This organisation, and others in the area, and those in other countries, and actually many aided projects around the globe have, and still do, lack in sufficiently monitoring and reporting on their impact. One of the reasons why aid failed in the past is because the development organisations weren’t held accountable for adequately indicating what their funds have achieved, and therefore donors are becoming more and more demanding on wanting to see proof of the return on their investment.
I picked up this deficiency in RDIS’ management of projects and over the last few weeks, developed a model for monitoring progress of their project objectives adequately, using KPI’s, in order to obtain figures as proof of the project’s impact. RDIS is definitely achieving a lot and has great success in what they do, but they have been challenged lately with the question of: where is the proof? I had to throw my PRINCE2 principles almost completely out of the window, as things here just work so much differently to the UK (perhaps someone should devise CHIEF2 principles for rural Africa?!). My aim was to come up with something that could be practically implementable here.
The RDIS coordinator was so enthusiastic about my suggestions that he gave me a whole morning at their monthly ‘board’ meeting to present the model. The presentation was quite unique to what I’ve experienced so far, having had to pause after every sentence to allow time for the interpreter. All in all, my propositions were received very well and the concepts introduced were understood clearly. But right now I’m not the most favoured person around, having exposed them to this challenge.
Though I tried to make the model as practical as possible, I still have my fears on whether it will be implementable as is. Time will only tell. Meanwhile, the first steps of action need to be taken now. Next week, I will start to visit each staff member in the different regions to help them implement the performance indicators in current and upcoming projects. Quite looking forward to that!
Self-consciousness of westerners, I think, made over the years that they have lost a sense of freedom. I’ve yet to meet someone in this country that is self-conscious. Here is why I came to this conclusion.
Any child randomly picked from a group, will without a blink stand up and sing a song or do a dance, if you ask him or her to do so. Now imagine the same situation in a school in SA or the UK … I don’t think so. And this is not only among the young, any age group will be willing to do the same (even the grannies). Maybe we should look back at where we picked up this attribute (or should I say attitude), and learn again from the 3rd world on how not to judge and be thought of as being judged.
7:50am this morning, we (two other volunteers and I) were collected at home by the Accountant of Compassion Project 727, and we ascended the hill behind our house to where their Saturday activities take place.
Children in school uniforms were playing all around till they were gathered on the steps in front of the church building to start the day. Now, we were invited by the project’s coordinator to come and see what they do, but true to Rwandan culture (as I’ve come to know), the way they like to make visitors ‘feel welcome’ is to included them in what they do. So in front of the 271 children, the coordinator announced that the three visitors will be taking their hour and a half lesson this morning. Luckily by now, my improvisation skills have developed quite well as this was not the first instance of this sort I’ve experienced whilst in the country.
The children gathered in to age groups at different spots under trees on the hill. Blackboards and a few benches were carried out from the church building and then the morning session started. Each group has a teacher who provides them with education in mainly social and bible studies. The class I was assigned to was very eager to learn more English words, so I combined this with teaching them an English song. And thereafter, as part of social development, we played some of their games. They even played ‘vroteier’! I wonder where that game originated then really if it’s known across Africa.
After the session, the children rushed to the Compassion office down the other side of the hill to get their cup of nutritional drink (boiled mixture of sorghum, maize, soya and sugar) and two ‘vetkoek’-like pieces of cake.
Normally, the children would have had another teaching session afterwards, but today they were gathered together for the handout of mosquito nets. Each child got two nets, one for themselves and one for a parent. This is obviously not enough for the whole family, but the nets are very big and could easily cover 2 children at a time. The children were very excited about these new items, but one of the Compassion staff explained to us that now they have a big task at hand as they’ll have to go and visit each individual family during the coming week to make sure the nets are being used and not sold for cash.
I looked over the hundreds of faces, and then started looking in to individuals’ eyes, and then realised that each single one of them are being cared for and prayed for by some person across the water. These children are light-years ahead of their peers: the children of other farmers like the ones I met yesterday and the children I see along the road so often. Their health, their clothes, their alertness and their content are some of the characteristics that are visibly different. As a sponsor myself, today’s interaction with the children meant so much to me, as I now clearly saw the difference that child sponsorship makes.
Well, as for the teaching of English, I’m not too sure if the children have improved that much yet. But, at least I managed to teach them two new songs in English!
One afternoon this week, we arrived quite late for the English classes and it appeared that the other two teachers couldn’t make it at all. No students have left yet, all were waiting patiently for us to arrive. But what amazed me even more, was that one of the classes decided to start on their own. Some of the children took initiative to carry on with the lesson where they stopped the previous day, and were trying to teach the other with what ever few words they could utter in English. Wow! I honestly did not think children could be that eager to learn … anywhere in the world!
This organisation, and others in the area, and those in other countries, and actually many aided projects around the globe have, and still do, lack in sufficiently monitoring and reporting on their impact. One of the reasons why aid failed in the past is because the development organisations weren’t held accountable for adequately indicating what their funds have achieved, and therefore donors are becoming more and more demanding on wanting to see proof of the return on their investment.
