. That through different arts and media the youth would learn how to better express themselves and the community would have the opportunity to take its place, to occupy its own space on the internet, and that it would be they themselves who would portray their community there, not people from the outside. There were lots of questions related to how they could access and use the internet if they didn’t attend school or read/write in French and if their community didn’t have an internet connection. But then the wife of the imam said that she hadn’t gone to school and she could do lots of things with her cellphone, so it was the same thing. After the community meeting everyone came up to us to say bye and Clare had lots of boys asking what her name is, how old she is, etc. She turned pretty pink. Photos: Community youth commenting on the project.

Photo: Papesidy filming a testimonial for the Nokia report.

On the way home we drove the back way through a whole bunch of urban communities right near the beach to avoid traffic. At one point we just plowed through this big sand field with all these guys playing soccer, making our own road as we went along. There was so much going on – people selling mangos, baobab fruits, fish, kids, goats, cars, busses, men and women sitting outside their houses chatting all along small winding streets next to big expanses of sandy beach leading to the shore. Along the beach the entire way was pure movement of people — playing soccer, doing sit ups, running in groups of 2-3 or in larger groups the size of a soccer team. (I’ve never been in a country where so many people jog – at all hours of the day in all types of gear and non-gear – from running shoes to flip flops to even small groups of women with headscarves). I kept thinking of Laye’s term “social living” and thinking this is really it. If I ever moved to Senegal I’d want to live in an area like this where people ‘live socially’ rather than the more exclusive neighborhoods where people tend to stay indoors more and the only people you really see outside are the men sitting in chairs in near the front door keeping an eye on things.

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Social Living

Posted in Senegal, travel on July 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday we went through who all the different groups and people with something at stake in the project are, and what they might want out of the project and how we can ensure that we meet their expectations. This included the kids, adults and communities that are participating, people in African countries who will see and discuss the art and media the kids produce, the different Plan offices, ourselves personally, youth in the ‘north’, etc. Then we talked about the concept for the 3 week training in each country with the youth and shared ideas about how to do it, coming up with an action plan for each country and a common vision for how to structure the training as well as things to consider when adapting the project and training to each country’s/communities’ individual realities.

Today we drilled deeper into what Nokia needs from us in terms of communications, reports, PR efforts, etc. and went over social media, new technology in communications and how it links with this project as well as some of the other projects that Plan is doing. For example how mobile phones can be used for call centers in cases of child abuse or disasters. This is one of the main things I’m going to be doing for this year – looking at how to incorporate more new technology and social media into our programs to increase impact and improve them.

I met up with Laye finally after work. He came to the Regal restaurant near Mie’s house to meet me, and we took a Car Rapide downtown. The Car Rapide was a new experience – a lot like the busses in El Salvador. They are smallish busses, painted all colors, and are probably all 30-40 years old. People kind of cram in and the back doors are left open for people to hop on and off. They smell like diesel smoke, but the evening was cool and with all the windows open, the ride downtown was really nice. We got down at the Poste Medina stop and walked through down town for about an hour, taking some pictures and seeing things. I’d been missing ‘social living’ as Laye calls it – something I was used to in El Salvador.

Social Living it seems is what the majority of people in Senegal do. Spend much more time outside, ride on crowded busses, and live in closer quarters. We ended up in La Escala night club. I had a beer and Laye had a Coke since he stopped drinking a few years ago when he met his spiritual guide who counsels him on life. He is Muslim, so we talked about that for awhile and what it means to him. Basically he feels that through his spiritual guide he has come to know himself and therefore he can know God. There were a lot of fairly obvious sex workers in the club, and he explained that in Dakar there are licensed and non-licensed ones and that the prices range depending on the ‘quality’. Laye said he doesn’t do the nightclub scene and that he prefers Reggae parties. He learned his excellent English by listening to Reggae music.

I took a cab home around 12.30 and we made plans to do something later in the week. It will be fun to see more of the ‘real’ Dakar.

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Saly, visas, getting down to work

Posted in Senegal, travel on June 30, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Amsterdam was a nice break from things since it was about 20 degrees cooler. And there was great Indian food! Julie and I spent the rest of the week planning the workshop. We found out that Rwanda staff would be able to attend the workshop, but then there was confusion over who was processing their visas. We worked against time, but Julie found a way. She had to scan a visa letter and send it to Chrystel and Eugene (the Rwanda staff) by email for them to download/ print at the airport in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) before boarding their flight. A bit crazy but technology is just as useful as the government connections at these times and they made it – though without their luggage….

I was supposed to meet up with my friend Jessica’s Senegalese friend Laye on Saturday night and to see one of the youth that had attended a US conference in 2004 during the day, but Mie had gotten back from Benin and Togo and made plans for us to go to Saly – a resort type town about an hour and a half outside of Dakar so I postponed things till next week. Saly was gorgeous. We stayed at a really really cool hotel (Hotel Teranga) next to the beach for about $60 a night. Apparently Saly is known for older white women being able to ‘find’ young Senegalese men, but I didn’t see much of that myself. Photo: Hotel Teranga in Saly.

It took us about 3 hours to get there due to some really intense traffic, but it was worth it. We got to see a little bit of the countryside, though not much. At least some nice landscape with Baobab trees. Didn’t get out to the pool till about 3 p.m. and still got burned! Photo: baobab trees on route to Saly.

We went home on Sunday morning because Joa had to catch a flight to Ghana for some meetings that evening. (Though we later found out his flight was delayed and he had all kinds of trouble getting to Ghana and spent about 10 hours in the airport in Abidjan) because he didn’t have a visa to leave and get a hotel room. Photo: Beach at Saly.

The workshop got off to a slow start, but by around 11 the group was moving together and getting down to discussions about the project idea and where we hope to take things. We started off by giving people the little Flip cameras and having each participant film the person next to them introducing themselves and saying what their expectations were for the workshop. Photo: (left-right) Me, Bedo, Yaro, Papesidy, Anthony, Julie, Chrystel, Eugene.

Then we went onto presenting the project concept and showing the virtual visit we did in Togo so people would have an idea of what could be done in their own country. We had people from Senegal (Papesidy), Mali (Bedo and Yaro) and Rwanda (Chrystel and Eugene) and the Regional Office for Southern and East Africa (Anthony) – and some good questions and discussions. After going through the project outline, goals, results expected, budget, etc. so everyone would be on the same page, we spent the afternoon talking about the kind of attitudes necessary for the project and ways to ensure that we were creating an environment in the community that would allow for open expression and participation of the kids who are going to be involved. I’m really confident that the people involved will do a good job because everyone’s questions and input were really good and insightful.

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laptop’s back!

Posted in travel, YETAM on June 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Today’s meetings at Plan Netherlands went quite well. Lots of interest in moving forward with media and technology. They are meeting with people at headquarters tomorrow and hopefully after that we will have a green light for a small group of people to move forward on a concept for using new media and the web for better outreach in several aspects. More later on that when things get going more. I will be involved through the US office and 2 of the African offices that are part of the YETAM project I’m working on with Julie will also be involved.

I just got handed my laptop! I’ll add the photos and stuff to the blogs I wrote…. :-).

YAY!!!!

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