Jerusalem

After the workshops in the camp, I crossed the border into Jerusalem for the weekend. It's always somewhere I've wanted to visit - a fascinatingly complex city, stooped in historical and religious significance. Standing on the roof of the Austrian Hospice in the Old City, looking down on the Via Dolorosa, I could see the Al-Aqsa Mosque to my left, the Western Wall in the distance, and the Holy Church of the Sepulchre to my right. A truly unique and humbling experience, made only better by the best apple strudel I've ever had. Thank you Jackie!

Al-Aqsa Mosque to left

Looking down on Via Dolorosa 

Holy Church of the Sepulchre on the hill to the right

Western Wall

Jerash "Gaza" Camp, Jordan

This week I've been doing some volunteer work at a women’s centre in a Palestinian refugee camp just north of Amman, Jordan. The Jerash "Gaza" Refugee Camp predominantly serves Gazan refugees from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Established in 1968, the camp is populated by 28,000+ Palestinian refugees. What distinguishes it  from the thirteen other Palestinian camps in Jordan is that, due to their 1967 status, 97% of camp residents are without a National ID number. This leaves them without access to the basic rights that Jordanians and 1948 Palestinian refugees are granted. The pictures below give a glimpse of some of the surface level challenges of living in the camp, but don't fully capture the depth of the issues that residents face. 

The Jerash Women’s Centre has recently been set up to offer women in the camp a dedicated space to learn English, discuss relevant issues (“majilas”) and even practice yoga. While the activities are popular, the centre itself lacks a coherent strategy, so I came in to run three days of strategy workshops with the women so that there is a clear plan going forward. 

Jerash Women's Centre

With the many issues women face in their day-to-day lives, it is difficult for them to step out of the present and think about the future that they want to have. So I started the first day by introducing the concept of "visioning" to a 5 year time frame. I think they thought I was mad when I got them cutting, sticking and colouring in collages to represent their individual visions for 2017, but they went with it and produced some very creative and insightful pictures that represented what they want for themselves and their families. After grasping the concept on an individual level, they worked as a group to map out their shared vision for women in the camp and for the women's centre in particular.

Individual visions

Basis of shared visions

On the second day, we identified some of the barriers/issues the women face in 2012 and grouped them under five themes: health, education, employment, family and law. We then decided which of these themes fell within the scope of the women's centre to address: health, education and employment. These themes formed the process of the problem tree analysis, a methodology that the women grasped really well and fed into with insight and intelligence. I was more than impressed. We rounded off the day by looking at how all the issues are linked and one can feed into another. For example, a poor diet can lead to illness which may prevent education and therefore limit employment opportunities. 

Problem prioritisation

Problem tree analysis for education related barriers

Identifying links between the problems

On the third and final day we worked on the "road map" that will link the issues/barriers women face in 2012 to the position they want to be in 2017. Very often in these kinds of processes, it's tempting to launch in straight away with the answers/activities before actually asking and analysing the questions. So by taking the time to do that, the women were really able to express WHAT they wanted the centre to achieve and HOW to achieve it, backed up with a solid understanding of WHY they wanted to do it. We started by rephrasing the problem statements into goals and converting the causes of the problems into objective statements. The women then split into three groups under the three themes and came up with some really innovative suggestions for possible activities that could be carried out at the centre in order to achieve the objectives. Ideas for health included bringing specialists from Amman to give interactive sessions on topics such as first aid and reproductive health. For employment, the women raised the need for entrepreneurship style training to help them convert some of the skills they have (needlework, beauty, hairdressing...) into a small business. And the education group raised their desire to learn more about the subjects that their children are studying at school so they can help them with homework. 

The next step is to take the nuts and bolts of the strategy produced with the women this week and turn it into a coherent strategy with a log frame for measuring progress, a clear budget broken down over the 5 years and an action plan with clear milestones for putting the strategy into practice. I'm hoping to follow up with some consultancy work in February to help this to happen. So look out for a follow up post in the not-too-distant future!

The process from bottom (problems) to middle (activities) to top (goals and vision)

With some of the women outside the women's centre, plus Nick and Jackie who work with the centre on an ongoing basis (on left) and Mahmud, the incredible 17 year old student who interpreted between me and the women (on my right)

ICS South Africa Programme Design Visit

I've just got back from my second trip to our South Africa office this year. In April, I was mapping opportunities to expand our advocacy and policy influence work. But this time I was there to support our team to design an ICS (International Citizen Service) programme to develop the skills of young people to access formal employment as well as develop their own businesses through entrepreneurship training.

Programme Design is an area of my job that I really enjoy but it's not always easy to explain what actually goes into designing a programme for international development, so I thought the last week in South Africa might be a kind of case study to explain a little more (and hopefully dispel any rumours that I'm just on a non-stop holiday!)

Most of the best programmes I've come across are based on a "needs assessment" - which pretty much does what it say on the tin. So in the case of our programme in South Africa, before I arrived our programmes team visited various communities in the Eastern Cape and spoke to groups of young people, as well as getting them to fill out questionnaires, to identify some of the challenges they face and what their most pressing needs are. The findings showed that in many cases, young people are unable to contribute to their household income as they have no means of earning a living - whether it be through employment or self-employment. 

These findings formed the next stage of the programme design process - problem analysis. This is a really simple process which involves writing the problem in the middle of a big flipchart (post-its optional but I'm trying to cut back on my addiction...) and then identifying the many possible causes of that problem as well as the consequences. So in the case of the problem of young people not contributing to their household income, some of the causes identified included high unemployment rate, lack of entrepreneurship skills training, a mismatch between the education system and the jobs market, policy barriers, family caring responsibilities, lack of access to grants and loans to start up businesses etc etc. Whereas consequences included a cycle of poverty, higher crime levels and other anti-social behaviour and even higher pregnancy rates. 

With the problem "tree" done, it's simply a case of turning it into a "solution tree" so that we're looking at the situation we want to have rather than the one we've got. Nothing like a bit of positive thinking! So eventually you end up with something a bit like this...

Once all the possible causes and consequences have been mapped, the next stage is to identify which of the causes we want to address through our ICS programme. As much fun as it would be to do this like a game of "pin the tail on the donkey", selection is a bit less random than that and usually involves some kind of criteria. The first part of this process is to consider the causes on a scale of influence. So, although significant, we determined that causes such as the high unemployment rate were simply so huge that we as an organisation could have little influence over them. The next stage is to look at the "fit" between Restless Development's goals and the causes. So in the case of the mismatch between the education system and employment market, we decided it didn't fall under our organisation's focus/remit as we do not work in formal education. Finally, we needed to consider the skill set of the young volunteers from the UK and South Africa who will be delivering the programme as well as the duration of each cycle of volunteers. So in the case of policy influence, although it's an area we do work on at Restless Development, we determined that young volunteers working on 3 month short term projects may not have the skills or time needed to actually influence policies. However, delivering peer education sessions in employment skills (CV writing, interview skills, how to fill out an application form) and entrepreneurship skills (how to write a business plan, financial management etc) is not only a good fit with our strengths as an organisation but suitable for cycles of young volunteers to build on one another resulting in a cumulative impact. We also recognised that our volunteers would be well placed to organise community events to raise the awareness of young people about employment opportunities and ways to access support when setting up a business.

Having identified the main focus of the programme, it was basically a case of fleshing it out by developing packages of activities that make up the programme - literally modelling the programme into something that is clear and structured. In the case of South Africa, this is shown in the flip chart on the left below.

Finally (on the right above, we mapped out what the programme would look like in practical terms such as where volunteers will be living (in host families in communities) and delivering activities (high schools and youth resource centres) as well as how we can staff the whole programme. My next job is to turn this into something that doesn't look like a scribbled mess but it's basically all there!

Putting the plan into practical terms

So. We have a plan. But it's just the start. And with the first cycle of volunteers arriving in South Africa in 4 months, there's still lots to do. During the rest of the week we mapped out a programme development timeline that means we have a plan for every week between now and then. But don't worry, I'm not that mean - blogs are no place for excel spreadsheets!

India ICS Programme Visits

My flight from Kathmandu to Delhi with Jet Airways was not the smoothest of journeys. During monsoon season I'd rather be on the ground getting soaked than in the air getting thrown around in the turbulence. But needs must. The journey's character was added to by the strange "beer only" approach to the refreshment trolley. I am not joking. Jet Airways - I salute you.

I spent Friday with our Senior Manager for Programme Quality, working through the implications of ICS monitoring and evaluation on our wider PQ systems. ICS is such a huge programme so where possible, we're trying to streamline processes with other internal processes, so it was really useful to dedicate a whole day to exploring ways to do that.

With Sushmita in the Delhi office

After a (far too short!) weekend with my friends Cecilia and Amit in Delhi, I jumped on a flight down to Chennai for three days of ICS programme visits to see first hand where ICS volunteers will be living and the kind of activities they'll be doing. Similarly to the pilot programme, in the scale-up they will be based in three different districts in the state of Tamil Nadu. Four volunteers from the UK will be matched to four volunteers from India and they will work together to conduct training sessions in health and livelihoods in new community youth resource centres as well as visiting surrounding communities to raise awareness around health and sanitation issues. I was really impressed by all the hard work that had gone into the preparations for my visits - as well as visiting the youth resource centres themselves, I was able to meet with key stakeholders and community members and talk to them about their expectations of the ICS programme.

 At the Thiruvallore Youth Resource Centre

Chengalpet Youth Resource Centre

 Meeting with the Youth Resource Centre officers

Community meeting outside Vellore with the Panchayat (village) chief's son

My last day in India was spent in the Chennai office with our South India team, doing a condensed version of the workshop in Nepal. The workshop feels like months ago now so it was good to refresh myself with the content too! As you'll see in the photo below, unlike our London office which is largely female, the Chennai office is made up of all men! They really looked after me and seemed determined to make me put on even more weight, feeding me delicious curries, dosai and idlies throughout the day! 

Lunchtime in the Chennai office

Post-workshop Kathmandu

After such an intense week for the workshop, it was great to have a couple of days off before getting stuck into ICS programme design with the Nepal team.

Ravindra (Nepal Country Director) took me and two of the other workshop facilitators, Xenia and Hannah, on a hike just outside Kathmandu. It wasn't quite the Ganesh Himal trek of last November but still great to get out in the fresh air (and driving rain!) While we were hiking we met an old lady who was carrying lots of beautiful flowers. Ravindra told us she said "If you have peace in your mind you will flourish like the sun" before she gave us some of her flowers. Got the impression her husband wasn't quite so deep and meaningful and found our massive height difference far more entertaining! (See pic below).

Sheltering from a downpour

Still waiting... but the crisps help!

Ravindra invited us back to his home after the walk and he introduced us to his goats(!) and his family who taught us how to make momos - traditional Nepali steamed dumplings. Turns out they're not as easy to make as they are delicious but still, it's the effort that counts, right?!

As well as hiking and momo making I managed to squeeze in a bit of shopping to find a traditional kurta which I'm getting made up ready for my India trip next week. There were so many to choose from but I managed to pick one in the end!

After three days in the Nepal office, supporting with ICS programme design I rounded off the week with a singing bowl therapy session. Yes, you read it right. A singing bowl therapy session. I had absolutely no idea what this would entail but will try anything once so with an open mind and comfortable clothes, Hannah, Xenia and I spent an 90 minutes hours ommm-ing, sitting next to, lying holding and even standing INSIDE singing bowls that our "therapist" made "sing" by striking the sides or circling the edge with a soft-tipped mallet. It was definitely an interesting experience, enough so for me to buy a singing bowl to take home. Wonder how long it will take for me to start using it as a fruit bowl!

ICS Global Workshop in Nepal

On August 4th I finally moved into my new flat in London and unpacked the boxes that have been living at Mum and Dad's for most of this year.... and on August 9th I repacked my suitcases and headed off for a three week trip to Nepal and India, kicking off with the ICS (International Citizen Service) Global Training Workshop.

In the last post I wrote, I described my new role as Programme Development Manager for the ICS programme at Restless Development. ICS sends young volunteers from the UK to work alongside national counterparts in developing countries, contributing to projects in Livelihoods, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Civic Participation. For this training workshop, two representatives from each of our eight Restless Development countries travelled to Nepal for a week of training. It was the first time we'd brought the whole team together in one place and it was worth a thousand (often unreliable) skype calls at such a vital time at the end of the one year pilot programme and before the three year scale-up. 

Restless Development ICS Global Team

The week was packed with lots of different sessions including volunteer management, risk assessment, recruitment, selection and training of volunteers and monitoring and evaluation of the projects volunteers will be working on. Everyone really got stuck into the long days I was really impressed with the energy that all the participants and other facilitators managed to maintain right to the end of the week. 

Xenia leads a session on training volunteers

Break-out groups in incredible surroundings next to the training room

Risk assessment discussions

One of the many energisers to break up the training sessions

Half way through the week we had the afternoon off and went into Kathmandu to explore Swayambhunath (aka "monkey temple" - the photos below show why). It was a great break to a very busy week and also a chance to meet with the Restless Development Nepal team who were fantastic hosts!

 The long way up to Swayambhunath

Monkey temple!

 Swayambhunath stupa and golden temple

The stupa at night

At the end of the week, everyone headed off in different directions, with our poor Sierra Leonean colleagues facing nearly a 48 hour journey with stopovers in Doha, Addis Ababa, Accra before reaching Freetown! I didn't have anyway near as far to go as I'm set to stay on in Kathmandu for an extra few days to work more closely with the Nepal team on programme design, squeezing in a bit of weekend time first. I'll fill you in on my next post...

End of workshop presentations

UK-based ICS team and facilitators with Nepal Country Director and his wife