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

Listening to LFO at trivia night at a Gulu bar... sponsored by Guiness

Gulu Town is often called NGO Town, and with good reason. Following the 2006 cease fire that ended the war against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda, hundreds of NGOs swarmed into Gulu District, many of them making their residence in Gulu Town, by far the biggest city in Gulu District.

This is not to say that Gulu Town is big. In fact, compared to the swirling chaos that is Kampala, Gulu feels like a serene hamlet. I really love this about Gulu. I can walk almost anywhere and while walking my chance of being mowed down in the street by a taxi or boda boda is far lower than in Kampala.

Another side effect of Gulu Town being small is that the NGO presence is wildly apparent. Holy cats there are a lot of white people here. As I write this blog post, I am sitting in the Coffee Hut, a café that has the magical combination of free internet, a generator for when the power is out (which, as it turns out, is a rather common occurrence. For example, the power has been out all day today), and coffee, a combination which seems to attract muzungus like moths to a flame.

This new reality of living in a Uganda where my 16 SIT cohorts and I aren’t the only white people I see all day has been an interesting one. Sometimes, I find myself annoyed by it. I ask “what are they doing here?” Which, of course, is silly, since one could certainly ask the same question about me.

Other times, I feel like I want to avoid the places where muzungus hang out in town, but let’s face it, the power has been out all day, and I need to use the internet. So here I am.

I supposed I liked to fancy myself the cool American who isn't obnoxious like the other white people who just drop in on Africa from time to time. In many senses I hope I am less obnoxious, but really I am just a white person doing research here like anyone else, so I guess I just need to get over myself.

However, it is certainly a different spectacle to watch, especially as someone who is interested in studying the effectiveness of aid. Every day, I watch all of these muzungus buzz around Gulu town, wondering what their reason is for being here. A lot of them are students (In fact, there is an SIT group in Gulu this summer for a couple of weeks, which has resulted in getting to see Muna and Miriam, two of the SIT staff, around town, which has been fun!), a lot are missionary types, and the bulk are well meaning aid workers, trying to make Gulu a better place, whatever that means.

Sometimes I wonder how many well meaning white people a Gulu resident sees come and go in their life time, and what they would say has been the impact of this constant turnover on their lives.

Which is certainly not to say that these people aren’t doing good things. After all, I certainly like to think that my presence here has some purpose. But the constant flurry of good intention around town often makes me wonder what sense the NGOs and aid workers in town have of what the other NGOs and aid workers are doing, and how many of them stay around long enough to see the result of their actions.

Basically, it really makes me believe in the importance of transparency, coordination, and a commitment to accountability in foreign aid, more than I already did before my arrival.

Also, living in NGO town leads to some funny situations, such as the one that inspired the title of this post. Last night, Greg and I went out to a bar in Gulu that hosts a weekly trivia night on Thursday. We met up with three friends of his from Notre Dame (plus one of their fellow interns who is from Germany), who are just outside Gulu Town on this Notre Dame program as well as two of Greg’s coworkers from the clinic.

The bar was a funny scene. Roughly equal parts Muzungus and Ugandans hanging out and playing trivia, but decidedly Muzungu music in the background. This included the likes of Jason Mraz, Linkin Park, Third Eye Blind, and LFO. We did respectably at the trivia, but didn’t win. I suspect we’ll try next week.

Love and miss you all!!

And We're Back!!

Hello again! Tomorrow I head back to Uganda for two months to work as a research assistant on some awesome projects! I figured that before I go, I should fill you all in on the projects I'm working on! Because I am using the research funds from my scholarship to fund this adventure, I am also obliged to blog at the Charles Center Summer Research Blog. In the interest of time (and finishing packing in time to watch the finale of America's Best Dance Crew with my parents tonight), I have shamelessly copied and pasted the post I wrote for the Charles Center blog:

Many scholars and practitioners have called attention to the shortcomings of foreign aid in promoting growth in developing countries. One problem that is often mentioned is that, of the roughly $150 billion in foreign aid received by developing countries annually, research has suggested that only a small portion of this money actually reaches the intended beneficiaries. A large portion of the diverted money is lost to corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency (Svensson 2000, Knack 2001). Of the money that does reach the right hands, it often ends in unsustainable projects that do not produce the intended results due to inefficiencies or project abandonment.

Two breakdowns in the service provider-recipient relationship contribute to the capture of foreign aid funds by corrupt officials and bureaucratic inefficiencies. The first is a breakdown in useful information provision. It is not a lack of information driving this breakdown, but a failure to centralize these sources in a useful way. Studies have suggested that individuals and organizations with access to useful information are far more likely to play an effective oversight role (Miller 2005, Gordon and Huber 2002). Often times, the most useful information regarding where aid is needed and whether aid dollars are being spent effectively is held by citizens in developing countries. However, these citizens generally lack the tools and access needed to provide direct feedback on project status or impact.

The first project I will be working on this summer will investigate the use of crowdsourcing to solve this information breakdown. Crowdsourcing is an idea that leverages the wisdom of the crowd to answer a question or solve a problem that would traditionally be posed to a specific actor. For example, in the business world, companies may use crowdsourcing to get ideas for a new product. This summer, AidData will be partnering with UNICEF andUshahidi to run a randomized control trial in Uganda to test which incentive mechanisms (ie. reimbursement, additional payment, social connection, public praise, instant feedback, engagement of local village councils, and relayed information about local outcomes, etc.) are most effective in compelling Ugandan citizens to participate in crowdsourcing to provide useful information on development needs and outcomes. The application of incentive mechanisms will be randomized across districts in Uganda, so that results can be compared against control districts to isolate the effect of the treatment. I will be working as a research assistant on this project, coordinating the AidData effort with the UNICEF Zonal Office in Gulu District, Northern Uganda.

The second breakdown in the foreign aid sector is a breakdown in accountability. Unlike governments. the typical service providers in developed countries, aid providers are not directly accountable to the citizens they serve through elections. Because of this, aid providers are often not held accountable for the development outcomes of their projects, an important incentive for effective service provision.

The second project will investigate the use of scorecarding NGOs to help ameliorate the problems caused by the accountability breakdown. Scorecarding refers to the quantitative assessment of NGO performance along seven metrics: policy structure, organization stability, accountability to stakeholders, transparency of information, financial viability, resource efficiency, and monitoring and evaluation. We will then collaborate with NGO partners in Uganda to randomize the publication of the scorecards of different NGOs to different stakeholders within Uganda’s NGO market (i.e. donor organizations, local and national politicians, project beneficiaries, etc.). This randomization will allow us to assess which stakeholders are the most influential in inspiring effectiveness in the NGO sector. I will work as the research assistant coordinating the evaluation of NGOs in Northern Uganda.

Final Post

My dear readers, I have been terribly remiss. I know I promised you all a final blog post, and it has been nearly a month since I made that promise. The delay is mostly due to finishing up my final paper and a fantastic three week vacation through Kenya, Tanzania, and Turkey with my family. The delay is also due to the fact that I wasn't really planning on getting around to this post; I figured no one was checking up on the ol blog anymore, and since this post is going to be a lot of me talking about my "feelings" and whatnot (spoiler alert!), and is largely self serving, I didn't feel too bad about neglecting Uganduh.

However, the wonderful Alex Rosenberg chastised my blog-break the other day, so I knew that at least one person would read my last post, so I decided to go ahead and write it.

It is hard to know where to start. As I have been catching up with friends at home, everyone always starts out with "Tell me about Uganda?!" This question always makes me laugh because it is just impossible to condense the depth and breath of four months in Uganda into a few sentence answer. My typical answer is to say it was incredible, and then tell people to read my blog. But believe me, once I get talking, I can't stop.

I feel Uganda withdrawal a lot, my poor family that had to suffer my moodiness in the first few post-Uganda days know it a little too well. This is not to say that America does not have it's charms: potable tap water, fountain soda, Chipotle, and a washing machine within my first few hours in the US served as a good welcome home.

In one of what became many conversations involving my habit of posing random questions to my friends and forcing all those in the conversation to answer (a habit that I realized on my trip I learned from my father... so, you know, blame him), Greg asked my what is my favorite place in the world. As is a rule of the game, I asked him to answer first while I tried to think of an answer. He, as is his nature, had a wonderful answer, yet despite proposing several different places, I couldn't think of a place that encapsulated the pure happiness that a favorite place should.

I tend to think I'm a fairly happy person, so I kept wracking my brain for the answer that I felt must exist, but was just eluding my grasp. It eventually dawned on my why I couldn't think of a satisfactory "favorite place": when I think about the moments in my life of pure happiness, I don't think of the place, the setting for the scene, but rather the cast of characters that fills it.

And as I think about what I miss in Uganda, I find myself dwelling less upon the place than upon the people that filled my time there.

I think about my homestay family,watching Tusker Project Fame with my mom, gossiping with my sisters in the bedroom while a family function is going on outside, and marathon dance sessions with Pinky.

I think about the warmth and kindness of relative strangers, the woman who showed me my taxi on my first day of school, Layla, the potato vendor who always ensured that Hannah and I didn't get ripped off in the market, Madam, who welcomed us into her living room and taught us to cook Ethiopian food, Rose, the owner of the Green Bar who would always give us free games of pool and cheer for me when I played against the boys, and the owners of the Indian restaurant I frequented, who never failed to ask "How's UNICEF?"

But mostly, I think about the 16 amazing kids who went through this experience with me: the first awkward days with our homestays, the dread of yet another mountain of Matoke, the feeling of victory when you don't let a conductor overcharge you, the discovery of the joys of rolex, Nile, dancing at clubs, and guacamole made with Ugandan avacados, the difficult realities of Ugandan life that confronted us, and the internal conflict of our role within this reality, the hiccups and joys of immersing ourselves in Uganda, and the eventual pain of leaving it.

Following the July terrorist attacks in Kampala, during that frenzied moment in which I considered transferring to a different program, one of the things that kept me from making what would have been a terrible mistake, was a feeling that I was going to like these kids, based, of course, on thorough facebook stalking. Now, looking back, my "feeling," though ill informed, could not have been more correct. I got so lucky with the other students on my program, and we all felt and expressed that luckiness to get to have this experience together.

The fact that I am heading back to Uganda in the summer dulls the feeling of longing. However, though I will return back to the place, I know I will never get back to that "favorite place," that moment of time populated with the most amazing cast of characters I could imagine, again. Though part of me is saddened by this, I mostly just feel so grateful that I got to have this experience, and so thankful to my parents for making it possible.

Speaking of things I'm grateful for! I just want to thank you all (however many of you that is at this point) for reading my blog. I have been very touched by the number of people, often people I never would have expected, who have told me that they read my blog. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my ramblings, I absolutely loved sharing this experience with you.

As they say in Uganda, we are together. A happy and healthy new year to one and all!

A Practicum Update

Hello friends! I hope everyone had a great weekend and hope that all of you who are in finals are surviving reasonably.

I finished up my practicum with UNICEF on Friday, and moved out of the Muzungu house the next day. Those two "lasts" like all things towards the end, were bittersweet. But I don't want to talk about "emotions" now. I'll leave that for my next/last post.

Instead, I just want to tell you all a little big about what I did during those six weeks. In the end, my practicum went super well. Once I was able to really start working (around week 3... oh well) I was able to accomplish a lot. Ultimately, I did a feasibility study for a larger, country-wide resource using Gulu District as a prototype. This involved learning about how UNICEF collects and stores aid information, how to connect diffused sources of information to create a complete picture of UNICEF aid, and consulting with those far tech savvier than I (which is really everyone) on how to best display this data in a web-based resource.

In the end, I discovered that a lot is possible. For many projects, individual cash requisitions can be tracked as far as to the location (aka clinic or school) level. However, this level of specificity required a lot of effort on my part pouring through the paper records I mentioned in my previous post to get the most specific possible information. Fortunately, a lot can be automated. I discovered that it would be possible, through digital databases, to completely automate tracking UNICEF funding down to the district level, which would represent a huge improvement over the national-level information that is currently the standard.

However, that isn't really good enough. It isn't sufficiently meaningful to a citizen on the ground to know that their district is expected to receive a certain amount of funding, and it weakens the ability of aid organizations to coordinate activities to avoid duplication or cross-contamination if they only can tie activities to the district level.

I am fortunate that the staff at UNICEF recognize this as well. They recognize the value of transparency, and want to position themselves as leaders in that field in Uganda. That was what I really took away from my practicum. It was encouraging to see that UNICEF Uganda was very serious about moving forward with this project and improving the way in which they give aid, and more encouraging/bizarre, that I could sit in the same room with the Head of the Uganda country office, and he was willing to listen to my advice. Strange, but awesome. I am very excited to witness my work reach it's full potential in someone else's hands next year (they will be hiring someone to finish this project). As I said in the presentation I gave today, maybe this won't change anything, who knows, but I think it represents a small step in the right direction, which is very encouraging.

For now, I want to share the mock-ups I designed with one of the aforementioned tech-savvy UNICEF employees so you can get a little taste of what this web-site will become.

The sub-counties of Gulu District are shaded based on amount of aid received. The icons represent UNICEF project locations.

The size of the circles around a location represent the amount of funding going to that location. You can see that some locations receive a lot of funding while others receive none.

Shows where within Uganda a certain donor (e.g the world bank) is active.

This view shows all active projects at a certain location, making duplication or gaps in aid apparent.

You have no idea

Happy Friday everyone! This must be a record blog post frequency for me! It's amazing how much more appealing writing blog posts becomes when the alternative is writing a forty page paper. But that is not to make you feel like sloppy-seconds my dear blog readers, you are always number one in my heart!

So, I don't like to play the Africa card. You know the whole "oh you think that ____ is bad, well in Africa ______." Because that is both disingenuous and super super annoying.

However.

There is one exception. One first world trifle that will now always make me chuckle. And that is when my friends in first world countries complain about the traffic. Oh, you think your traffic is bad?? You have NO IDEA.

My first day in Uganda, we arrived at the Kampala airport at 7am. After the roughly hour drive from Entebbe to Kampala, we had barely set our bags down when Terry, who had already been in town a couple of days, proposed he take us to this "great bar overlooking the city."

"Woooo welcome to study abroad!!!" I thought. So a gang of us set out to follow Terry to the bar. Little did we unsuspecting bazungu know, but he was taking us to Old Park. After winding my way through what can only be termed madness, knocking down a vendor's stand in the process and feeling mortified, we finally sat down at the bar. "What have I gotten myself into?!?!?!" I thought. "How am I ever going to learn to navigate this??"

Scenes from Old Park:

Right before our Ethiopian cooking lesson, Hannah and I stopped at the same bar. As we sat overlooking Old Park, the inevitable reflections began. We talked about how we felt we had come so far in Kampala. How the things that once felt unconquerable now felt commonplace, easy. I'm not sure exactly when that moment happens when you stop feeling like a tourist, and start feeling like a resident, but as I looked at Old Park with total comfort, I was certain that it had happened. While I once wondered how I would survive Kampala, I now wonder how I am ever going to be able to leave.

So, go ahead and complain about your traffic. With your "lanes" and "traffic lights" and "cars that go the right way in traffic" and "no livestock on public transportation." That's fine. But until you've conquered Old Park, you have no idea.

Bucket list items one, two, and three

Hello Mikwano!! I hope all is well!! And happy Rabbit Rabbit to those of you who do that! With the coming of December, it is becoming ever clearer that my time in Uganda is coming to an end, a fact which never ceases to blow my mind!

A few weeks ago, Ali, Hannah and I sat down and made a bucket list of things we wanted to do before we leave Uganda. This blog is about three of the things on that list.

Bucket list item number 1: Learn how to cook Ugandan food.

So I miss a lot of American food. In fact I have come to realize that I have professed my longing for cheese a bit too much. So, sorry for that. The love of a girl and pasturized dairy products is not to be messed with.

However, I am going to miss a lot of Ugandan food too, so I employed my friend Erin, and our Kenyan friends Brian and Henry to come over and teach me how to cook omuceere (rice), emboga (cabbage), ebijanjalo (beans), and chapati. So now I am an expert Ugandan chef, and I have decided that I am having a study abroad potluck when I get home, so if you want to try Ugandan food you are invited. And if you are currently studying abroad, you must come and cook food from where you're studying. That is the deal.

Bucket list item number 2: Learn how to cook Ethiopian food.

Who knew so many of my bucket list items would have to do with food?? My friends and I have taken to frequenting this Ethiopian restaurant.... though I fear that restaurant is not quite the right term, as this place is the epitome of hole in the wall. You wind your way through the crowded streets near Old Park (the subject of my next post), enter a guest house through an alleyway, climb up several flights of stairs, walk into a small kitchen and call "hello madam?" Then, a lovely Ethiopian woman will come into the kitchen, take your order, and will eventually serve you in her living room.

Ali, Alena, Hannah, and Madam on the balcony outside her house/restaurant

View of the guest house courtyard. Many other Ethiopians live here.

The food is delicious! And super cheap for bounteous quantities of food. Though there is a strict leave nothing on your plate rule, which has resulted in Injera snuck out in purses on many occasions.

One time we were there, Madam offered to teach us how to cook the food, so last Sunday, Hannah, Ali, and I went for a lesson. We learned how to make the traditional Ethiopian salad, and the vegetarian dish shown below:

Madam measuring out the all important Ethiopian spices

The aforementioned dish, bubbling away on the stove.

And now for something completely different, bucket list item 3: white water rafting on the Nile

Yes friends, after 20 plus years of life as a nerd, I have become a bad ass. I know. You're shocked. But it's true, and I have the bruises and sun burns to prove it.

The day after thanksgiving, ten of the SIT crew took to the Nile river for a day of Class 5 rapids. It was so much fun: totally crazy and terrifying, but I always felt safe and just had an awesome time. I thought I was so legitimate having rafted a couple times in Colorado.... but lets just say that the class 3s and 4s on the Colorado river are nothing compared to the class 5s on the Nile. Here's a little taste of what we did.

After a long day of rafting, we got to spend the night at the lodge of the rafting company we used, which could not be more beautiful. I will let the pictures do it justice:

The sunset view from our lodge... yeah, this doesn't suck.



Drinking Nile... on the Nile!!

I have a couple more items on my bucket list, and I will be sure to tell you about them as I check them off. I look forward to completing them and adding to the unbelievably long list of incredible memories I will take with me from Uganda.

Also, tonight is the first night of Chanukah!! I made some latkes, which of course didn't taste nearly as good as Mom's, but a gal can try, right? I hope those of you who celebrate had a wonderful first night!!

A Very Ugandan Thanksgiving

Hello all! I hope you guys had absolutely wonderful thanksgivings!! For those with whom I usually celebrate, I was missing you all very very much, and for those with whom I don’t usually get to celebrate, I was thinking of all of you and am thankful for you all.

So I had a very Ugandan thanksgiving this year! Of course, thanksgiving is not a celebrated holiday in Uganda. (Though it involves lots and lots of eating so I feel like it was practically made for Ugandans, you know, besides the whole discovering America-thanks for the meal-here are some blankets as tokens of our appreciation-thing.) As a result, us Bazungu were facing the prospect of a thanksgivingless year, a prospect that just wouldn’t do! So we decided to create our own thanksgiving celebration.

Hannah and I spearheaded the cooking effort, which was an adventure to say the least. Our kitchen is tiny, our oven is broken, and we have a grand total of two pots, so the prospect of feeding 17 seemed daunting. However, we were determined. We had a plan. I dedicated several desktop sticky notes to menus, attendance lists and shopping schedules.

Wednesday night, we would make the mashed potatoes, which would take the most time of anything, to have enough time/burners/pots to make the rest of the dishes on Thursday. However, soon after we started cooking, the power went out. No worries! The mashed potatoes would be made by the light of two headlamps!

On Thursday, I took off of work early to finish cooking. About an hour into cooking, the gas runs out of our stove. Visions of pathetically asking neighbors to use their stoves or, the horror!, a matoke-laden thanksgiving, flashed before my eyes. However, our wonderful landlord Eric soon came to the rescue with a new (though I’m pretty sure it was just his gas canister and not a new canister at all- my thanksgiving hero) canister of gas. So we were back on track. The guests were due at 7. The power went out at 6. Bring out the headlamps!

Look! It still works! Thank you Eric!!!

Oh tiny stove, I am glad that you work during power outages!

However, in the end, all of the food got made, a menu of mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes (my mom’s recipe!), green beans, vegetable rice, and cabbage salad. The guests arrived, all bringing exactly what we’d coordinated ( how wonderful when you have friends who follow through and call you during the day to ask if they can bring anything else!), and we had an absolutely fantastic thanksgiving by the light of headlamps! ( I like how the last three paragraphs end in "headlamps!"-- This thanksgiving is brought to you by the letter headlamps!)

I think we employed every single dish in the kitchen in our effort

After several hours of cooking, chefs Alena and Hannah are excited to eat!

As is the tradition of many of the students there, we all went around and said what we’re thankful for. I said that, in anticipating my first thanksgiving away from home- the first thanksgiving any Stern has spent away from home- I was expecting to feel incredibly sad. But instead, as I looked around the room at the faces of my friends crammed into my tiny living room, illuminated only by an open laptop and two headlamps, whatever sadness I expected to feel was replaced by overwhelming love for the people around me. I am so lucky to have found such an amazing family here in Uganda.

I skyped with my parents last night, and they reminded, as they are wont to do, that I will be seeing them in 12 days. This ever waning countdown, of course, is one of very mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am so excited to see my family and for the adventure we are going to embark on together. I am so excited to return to America, land of my puppy and diet coke and cheese. And I am so excited for getting back to my W&M family next semester. However, I am also unspeakably saddened at the prospect of leaving Uganda, a place that has come to be my home, the prospect of leaving 16 friends, who have become my family, and the prospect of the conclusion of this experience that has challenged me, delighted me, sometimes frustrated me, and has exceeded my expectations in every possible way.

I have realized that no one emotion is ever going to win out, and in a way, I am so thankful for that. Many people search all their lives for one place to call home, and at the ripe old age of twenty, I have already found three homes, filled with three different, wonderful, loving families.

I have so very very much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving.

Dreckitude!

Hello all! I hope you all had lovely weekends! I was a little hurt that no one commented on my most recent blog post, but I decided to get over the pain, learn how to love again, and write another post.

You are likely asking, “what is “dreckitude,” exactly?” Well, my dear confused reader, it is a word pioneered by Vogue Editor and more importantly America’s Next Top Model (oddly, one of the few American shows we get on our TV in the Muzungu House, as it has lovingly been named) judge, Andre Leon Talley. “And why do you insist on undermining the gravity of your posts by making inane pop culture references?,” you now ask. Well, that cannot be answered in the time we have, but good use of the word “inane” back there, imagined voice of my aggregated readers!

So I figured it was about time to give you all an update on my internship, since I am over halfway through my practicum and what not (ahhhhh!!). Over these past two weeks, “dreckitude” is a word that has been popping into my head quite a bit as I try to navigate the complicated, dizzying, and often maddening world of foreign aid transparency.

One of the things that always amuses/confounds me about foreign aid is that, as it seems to me, it is a system that was built in a manner that is completely incompatible with its goals. Of course, the presumptive goals of the system have also changed since its creation.

AidData holds foreign aid records dating back to the 1950s. However, no one could have said that foreign aid was really attempting any goal other than fighting the spread of communism until after the specter of the Cold War had settled. This means that for the first fourty-ish years of the existence of foreign aid institutions, they were designed to achieve a purpose that is far different then they are now.

Of course, there are many who would argue that aid is still predominantly political in motivation, only now the aim is co-opting UN votes or access to natural resources, instead of fighting the red tide. This is one of the things that I find so fascinating about foreign aid: The idea that foreign aid can and should achieve the nebulous idea of “development” is an idea that, at best, is only 20 years old, and many think is still a nascent idea.

This summer, I worked on the World Bank on the mapping for results project, which I wrote a couple of blog posts about here and here. Also, if you want to look at some pretty maps I helped create, you can look here.

The aim of this project was to gain a better picture of aid, due to the very general information that generally exists about foreign aid, which I discussed in this post. One of the most frustrating things about that project would be when I would read through (cough skim cough) hundreds of pages of documentation just to find that “these 30 schools were built in Northern Uganda.” But where in Northern Uganda??? How can you expect anyone on the ground to know if their representative has swindled away the money that was supposed to build them a school when the most specific information we can get about the location of those schools is a region of a country?? That would be like saying that ten schools are being built on the east coast and expecting someone in Lancaster County PA to both somehow know that they are supposed to be getting a school and speak out when one does not show up. (To be fair, the good people of Lancaster County might be able to magically know about fictional aid flows, if their ability to make delicious delicious pretzels is any indication of their psychic abilities…. Mmmmm who wants to send me some pretzels? And some cheese!!!)

The other frustrating thing, food diversions aside, was knowing that someone in the World Bank, perhaps someone sitting less than a block away from me, has perfect information, knows exactly where those villages were built, and yet I was unable to find out who that person is and how to get that information. One of the good outcomes of that summer was the introduction of a discussion of adding a standardized location field to World Bank documents, so there would be a set place to look for the location of a project. However, this would only specify location to the district level, and wasn’t even a sure thing. Yet, in even considering this measure, the World Bank stands as a leader in its field.

Of course, I always wonder why, in 2010, it is just now seeming like an important idea to the World Bank to specifically record where their projects are, a task that would take the person implementing the project on the ground about 5 minutes. But this is just another one of those things that remind me that aid agencies were not necessarily designed in the best way to achieve what their stated goals have become.

The dreckitude that characterizes the record-keeping of project locations at the World Bank is certainly not unique to that organization. UNICEF has plenty of its own problems, which have injected a good bit of frustration into my first three weeks. I essentially have spent the last three weeks trying to understand how UNICEF records and organizes its aid information, who within the organization holds which information, how each piece of information can be used, and perhaps most importantly, how I can get my over-eager little hands on the information I need.

This process has proven difficult as I have found myself hitting many dead ends. However, I had a great Monday (today was a public holiday for Eid al-Adha so I didn’t have work) at work in which all the pieces seemed to fall together. It was the first day of my practicum that I actually felt that I would be able to accomplish the prototype website, the output that I have been hoping to produce from my six weeks at UNICEF.

However, much ridiculousness still exists. For example, all of the reports from the implementers on the ground only exist in HARDCOPY. That’s right, there is no electronic record of the only documents that detail specific project locations, beyond the district level. So in order to find specifically where UNICEF is working, I will have to dig through hundreds of pages of paper. Oy. Moreover, there is absolutely no way for anyone outside UNICEF to have access to this information, the information a citizen would need to hold their representatives accountable for the aid they are supposed to receive. However, the one of the most exciting things about my project is how much commitment there is within the UNICEF Uganda office to organizing themselves in the best possible way to achieve development outcomes.

In my discussions with my boss, he has seemed excited about the idea of making changes to the current reporting system to be able to feed the necessary information into the system so that it will be sustainable without an intern doing the grunt work to pull the scattered pieces together. So all in all, I am feeling optimistic right now, which feels pretty darn good!

As things start moving, I’ll try to write more often about how the project is coming!

With love and smizing,

Alena