How do those buildings get painted anyways?

Remember that Koro Youth Development Association building? Remember how it was painted with an advertisement for a booze distributor? Well how did that happen anyways? It is a very common sight in Uganda to see buildings painted with an advertisement for a company, often a company that has nothing to do with what the store sells.

This store does not sell cellphones in the middle of a cornfield.

This store does not sell Maharajas. But what if it did?!?!?

I have long wondered how this comes to pass, and finally asked a couple of Ugandan friends and got an answer. Basically, a company will come into a town with some idea of how many buildings it wants to paint. It approaches store owners - usually targeting those with worn paint- offering to paint their store for free if the store owner doesn't mind that it is painted with their advertisement. As it turns out, a free coat of paint induces most shop owners to agree to this deal! Apparently these deals usually involve some sort of time the shop owner needs to keep the paint up, but there are absolutely no consequences if they change it the next day.

So there you have it! A burning question finally answered!

NGO Verifications

Hello all! I am so sorry that I have been absent from the blog of late. However, sorry I’m not sorry because I’ve been away because I have been completely busy, which I absolutely love. It has been a very interesting couple of weeks, ones which I intend to write several blog posts about over the course of next week.

One of the things that has been keeping me super busy is NGO Scorecard verifications. You remember the NGO Scorecard project? If not, I wrote about it in this post http://uganduh.blogspot.com/2011/07/ngo-adventures.html for a quick refresher course.

Once we got the NGOs to show up to the conference way back in June, the next step was getting them to agree to sign up to participate in the actual QuAM verification process. QuAM itself is a Ugandan program, created by two of the big organizations in Uganda that focus on the NGO Sector: DENIVA and the NGO Forum. However, in the two years this program has been in existence, the QuAM members have only managed to do two verifications. Our goal this summer is to do 200 verifications of NGOs and CBOs (Community Based Organizations…. Basically baby- NGOs). So needless to say, we are giving this program a much needed kick in the pants to get going. One of the ways we’ve been doing this is by paying the QuAM fee that organizations need to pay to get verified. This fee comes to 50,000 shillings (roughly $20), which for many of these tiny CBOs is just too much to pay. But more on that later.

QuAM itself is a very interesting organization. Basically, there is a national QuAM committee and then there are district committees in each district. The district committee members (DCMs) are the ones who actually do the verifications. Interestingly, each district committee is elected by the NGOs who are registered with the NGO Forum. It seems very interesting to me that the regulators are elected by the people that they are trying to regulate. However, it has become very clear to me that while this project interests me from the accountability standpoint (does publicly holding NGOs accountable for bad behaviors make them improve?), QuAM sees itself as more of a consulting organization: working with NGOs to help them get better.

At first, I found this apparent conflict of interest troubling, but have come to realize that especially for the smaller CBOs, a lot of the problems come from simply not knowing about best practices. I guess from that standpoint, the most capacity building (another excellent development buzzword!) can be achieved when the DCMs are people who the NGOs and CBOs hold in high esteem and trust to give them good counsel.

It seems to me that the QuAM process really aims at these groups. Because, for calling the process “verifications,” very little is actually verified. For example, one of the questions is “Does your organization prevent the mismanagement of resources by its staff and members?” This, of course, is an important question that speaks to the corruption and inefficiencies that many perceive to be endemic to the aid sector. However, the QuAM process just asks the NGO to point to the section of constitution that codifies this standard, yet takes no measure to verify that this standard is implemented in practice. Thus, even the most corrupt NGO that completely ignores all of its policies would pass the QuAM with flying colors if they have good written policies.

This was a bit frustrating to me at first, since basically renders QuAM obsolete as a financial accountability tool. However, as someone who has pretty much exclusively worked with large development organizations, this process has enlightened me to the incredible scale of organizations that all fall under the category of NGOs.

For example, some NGOs are incredibly slick and well run. Take for example the Norwegian Refugee Council. It was an absolute pleasure to verify this organization. The NRC is an international NGO based in Oslo (thoughts and prayers to the citizens of Oslo and the families and friends of the victims of the attack there) that works in 22 countries. They really seem to do good work and are excellent in their monitoring and evaluation work. They applied for the highest certificate level, and I’m sure they will pass every standard. Some of the standards seem quite silly for an organization such as this one. For example, the question “Do you have a bank account?” was met with laughter from the NRC staff.

Other organizations are much less slick and well run. My first verification was to Northern Youth Alive Multipurpose Uganda (awesome name, btw). This organization was basically a group of friends who seemed to get together to solve the shared problem that none of them have jobs. They decided to solve this problem by forming an “NGO” that would promote “livelihood enhancement among Ugandan youth.” This organization was brand new, formed in April 2011, and yet to have a single donor. So far, the founding members had managed to pool together a little bit of money to open up a barbershop that they staff themselves.

Verifying such an organization really highlighted the learning process that QuAM is excellent to engender. For example, when asked the question about preventing mismanagement of resources, they pointed to a sentence in the constitution that demanded that “all members respect the organization.” Not satisfied with this, I kept asking them how they would prevent mismanagement.

-“Let’s say it is the end of the day at the barbershop. How do you make sure someone doesn’t take more than their share of the day’s earnings?”

-“That would not happen. We are all of one heart.”

-“But… how do you know that everyone is of one heart? How do you make sure?”

-“We know. We would not have such problems.”

-“Um….”

By the end of the meeting, Esther (my baller DCM partner…. She insisted that we skip the free lunch I offered to buy her the first day so we could get more done.) and I convinced this group that it would be a good idea to develop monitoring practices…. Just in case someone may join the group who is not of one heart in the future.

The Northern Youth Alive Multipurpose Uganda Members in front of the Barbershop

Sign in the barbershop. Ironic, no?

Another CBO we visited, the Koro Youth Development Association, also works to provide livelihood opportunities to Gulu area youth. Mostly, they do this by creating crafts such as beads and doormats that they sell to raise money.

When we asked to see their most recent financial records, they started looking through a stack of water logged papers that they thought contained the records. They were not there. We availed on them that documenting financial transactions would be a good idea if they hope to get donor funding in the future.

Chairman of the Koro Youth Development Association at his Desk

After the business portion of our meeting, we went out back of the office and the members performed some traditional dances for us. A very fun end to the verification day!

The Koro Youth Development Association Building

The women of the Koro Youth Development Association making beads out of cut up sensitization (another good buzzword) posters from Aid Organizations. I found that quite funny/ awesome.

Dayenu

Hello everyone! I hope that life in the States is excellent and that your post-July 4th week has been good. Speaking of Independence Day, yesterday was Southern Sudan's independence day!! Very exciting. There weren't particularly any celebrations in Gulu, but you could overhear bits of conversation about Southern Sudan's independence and could sense the excitement in the air. I'm stealing this quote by Ambassador Susan Rice from my friend's facebook status (ahhh social media). But it's a lovely one so I thought I'd share: "Every problem created by human folly can be met by human wisdom and mended by human resolve."

I had a very lovely birthday this Wednesday. I was awoken by Greg with a "Ugandan mimosa," a creation of his that consists of Orange juice and Waragi, or Ugandan gin. For anyone who is every had waragi, and probably even if you haven't, you can imagine that the Ugandan mimosa is not quite the delightful breakfast drink of the American mimosa. But still, a lovely and fun way to start my birthday.

In the afternoon, Greg, Fabius and I went to the Samuel Baker fort, a delightful hour boda ride outside Gulu. The fort was once an Arab slave trading post, but was taken over by the British explorer Samuel Baker in 1872 who ended the slave trade there. We were taken around by this group of park ranger types who told us about the different features of the fort.

After returning to town, I had a delightful pizza (!) dinner with Greg, Taylor, Kurt, and Jessica, one of the other BYU students who was up in Gulu working on the project with Taylor.

Then, Greg and I met up with some friends from the clinic as well as our friend Tina who works at the grocery store near our apartment. We had a fun night of hanging out and dancing.

I learned a couple of things about birthdays in Uganda. The first, is that when it is your birthday, you are called "the baby" regardless of your age. You also can be commanded to do silly things, like dance for the group "get up and dance, baby!"

I also learned that people that you have only known for a short while, or people you have even only met once, will go to great lengths for your birthday. Not only did these new friends come out for my birthday, on a Wednesday night, but all of them brought me presents. I was so touched by generosity of my friends both with their time, and with their limited resources.

In Judaism, we sing the "Dayenu" on Passover to give thanks for all of the blessings that God bestowed upon the Jewish people. Translated from Hebrew, Dayenu means "it would have been enough."

This week, I found myself thinking of this a lot. I feel like, in Western culture, we are fixated on the idea of "enough." When we give of ourselves, we try to zone in on that perfect spot of "enough." We want to give enough to be helpful, appropriate, and good, but we try not to exceed that mark, to give in excess of what would be "enough."

If you asked an American for directions, they would point off in the distance and tell you how to get there. If you asked a Ugandan for directions, they would walk you to your destination and make sure you got in unharmed.

Yesterday, Greg and I met up with our friend Vicki at her family's village in Gulu. I met Vicki through Greg, who met her through a Notre Dame SIT alumna who met Vicki when she was in Kampala. Vicki herself is currently doing a certificate course in catering in Kampala, but is originally from Gulu. So when she was up here for a conference in Gulu, she invited Greg, me, Taylor and Kurt over to her family's village, a few kilometers outside Gulu Town.

Vicki's extended family lives in a sort of compound of several thatched huts, surrounded by their farmland. Once we arrived at the compound, we were greeted by a parade of "brothers and sisters" (Ugandans call EVERYONE brother and sister (sista): friends, cousins, coworkers, actual brothers and sisters... so sometimes it is a bit hard to track down the actual biological relationship between people... of course, that is far less important given the broad Ugandan concept of family), aunties, mommies (none of whom were Vicki's actual mother), and finally Vicki's grandfather.

Vicki's grandfather, Michael, is a very interesting man. Due to some illness (it was unclear what exactly that was), over 35 years Michael has lost all of his fingers and toes, as well as having one of his legs amputated. He does not have any sort of wheelchair or prosthetic, so he can only get around by dragging himself on the ground. As we were talking to him, he just kept saying how grateful he was that we have come to his home, and that he knows God must love him to send him visitors.

We were ushered into one of the huts were we sat around and chatted with Vicki and two of her brothers and one of her sisters. It was so much fun: a lot of laughter, a discussion of whether the film "invisible mud fighter" was an accurate depiction of Western culture, and a dance off between Greg and one of Vicki's brothers, which Greg decidedly lost.

But mostly, we ate. A LOT. First, we were fed oranges picked from the family's tree. We were given orange after orange. When I tried to share with the children, I was scolded "you eat!" Then, we were given heaping bowls of rice, millet posho (which looks like a brown blob...), various cow parts (which I thankfully managed to maneuver my way out of... the rest weren't so crafty) and greens (which I had to eat twice as much of since I didn't eat the meat). Whenever we finished our bowl, Vicki put more into our bowls. After lunch, the family went out and bought us each a soda. When it was time to head back into town, we weren't allowed to leave until my purse was STUFFED with oranges.

As Vicki's family exemplifies, Ugandans do not know the definition of "enough." The sodas that were purchased likely cost what the entire family earns in two days, yet they did it without thinking twice. Ugandans do not try to find "enough," they do not worry themselves with not burdening themselves beyond what is necessary, they do not try to calibrate what they give with what they expect to get back.

I have been deeply touched by this generosity, and I aspire to think less about what is "enough" and to give of myself more freely.

Love,

Alena

Interview trip to Pader District

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! I hope you all are having a wonderful celebration. My celebration this year will not have nearly the excitement of last year's patriotic song session on DC public transport and fireworks at the Jefferson Memorial. Largely because this year's celebration will be non-existent. But I am thinking fondly of my July 4th memories today and wishing you all an excellent and safe independence day.

Today's blog post is going to be about another project I am working on. Taylor, one of the students who is in Uganda this summer with the BYU study abroad program here (who is, therefore also working on the crowdsourcing/ scorecarding projects since the first is an AidData project and the second a BYU project), is undertaking an independent research project that aims to assess the unique effects of sexual violence on social structures in Uganda, as compared to other forms of trauma. Her hypothesis is that sexual violence has a uniquely stigmatizing effect, and is thus more detrimental to social cohesion than other forms of trauma experienced during the civil war.

However, Taylor is based in Kampala with the rest of the program, so she enlisted my help with conducting interviews up in Northern Uganda, since that is where the civil war took place.

I suppose it is about time I give you some background on the civil war that took place in Northern Uganda for nearly two decades. I'm sorry if this is information that many of you already know. But, just in case...

A brief overview:

The civil war in Northern Uganda began in 1986, when current President Yoweri Museveni

seized power from a government dominated by northern Ugandans, predominantly

those from the Acholi ethnic group. Soon there after, Joseph Kony began to form the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Joseph Kony blends Christian fundamentalism, African animism and elements of Islam in his ‘spiritual’ leadership and political crusade against the government. His army has a political agenda to overthrow the government and spark the “moral regeneration” of the Acholi people, creating a utopian society in Uganda

Despite their anti-government agenda, the main victims of LRA aggression was the Acholi people themselves. The LRA terrorized the population by killing, looting villages, burning homes, and abducting villagers, namely adolescents who become child soldiers or child brides for the LRA.

In the Acholi area of Northern Uganda (Acholiland) approximately one-third of all males and one-sixth of females between the ages of 14-30 were abducted for at least two weeks.

In 2005, the civil war in northern Uganda was termed the ‘world’s largest neglected

humanitarian emergency’ by the UN’s Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. After two decades of fighting, a truce was signed in August2006 between the LRA and Ugandan government, ending the civil war in the North. Kony and many of the LRA officers have since fled into the DRC.

It is estimated that over the duration of the conflict, 66,000 youth were abducted by the LRA and nearly two million people in the region were affected by the conflict through displacement and exposure to attacks by the rebel group.

Now back to the post...

The women that Taylor's study seeks to reach are those who were survivors of sexual violence either as the abducted women who served as child brides in the LRA or who were attacked during an LRA raid of their village.

Heavy stuff.

So right after the NGO conference on Monday, Taylor and I set out with NUMAT (Northern Uganda Malaria, AIDS, and Tuberculosis Program) to neighboring Pader district to conduct interviews.

The experience was very interesting, and we both learned a whole heck of a lot about field research, though most of it goes in the what not to do column. For example, do not forget to bring a pad of ink so that women who cannot write can sign consent forms.

One of the main challenges we faced was with randomization. For a study like this, you ideally would want to have a random sample of women in Northern Uganda participate in interviews. However, walking up to random women in the street and asking "have you been raped?" likely would not go over so well. So instead, we have been working with various organizations with SGBV programs (Sexual Gender Based Violence) to find subjects to interview. Of course, specifically targeting women who organizations know to be survivors of sexual violence is the exact opposite of random.

Another challenge is the effect of the translator on the interviews. Since none of the women we interviewed speak English, we would conduct our interviews with a translator, who would ask the interview questions, and then turn the answer given into the code that corresponds with one of our survey options.

There are two problems with this. 1) It is HIGHLY subjective how the translator turns the response into a code. For example, if the response choices are a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, it is entirely subject to the whim of the translator where a response falls on the scale. (Quick side note: the inability of Ugandans to stick to the options on a survey or form really makes me realized what a standardized test/ form completing culture we have in the US. The idea of just speeding through questions and selecting one of a multiple choice set of answers is completely foreign to Ugandan culture. This is why a survey that would take me 20 some minutes to complete takes our Ugandan subjects roughly and hour and change to complete. )

Anywho

The second problem with this is that I am totally shut out of what the interviewee is saying. I sometimes just felt like I was mindlessly ticking boxes as these women were relaying these incredibly intense stories. That was a bit frustrating, as it makes it more difficult to really connect with the subject. However, I got to do some interviews yesterday where the translator translated everything the interviewee said, which was a much more interesting and intense experience.

Aside from many lessons about the perils of field research, the thing I have really taken away from this experience is a profound respect for the resilience of the Ugandan people and a deep sense of the injustices of being a woman in Ugandan society.

I'll talk more about these subjects in another post, since I feel like I've been typing forever. However, I'll just end with one example from my Pader trip of what I mean. One of the sections of the survey assesses the level of trauma experienced by each subject. It asks whether the subject has experienced 27 different traumatic incidents, ranging from being displaced from your home, to rape, to witnessing the murder of a family member. One of the women we interviewed answered yes to 20 out of the 27 incidents. Not only does she have to figure out a way to live again, but she has to figure out how to support her 6 children, along with the 4 nieces/ nephews she has taken in all on her own on an income of less than a dollar a day.

All this and she manages to smile and offer to share her G-Nuts with me. Truly amazing.

Love,

Alena

NGO Adventures

Hello everyone!

Happy rabbit rabbit to you all!!! It's hard to believe that it is already July for two important reasons 1) My birthday is in 5 days, wooo!!! and 2) My birthday marks the half way point of my time in Uganda. I feel so much like I am just getting started on so many of the things I want to do here. With July's arrival also comes the realization that I very much owe you all an update on what I've been doing. Mostly, I've been working on the NGO Scorecarding project and a project about the effect of sexual gender based violence (SGBV is the developmenty term for it) on social cohesion. As I look back on my other posts, I realize I have mentioned nothing at all about that project! Oops! I was planning on saving that for my next post so..... suspense.

This post is going to be dedicated to the NGO Scorecarding project, and how that's going. This past Monday, we held a big conference in Gulu to get NGOs to agree to undergo the evaluation process (the QuAM or Quality Assurance Certification Mechanism.... where did the C go in that acronym? Beats me.) that we will be using in our RCT.

Myself and Kurt, one of the BYU research assistants that is in Uganda for the summer were named co-coordinators for that conference, so much of last week involved planning the conference and convincing NGOs to come.

One of the ways we tried to mobilize (mobilize being another great development buzzword) NGOs to attend the conference was by delivering flyers to their offices and explaining what the conference is. To do this, I set off on foot with Clara, a lovely woman from the NGO Forum, the group we've been working with (more on that later) to visit the NGOs in Gulu Town.

I was struck by how absolutely tiny some of these NGOs are. To find some of them involved ducking between stalls in a market, and going into these tiny one room offices tucked out of eyesight. Yet, despite the seeming elusiveness of these organizations, they ALL were plastered with stickers from some larger donor: USAID, World Vision, ECHO, the UN, etc. That would be another interesting project, learning how these large donors find these tiny NGOs in the first place.

Also, walking around with Clara was a hilarious experience. She has lived in Gulu her entire life and knows EVERYONE. We were stopping ever thirty seconds to greet her sister, her aunt, her classmate, her friend from church choir, etc. It was really fun to just be with such a social butterfly and really get a sense of the community that exists among Gulu residents. However, this did make the process take MUCH longer than it needed to. Oh well. Worth it.

Another way we mobilized NGOs was by calling them using a contact list given to us by the NGO Forum. I should probably explain what that is now. The NGO Forum is an organization that seeks to improve coordination and capacity building among NGOs. When an NGO opens in a district, they are supposed to register with the NGO Forum, and then I suppose they gain access to perks of some kind... though to be honest I am not entirely sure what those are, ha. A subject for another post I suppose.

Many NGOs and businesses in Uganda don't have landline phones, but operate entirely based on the cell phones of their employees. The contact sheet from the NGO Forum was also completely out of date. As a result, I had many delightful conversations with former NGO employees and retirees, and man did my "Ugandan English" accent get awesome as a result. However, this was not the most efficient means of actually reaching the NGOs I wanted to come to to the conference.

So a couple of days before the conference, I went into the NGO Forum to ask for updated info. The following conversation occurred:

Alena: "It seems that most of the contact information you gave me is out of date. Is there a more updated list?"

Receptionist: "Yes"

Alena: "Can I have it?"

Receptionist: "No"

Alena: "Um, what?"

It turns out that the receptionist only had the hard copies of the registration forms of the NGOs, that she was "still working to put into the system." She pulled out a giant package of forms. I thought I would just be writing down the phone numbers of the couple of NGOs on my list whose contacts I couldn't get from the wrong numbers I spoke to. However, NONE of the NGOs were on my list. I had just been given 50 new NGOs that were NOWHERE in the system, some of them having registered with the NGO Forum as long ago as 2003.

Oy.

The organization that is supposed to be the beacon of coordination for the NGO sector can't even enter NGOs into the system that have been registered for eight years?? Yikes.

Coordination, transparency, and accountability. I think this is becoming my mantra. My dad would be so proud.

But anyways, the conference came together nicely! We had 90 NGOs show up when we were only expecting 75, so I believe I mobilized effectively! Now, we are just giving them time to get their documents together, and we will start evaluating the week after next. Undoubtedly more NGO adventures to come!

I hope all is going well stateside and that you all have exciting July 4th weekends to look forward to!

Love,

Alena