Blogging has been slow here, primarily because I am not yet sure what shape this space will take now that I am veering off into a study/discipline/profession of which I have a very limited understanding and even less experience.
That being said, I did want to offer an update on the marathon training for all those who have donated so far (we’re nearing our goal, but ever so slowly, you can help out here!). I finished my first 30km training run in around 2h48 a couple of days ago. When I started training in March in Gulu, this would have seemed a daunting, unrealizable distance. After a few months of training, it was actually a breeze despite being a bit sore towards the end and for a few days after!
Over at Women of Kireka, children are already heading back to school and the women are preparing for the launch of our online store. They also spent a day tabling at the American Recreation Association market selling their wares and meeting other local jewelry makers.
A friend sent this to me this morning. Fascinating (not least because of the excellent drawings!). The main point is that charity (development, aid) is not bad, but doing charity using money made in the systems that make the poor suffer is immoral (and ridiculous, when you think about it). These interventions are simply “remedies” that prolong the actual disease. I also really liked this extract: “It is much easier to have sympathy with suffering than have sympathy with thought.” I think that’s something you could say big pushers like Enough in their blood minerals campaign ascribe to.
As many of you know, I am running the Montreal Oasis Marathon on September 5th, 2010 – in exactly 27 days! Running the marathon was partly inspired by the need to find a way to help pay school fees for the children of the Women of Kireka. These twenty women, who still work part-time in a quarry for a pittance, now have a small start-up jewelry business, which I helped to establish in 2008 in Kampala, Uganda and now assist through Project Diaspora.
As many of you also know, I’m generally no longer a fan of fundraising. After a couple years working on and off in Kenya and Uganda, and further experience in the “wheel of development,” I have learned to deeply appreciate the value of business. By business, I mean a system where a unique high-quality product, made through painstaking attention to detail, is fairly traded for monetary capital. This seems to be the most sustainable and engaging form of economic development.
In line with this, Women of Kireka has transformed itself from a donations-funded model, where international donors help to raise enough capital for the women to start their own business, to a small start-up business built on hard work by the people who make up the Women of Kireka and Project Diaspora.
However, in order to get Women of Kireka to where it is now, it was necessary to help the women spend a few less hours on the quarry. They identified school fees as one of their most expensive and stressful costs. By covering school fees for a year, Project Diaspora – and your first two round of donations – gave the women enough time to see if Women of Kireka was for them and whether we could build a successful business together.
This generous time has proved to be fruitful and we think that, after this final round of school fee donations, Women of Kireka will be entirely run as a business, no longer soliciting donations. In the little time we’ve had this year, we’ve registered Women of Kireka as a business, opened a local bank account for the women to place their savings, developed an emergency health fund scheme, launched one line of jewelry, developed a website and established a series of local and international partnerships with such groups as Solar Sister.
This final round of school fee donations will give the women the free time to perfect their second line of designs. It will also give us the time to focus on opening the online Women of Kireka store. We expect that these activities, particularly the opening of the online store, will ensure that the women can support their children next year in school and work increasingly with Women of Kireka, thus moving off the quarry for good.
Fortunately, the beginning of the children’s semester coincides with the Montreal Oasis Marathon. As I cross the finish line, the children will be getting ready for their final school term this year and we hope your generous contributions will help us pave the way for a successful new school term!
For more information on the Women of Kireka, please visit our website. Project Diaspora is a non-profit organization based in Dallas, TX.
My article on psychosocial support just up on Toward Freedom:
In 2008, Micheal G. Wessels, professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia University, published an article on psychosocial support. “Psychosocial support,” he said, “ought to occur at the same time one applies the most immediate life-saving measures.”
While mental disorders continue to carry a fair degree of stigma in many countries, psychosocial support – as part of the battery of help humanitarian assistance organizations offer – is gaining more awareness.
In Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) realized an overwhelming need for psychosocial support among refugees and founded a psychosocial support outreach counseling center (PSS center) in October 2009. The center is not part of the UNHCR’s classical approach to post-conflict rehabilitation. Previously, they referred refugees to local psychiatrists or family counseling through organizations like UNICEF.
Benefit of having a library at your fingertips (and a good one), Autesserre’s book came in yesterday. Now in my hungry possession. I’ve only managed to digest Chapter 1, but my first impression might dictate my thoughts on the rest of the book, or at least influence my reading.
The concept of organizational culture (or corporate culture) is inherent to any “industry” – whether it be aid or banking or being a professor. Each profession and its environment comes with rules – norms – that have been developed over a long period of time. Did we think aid or development was an exception to the rule?
@tmsruge’s first comment to me is that the aid industry is so worried about its own survival that it leaves no room for innovation. I’m not really sure that is the key issue. Unfortunately, I think humans do as humans do and we often end up with the same organizational product.
Finally, are people naive enough to think “do-gooders” get a free pass to not be seen as controlling and hierarchical as the next human? Anyways, it seems like a pretty smooth read so I would urge you to dig in and let me know what you think.
2. Ssozi, aka an African Timer, is also raising capital funding here for a project to help rural farmers in his community.
3. Tech@State live streaming. Connecting tech to US State Department’s development and diplomacy goals.
Over at Women of Kireka, Jenny Groza, our newest intern hailing from NYC, has arrived in Kampala. Women of Kireka artisans are also busting out some beautiful new designs that we’ll be launching in September/October. Finally, we’re moving towards an online store for all your individual purchases!
My heart goes out to everyone in Kampala affected by the bombings. I find it hard to believe that this happened – for external or internal political reasons or otherwise.
*Edit: Here’s a brief one from the Atlantic. Al-Shabab taking ownership. Uganda seems like a very odd place for them to ‘strike’ regardless. Either way, security will need to be ramped up for the AU meeting this month.
A busy week with the Women of Kireka. Today, we celebrated Hadijah (WoK’s business consultant)’s birthday with a delicious cake and a rooster. We also welcomed two American medical students who stopped by to pick out some gifts for their friends back home. Tomorrow, we have what is becoming a photo shoot of epic proportions [...]
From Taking the Rules of the Game Seriously: Mainstreaming Justice in Development in the World Bank’s Justice for the Poor Program: Beyond just correcting failures in the conception and practice of justice-sector reform work, development needs to address the larger issue that most development processes fail to even consider rules systems,9 despite the routine invocation [...]
