My Project

Through all the frustration and seemingly wasted time, I found a great way to help this organization. It wasn’t what I expected coming, nor completely what I want to do, but it’ll make me feel like I’ve made an impact when I leave.

(Side note, I just looked out the window and saw a blue-balled monkey stroll by. Oh Kenya...)

My organization is based off of the philosophy of the first Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere. The philosophy is based on village governance. President Nyerere called it Ujamaa, which in Kiswahili roughly means community, or group. It is believed that by giving people small scale self-governance they can enact the change that they themselves choose. The term coined in the international arena for such a practice is Community Empowerment.

The manner by which my organization (Ujamaa Center) has done that is great. They recruit active members of various communities who they title Community Mobilizers. These people have a few vital aspects to them: they know the community they are working in, that particular community can relate to them, and most importantly they care about their community. Each Community Mobilizer (CM) is required to take a course specifically aimed at community empowerment based development work. There they learn how to make their entry into a community, how to assess the people’s needs, what sorts of activities they should hold, and with the help of experienced development workers, what works and what doesn’t work, and so on.

Taking all that into mind, I couldn’t really see myself doing something constructive in the field in just 3 months. There was no existing project that had a screaming need for someone to drive it, and I didn’t want to try and rush to a conclusion about how to help a community just because I only have 3 months to work. It was initially pretty distressing because I couldn’t get sufficient information on ongoing work, what CMs they had employed, etc. All of that led to a glaring, gaping hole in Ujamaa’s methodology. Their infrastructure of documentation and management of their activities need some work. So, I’m going to work on all of that.

It was a realization that made me a little sad since I thought I’d be more directly involved in an on the ground, in the field, project. That me a little lost, but I realized that I could wrap my project around field visits by working closely with CMs to try and develop the best methods of documenting their work. My blossoming project will require me to visit activities put on in the field and spend a lot of time, at the very least, learning all about the way these motivated and inspired people engender sustainable development. My last couple field visits were inspiring and have started to build my perspective on the wide, multi-faceted world of development, particularly the approach of being a facilitator rather than an implementer.

My saving grace, mentally, is that I came here partially to see how an NGO is run, what comprises it, etc. I’ll certainly attain that goal as I’m part of the infrastructural process. I’ll be writing a grant, building capacity, and essentially fortifying Ujamaa’s internal processes. I would not send future interns to Ujamaa if what they are looking for is participation in the change that is already in motion. They can observe, they can benefit, but there impact will be from a structural level.

Ujamaa is off and running, their roots run deep, and I hope those roots spread far and wide. I'm surely a fan.