The Chapter Buzz

A few months ago I had a great Skype call with Fannie, the president at Polytechnique, where she recommended the idea of holding a Quebec Presidents weekend. I immediately jumped on board – particularly since only a few presidents attended our May Retreat, and we had to cancel Quebec Regional Retreat due to low registration. Almost all of our Quebec chapters went through large transitions over the past year, and have had issues maintaining chapter health, culture, and performance.

Alors, je m’en vais a Montreal! The team’s main goals for the weekend:

1. Determine the value of working together as QC chapters
2. Build strong relationships between the presidents and corresponding chapters
3. Share strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities; look for synergies
4. Potentially narrowing on a few key areas of collaboration in the year ahead, and associated communication strategy

I would say we more than met those goals; by the end of our time together, the team had a draft vision for Quebec chapters in EWB  and some tangible first steps!

Guillaume, Fannie, Natalie, Marie-Chantal, and Hadi (missing: David from Sherbrooke)

Goal 1

On Friday night, Luigi, past president at McGill, shared some great insights from a time when QC chapter collaboration was at its peak. Following this awesome inspiration, the group narrowed down on the core value of working together as QC chapters.

• Network of connection, coaching, and support between presidents, and team members working in similar areas to boost performance, understanding, and strategic thinking
• Collaboration to build members’ organizational understanding and overall learning – seeing the bigger picture of EWB through interactions with other chapters (ex. retreats)
• Collaboration on strategic activities that can lead to greater impact than one chapter alone would be able to achieve

Goal 2

Definitely achieved! So much so that it was difficult to stay on task and focused since interesting discussions always seemed to emerge around questions that everyone could provide perspective and ideas on.

To start with, we all shared core character strengths and mapped out the overlaps and differences within the group, to ensure we could really leverage each other’s strengths throughout the day and beyond – and to know who could push or help us in other areas!

From there, we went on to map out how each chapter’s core team was performing according to the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team model, which led to a massive discussion around building trust, and what healthy conflict looks like. We also did a diagnosis of the QC Prez team.

Goal #2 just kept growing throughout the weekend as the team got to know each other more – and played a few rounds of Werewolf!

Goals 3 & 4

This is where the chapter connection magic started to build! We went outside, broadened our view, and did an analysis of the opportunities and challenges facing this idea of QC chapter collaboration.

This activity led into a bigger brain-busting visioning: What do we want to be known for as Quebec Chapters? What value can we uniquely bring to EWB/Quebec/the world?

If you zoom in on this you will see some pretty inspirational ideas:

• Moving beyond the chapter lens to an organizational lens, what can we accomplish as a unified group? What can we accomplish beyond this year, or 3 years from now?
• Idea of moving in the same bold direction as a Quebec chapter “train”
• Building an agile and highly responsive network within Quebec to mobilize citizens for EWB campaigns
• Leveraging multicultural strength of Quebec, diaspora communities, and bilingualism
• Best change leaders in EWB; most thoughtful around building and growing leaders that then go on to create change within Quebec & beyond
• Building a partnership with OIQ (engg association)

This discussion was a first step, which the chapters have committed to continuing in coming months and bringing their chapter teams into.

In the meantime, the team solidified on a few core actions: connecting team members with other team members in similar roles for support and synergy; planning a kick-butt Montreal Retreat for November with an advocacy focus to pilot a collaborative mobilization event and build face-to-face relationships between chapters; and even Quebec chapter tee-shirts/cheer for Conference to build the community spirit and connection! WATCH OUT EWB!!!

Other Take-Aways

Here are some of the other core themes and take-aways that emerged in many of our discussions throughout the weekend.

• Importance of getting the right people on the bus and then ensure the bus moving in a common direction – people will jump on and off but important to have that vision

• Need to free ourselves from the chains of past precedent – the “…because we did it this way last year” mentality. We can easily get stuck in certain ways of doing things without questioning their impact on the chapter, or whether there are better approaches out there!!

• Approaching our activities as “testing hypotheses” is a really cool way to get people seeing learning as a critical element of any action, and to be thinking about continual improvement and evaluation

• We need to be taking a 2+ year view of chapter recruitment/member engagement! This will make the rollercoaster less steep.

• Also should be developing strategies on how we bring new people in – Poly does a very thoughtful job of this: quickly bringing up to speed on org & chapter values, leadership development approach – yes, may cause some people to leave, but then maybe they weren’t the right people

• Importance of being willing to draw a line in the sand as a leader; I see a fear of taking tough decisions, or even minor decisions, that could potentially alienate others or go against the current.

• The value of ensuring individuals’ personal motivations are reflected in or supported by the work they are doing

Blog soundtrack+ some cultural education: “Long Gone to Saskatchewan” – Corb Lund Band

USask. Beautiful campus with beautiful people.

The first time I visited the chapter, I automatically sought out the nicest building on campus, assuming it would be the engineering faculty. Wrong-o. Agriculture. Engineering is the slightly dark and dated brick building to the right. Seems we aren’t in Alberta anymore…

After a summer with many of the core team members out of the city/country, I arrived just as the team re-grouping began. It was the first time I’ve done such an early chapter visit, but I think it was well worth it especially since the team was still in the planning phase and given that the exec turnover was quite high.

3 cool things you should know about USask (of many!)

1. Incredible fundraising – highest amongst the EWB student chapters (many of whom are larger and have more members)

a) Once upon a BBQ.  BBQs at USask are a science. John, the current BBQ director has a full-on year plan with a new M&E system and several pilot innovations to increase revenue. Everything is considered, from line-up positioning, to cooking times, down to the second. It’s John’s goal to make the BBQs even more revenue-generating than before – and before is not too shabby with average sales of around $400/week leading to a total sum of $15,000: enough to cover both JF payments.

b) Gala night. Last year, the team managed to secure enough corporate sponsorship to make pure profit on their event. On top of that, they sold tables to companies, making over $10,000 (please correct if I’m off!) through the event.

And what’s amazing in this is that until this year, the chapter hasn’t operated with a VP Fundraising! Typically the BBQ director is a set position, but the team has traditionally rallied to put together big events like the Gala. Now with Raquel as a full-time VP fundraising extraordinaire  - who organized a fundraiser for this weekend WHILE in Zambia as a JF – who knows what’s possible!?!?

2. Learning is all around. The chapter holds weekly meetings, same time same place, where they dive into complexities around development, EWB’s approach, and social change, consistently getting over 20-25 people out. This year, they might consider running bi-weekly but higher quality MLs in order to have more planning-focused meetings in the off-weeks in order to provide a better space for engaging members at an action level.

3. MP Engagement. Until last year, the chapter had never really done much advocacy/MP outreach. But within several months, they had established positive relationships with all of the area MPs, and are keen to deepen those ties this year.

So what did we do during the visit?

Because the team was still gelling and getting their planning hats on, I decided to run a workshop with the exec team to do some bigger-picture visioning and exploration of the chapter. We started with an activity where everyone had to come up with at least three things they wanted the USask EWB Chapter to be known for – whether it was on campus, within EWB, or beyond.

Here are some of the pretty sweet ideas that were generated.

Next we moved onto a SWOT [strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats] analysis of the whole chapter.

From here, we tried to narrow on a few key priorities for the team, with a 1-3 year lens. The idea was that this would provide a unifiying rallying point for the team, and common goals and direction as a chapter that could then inform specific program strategies of the team members.

At the end of the exercise, three key themes emerged: People, $$/Revenue Generation, and Visibility. The team is now defining these in more depth, with concrete targets, but here is the general gist:

• People: building more layers of engagement and leadership in the chapter (moving beyond exec team as the primary means of engagement, while everyone else just shows up to ML), so that our base is stronger year-to-year; and to focus more on leadership development as a core element of the chapter’s growth strategy.
• Revenue Generation: Pushing to the next level of fundraising power; becoming famous for their ability to generate funds for EWB.
• Visibility: Building the EWB Brand on campus so it becomes recognizable and attracts others; all chapter activities seen as a recruitment/brand-building opportunity and are leveraged
• Oh and Chapter of the Year, of course.

The team hard at work! From left: Erin (prez), Mitch (Comms), Alanna (YE), James (Finance/Advo), Bryce (Member Engagement), Seth (GE), Steph (RJF/ML), Raquel (RJF/$$)

Phew! Time to head for a well-deserved meal together. On top of this big meeting and a series of thoughtful 1on1s, we had some great discussions about the direction of the chapter and the JF experience during a potluck. This is where I learned that Roughriders fans are really hard core, upon eating some Al-Dressler chips. Check out this video. The Co-Op stocks a whole gamut of Roughrider player punned products.

Thanks for the great visit! And special thanks to Erin and her family for hosting me, and to Tamara for being my suitcase valet

There’s no better place to start this hopefully recurring blog feature. So many of my happiest moments and most intense giggle-fits of undergrad took place in this very office. It was a place of discussing, planning, strategizing, and learning, but also a place of dance party-ing, youtube-video watching, and pranking.

It’s where I learned what a complex number was, and told people a million times that “no, we don’t supply Engg paper” (though I’m not sure I ever learned what that really is).  It’s pretty cool to come back several years later and see that culture of serious work + serious fun seriously intact. I actually think that chapters with an office to themselves have a big advantage in terms of organization, team-building, brand-building, and culture-setting.

While I don’t have a photo of the office itself – this blog idea was after the fact – I’ll try to tell a bit of a story through the following snaps.

#1: Meet Max. Max is an amazing person and one of the most energetic EWB’ers out there. He’s been involved at the chapter for over 3 years now, and is known for his huge smile, passion for social justice, and ability to wax philosophical – coined “Maxplinations” by the chapter.

Max was recently featured in the student newspaper, the Gateway, discussing student involvement and his work with EWB. His adoring family at the chapter proceeded to hoard a large number of copies, and now Max is everywhere.

A Maxplination (click to view larger)

I actually made this clock when I was 10. And donated it to the office

#2: Meet the Whiteboard.

The Whiteboard is a multi-purpose tool. Planning, mapping ideas, leaving messages, drawings, and list-making.

In a moment of brilliance I asked the folks in the office what “4.0” was, thinking it was a new edition of something secret. Ummm….Anna…that’s a GPA. Right, been out of school for awhile apparently.

#3: Meet the Bulletin Board.

The bulletin board has a corner for inspiration and a corner for silly/funny things. The day I was on campus, Ian Wright gave a great presentation (available here) to all the first year engineers. He adapted the Solving Problems that Matter workshop from last year, tweaked the content, and turned it into a sharp-looking and super-engaging Prezi. It was pretty cool to watch the crowds’ positive reactions to his presentation, and to hear the Dean of Engineering reinforce a lot of the core points.

Anyway, at the end of the presentation, students wrote down a goal they hope to accomplish by 2025. I helped the chapter sort through the responses – pretty motivational stuff! Here are a few that were selected for the whiteboard. You guess which ones went in which corner.

If you don't catch the joke, visit laptop.org

Hey everyone! I haven’t touched this blog since my trip to Malawi last winter, but have decided to recusistate it. I see this as a great way to further cross-organizational and cross-chapter connections by posting about my upcoming chapter visit experiences, as well as random thoughts on chapter development, neat things chapters are up to, and what’s going on in the EWB office. It’s also a great way to keep me writing, and reflecting! Please send thoughts, suggestions, and feedback my way.

—-

We welcomed our third Fall SCF, Rayannah, to the office yesterday. One of the best parts of working at EWB is our cake. That’s right. Each time we welcome a new staff member, celebrate a birthday, or bid farewell, there is sugary goodness involved. So I skipped off to the corner store where I had spotted homemade pies the weekend prior. Apple pie with ice cream – can’t go wrong!

False. After Rayannah meticulously cut 15 small slivers of pie, she noticed some green specks. Then more green specks, then entire layers of mold beneath the crust.

Oh but the plot thickens. Turns out she has a nut allergy, and of course both the pie and ice cream were of the “may contain traces” variety. Hilarity ensued, and needless to say, I am removing myself from celebratory duty shopping from now on.

So Rayannah’s day 1 take-away? Life at EWB is like a moldy pie. Looks delicious but there is trouble that may lead to an epi-pen injection lurking below…eek!

Hey folks! Back in Canada now, sleeping off some jet-lag and hopefully this darned cold too. Have a few more posts I want to write about my time in Mzimba, as well as some other reflections, which I hope to get to this weekend. In the meantime, I’ll let you in on some of the initial ‘culture stun’ (not quite shock) I’ve been experiencing.

Arrive in London, 5:35AM Wednesday morning. First thought: why is Heathrow airport so damned cold? It’s not as if it’s 30 degrees outside. Compared to the warm, dimly-lit interior of Kenyatta airport, Heathrow feels cold, hostile, hospital-like. After wandering down a seemingly never-ending white hall to get to the transfer point, my first stop was the washroom. The fluorescent lights burned my eyes, and I was taken aback by my reflection in the omnipresent, crystal-clean mirrors; mirrors are a rare toilet feature in Malawi. Everything is mechanized, from the flushing to the soap, water, and drying – no effort required to do anything. I found myself (almost) thinking nostalgically of the squat – its adds an extra element of challenge to the whole process, as well as the uncertainty of whether toilet paper would be available. And at that, whether it would be blue, pink, white, or with little dogs on it; nope, just standard, and alarmingly soft.

Heathrow - rows of toilets stalls

I wandered aimlessly for quite some time, glancing at newspaper headlines in W.H Smith, and cursing my failure to purchase a book from one of the shops in the Kenyan airport – they had an amazing selection of African authors and themes, compared to here. Instead, the non-fiction section I’m yearning for is blocked by a massive box, and the clerk on duty could care less that this was preventing him from a potential sale, as he remarked to a colleague that he was supposed to be on vacation right now.

Hoping to order some breakfast, I scrunched my eyes, re-adjusting to menus flashing on screens, and the ridiculous amount of choice available – there were ten different types of bagels to choose from, not to mention the toppings! Half-expecting someone to sell me on an item, I was just standing there staring, leading one of the staff to ask if I was alright…

Unlike the duty free shops in Nairobi, stores here are more specialized, and all your upscale shopping needs can be satiated without leaving the airport. Bvlga (whatever the heck that is), Harrods, Burberry, Rolex. Status symbols for easy purchase. VISAs are easily accepted – no issues with power outrages, or cost. Though it appeared that just as in Nairobi, I would still be unable to exchange my kwacha.

Rules everywhere, and unnecessary quantities of signs directing you to take an appropriate action, or a certain direction. No need for any interpretation or industriousness. None of that queuing for immigration and not realizing that you were supposed to fill out the blue form at the table you had your back to when you came up the stairs, leading you to start the whole process over. No chaos in the pre-boarding area – ‘wait, did they call for Addis, Nairobi, or Jo-burg, I couldn’t hear anything, that guy really needs a megaphone’.

When I go to change my clock, my computer reminds me that I’m at the centre of the universe: UTC – 0 hours. Makes me remember explaining the concept of time changes to Andrew last week, and him being astounded that I would “gain 6 hours” upon my return. Fortunately, my lay-over in Heathrow was short, so before I had much more time to wander, I was whisked off on the next plane to Toronto.

Fast forward about 18 hours. I wake up panicked. Where am I? My first thought was that I was in Alyssa’s room in the village. No, it’s a bit too light for that. And I’m cuddling something – what? I throw a small throw pillow to the floor, confused. Next thought was that I was in Nkhata Bay. No, there’s an electric alarm clock beside me…electric…finally it dawns on me.

I feel like I’m being enveloped by my bed. Its too soft; I’m almost suffocating, drowning in blankets and pillows. And something is not right. It’s much too quiet – eerie, almost. Where are the roosters? The routine noises of other people starting their days? The birds landing with an awkward thump on a corrugated tin roof, waddling across, each step a resounding bang heard below? Luckily I have a squirrel in the attic to help with the transition.

Its crazy how a few weeks can throw everything out of whack, change your equilibrium.

Last Thursday morning we got up and headed for the minibuses – literally, small white bus-vans that can hold anywhere from 13 relatively comfortably to 24 packed in like sardines. After about a half hour ride, we hopped off on the highway leaving Lilongwe and found a bunch of guys with bikes under a tree on the side of the road. Genevieve rode on the back of Duncan’s bike, and I attempted to take Cat on the back cushion of mine. However, these being really old, heavy, one-speed bikes, I failed miserably at the task, unable to keep the balance of both of our weights, so Cat went back for another bike. Once sorted out, we started biking down a paved road, which turned into a dirt road, and eventually a small path through grass and among the maize fields. Despite not living in the village for several years, Duncan adeptly navigated us through what to me were indistinguishable routes between maize fields.

After several kilometres, we knew we were getting close to the village, as children starting shouting “Duncan-e” “Duncan-e” as we passed by. A few turns later, and we arrived at the village, much to the excitement of a huge pack of kids – apparently it was a school holiday. Duncan’s father greeted us and introduced us all to his wife and kids before bringing us inside his house. There, we met little Duncan – a 1.5 year old adorable namesake.

Duncan lived with this family during his JF placement, and learned most of his Chichewa from them. Now, he and his father conversed rapidly in Chewa, as the three of us strained to hear familiar words. His father farms, but supplements his income by smuggling charcoal from Mozambique. He is originally from Mozambique, but fled during the violence and worked in a peace-related job here before meeting his wife and moving to this, her village (the custom with the Chewa). Our host was so so generous, bringing us stools to sit on, and a heaping bowl of steaming boiled pumpkin (maungo) – so delicious! This filling appetizer was followed up with the traditional nsima, with vegetables and a yummy peanut-y sauce as the relish. Following this feast, we got up and were taken around the village; a great opportunity to endlessly practice my Chewa greetings – I was getting many compliments by the end for my speedy delivery! We checked out the old unprotected well (no good cover), recently abandoned in favour of a new borehole. Thank goodness, since the old well was the cause of a lot of sickness – including a case of E. Coli for Duncan.

Next we walked about 20 minutes into the field to check out his soybeans and groundnuts, all of which were planted on land he rented from his wife’s sister. Malawi’s population is quite dense, so land is immensely valuable. We continued on to see the maize, which was another 15 minutes bushwhacking our way through the stalks. Again, to me these were indistinguishable, apart from varying in heights and green-ness, but everyone there knows exactly where their plots begin and end. The Malawian government provides a fertilizer subsidy for farmers, which has gone a long way to prevent the kinds of famines seen in the early 2000s. However, only a certain number of coupons are allocated per village; in this case, 8 households out of 18 received them – good for one bag of fertilizer. This has led not only to a black market of coupons, but to villages splitting apart to make the case for needing more coupons. Sometimes they actually move, but usually they just adjust the boundaries and make a new name – or just add a 1,2,3 or A,B,C to the existing village name.

Returning to the village, we sat for a while with some of the women and kids, and used the latrine with a new handwashing station – a small plastic bucket with holes at the bottom, which you dip into a larger bucket of water then hang up on a nail and wash your hands underneath; quite ingenious really. And more hygienic than Duncan’s current home Despite us understanding very little of what was going on, everyone was overwhelmingly welcoming of us, and excited to be hosting friends of Duncan’s. When Gen got her camera out, all hell broke loose with the kids, and even two older ladies decked out in nice chitenges, bracelets, and headscarves wanted to pose; one of them ensured that her 500 kwach note figured prominently in the photo, which led to a lot of laughs.

When it came time to hit the road and let the work of the village recommence, we got about 500m before the chain of Duncan’s bike snapped off! The initial cursing was not worth it – within minutes, several men offered their help and yelled at a boy to go find an axe (sending a kid to do things is a normal occurrence here) and after another 10 minutes, they somehow axed the chain back into working order and we went on our merry way. This kind of industriousness and generosity (as I experienced with the many flat tires earlier last week) never ceases to impress me and leave a big smile on my face. A smile that was further augmented when we passed two boys on a bike singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. After greeting them, I said “its not Christmas!” and they said “no, but its happy!” – point taken!

Several hours later, I found myself surrounded mostly by ex-pats and some wealthy Malawians in a nice Lilongwe club for drinks and dancing with the APS crew. I felt like I could be anywhere in the world – the decor was similar to bars I’ve been to in Canada and Europe, as was some of the music. After spending several hours only kilometres outside the city in a village without running water, electricity, or disposable incomes, I felt the burn of culture shock and hypocrisy – how can such opposites exist alongside one another? How can I be spending the equivalent of what many live off of for one day (250K – less than $2 Canadian) on a beer? What the hell is going on here? How can I participate in this extravagance? What are your thoughts – how do you deal with this juxtaposition?

For the record, I temporarily shook off my broodiness, and had a great time dancing with a great group of people whose passion for working towards a more just world is not corrupted through the occasional night out.

Duncan works at Mzuzu University, at the Water and Sanitation Center of Excellence, a start-up initiative aiming to bring together various players and thinkers in the water sector. There is a mix of professors, students, and other NGOs, like Water for People, within several offices with reliable Wi-Fi – a great pretty sweet work environment. Duncan is supporting the neighbouring Ruimpe and Karonga districts with DSS/EBDM stuff, and focuses on community-level finance for waterpoints. As much as district planning and information management is important, increasing the overall coverage and functionality of waterpoints also requires strong management and operations/maintenance (O&M) at a community level.

The standard approach right now is that when a new waterpoint is installed, a Waterpoint Committee (WPC) is formed from ten members of the community (volunteers), who receive some level of training, and are expected to organize servicing and repairs with money they collect on a regular basis from users. In practice, some committees are more active than others – as time goes by without major problems, the incentive to meet and to collect funds diminishes. Over time, habit and knowledge loss is large as people leave the committee or village, drop off in their commitment, or simply are out of practice. Being a committee member can also be unpleasant when it comes to $ collection time; embezzlement does occurr, and can make communities more reluctant to ante up and even unfairly accuse the committee of stealing. Overall, not necessarily a fun position to be in, especially when you have better things to do, like farm, run your business, or care for your family. In many of the villages I visited this week in Mzimba, committees only had a few remaining active members, one’s treasurer had disappeared with the funds, several were no longer collecting from the users, and one or two expressed the desire for more training due to knowledge loss.

When it comes to O&M, there are three key components: spare parts, money, and knowledge. Within the sector, a lot of emphasis has been placed on spare parts, but based on a large survey this fall, Duncan argues that its actually the least important bottleneck: if the money is there, its not all that difficult to access spares. (I also saw evidence of this through the field interviews – many committees had spare parts on hand, or within close proximity). Duncan’s work has been focusing on the money – community finance.

In this area, there is no clear division of roles and responsibilities for the possible players involved – WPCs, districts/government, Water monitoring assistants, area mechanics, NGOs, MPs, etc. In the past, in Banda’s era, water was seen as a public service – it was the government’s responsibility to take care of breakdowns. This has changed over time, leaving a grey area around waterpoint management and the process for O&M, and has exacerbated a sense of ‘someone else will take care of it’ at the community level.

 One thing Duncan is thinking about is having a consistent three part system, where the community makes an initial deposit upon installation, then makes a management monthly payment at a standard level, and major repairs/rehabilitations that cannot be covered would then warrant government involvement. This will require having a standard definition of rehabilitation versus repairs, which is currently not in place.

He’s also been piloting the idea of waterpoint management coming under the realm of local chiefs/village headmen. Chiefs have the power to enact bylaws, and are quite effective in setting policy around things like funerals, for example. The idea is that the chief could draft a bylaw governing the process of waterpoint management, including the maintenance and funding. Since there is typically a great deal of respect for strong leaders, this could potentially be an alternative to Waterpoint Committees. So far in the pilots that have been tested, there are mixed results, with some bylaws working well, and others not making much of a difference. It looks like Genevieve (new APS) will be doing her field research on bylaws, to further assess the feasibility of this approach.

Two broader thoughts coming out of this discussion:

1) EWB is quite unique. Few other NGOs have the ability to freely test hypotheses, set up research projects, and adapt our thinking/approach quickly based on this. We don’t fit the traditional NGO paradigm; in many ways we are free agents, without the same constrictions of reporting and tight scrutiny. At the same time, as an NGO we are able to bring an outside perspective, act a bit outside of the system’s constraints, start conversations that wouldn’t otherwise happen, and share external perspectives and ideas.

 2) We often have this utopian idea of community in African/poor countries: everyone is holding hands and singing – its easy to build consensus. Learning from Duncan, this is definitely not true – communities are communities! Can you imagine if your community was told you were responsible for CBM of water supply and this dude would be taking your money every month to save for future repairs – would you have enough trust to do that, especially knowing you could do other things with that money? And knowing that it is not being stored in a formal bank account?

Thinking back to development-related reading I’ve done, especially in school, I was led to believe that this kind of community-based approach was the way to go, but seen in reality things are obviously much more complicated. Here, theory and practice, buzzwords and reality, come into contact, and can seem just plain silly. In the market, I bought roasted maize from a group of women. Did I think “ah, excellent, women leading a small-scale income generating activity”? Not so much.

On Monday morning, over a breakfast of fresh (giant!) avocado, tomato, bread, and Mzuzu coffee, Duncan and I had a great conversation about his own reasons for becoming an APS (and extending for another year); these kinds of discussions have been great for helping me think about how I can add value to recruitment within chapters, have challenged a lot of the assumptions I hold about the role, and have pushed me to see myself as a potential APS down the line. Cool!

Like many EWB-ers, Duncan was interested in working within development or on big global issues for a long time; so when graduation was in sight, this opportunity seemed much more attractive than working for an engineering firm. His JF placement was a major turning point; it forced ‘me to confront myself, and my view on the world; rarely was I pushed in that way at home’. The challenges experienced as a JF shook up his reality, and ‘blew my mind open’ – an evidently left him wanting more of this and applying to be an APS, to continue answering the question: what is our role in development, and what is the value-add of our approach?

Some of the personal factors in the decision included wanting to grow up and build greater independence, become more self-reliant and aware, develop self-management skills, learn how to seek out opportunities, and immerse himself in a new culture and language. Despite the JF experience, Duncan was still intimidated about the opportunity; when he found out he would be placed on the Wat San team he initially panicked – ‘oh my god, Owen Scott is on that team, I’m never going to be good enough’. Thinking about living in Malawi for an entire year was also a scary proposition.

Now at the start of his second year with the team, Duncan can now envision having a life here, and is more comfortable with being away from home, knowing that he is lucky that it will always be there for him when he wants to return. The first 6-8 months were certainly challenging – its harder to have a life outside of work when living in a village, and can be challenging for co-workers perceptions of you in the office – and life in a rural village can be just plain difficult. But those months were huge in shaping his current contribution to the work. They also cemented the importance of language and networks – who are you going to call when you run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere at night? How will you get help – and build these strong networks in the first place – without speaking Tumbuka?

In Canada, it often takes months to feel set-up and decently performing in your job (I can definitely attest to this!). In Malawi its no different, except here you are ‘learning life, too’, which takes time. So when all of a sudden the winter rolled around and the end of his first contract was in sight, Duncan decided to continue the massive learning and growth for at least another year, now that his feet are under him, he has ‘learned some life’, and is in a great position to really ramp up his work! Excited to keep following his journey – you can too, at http://www.waterwellness.ca

Its been a busy few days here in Malawi, so I have fallen off the blogging train! After hanging out on the weekend with Jordan and Genevieve and participating in some of their in-country training, we hit the road on Sunday to do several days of shadowing. Megan took us to the bus station and manoeuvred us into the right buses with ease; its a chaotic place – everyone is trying to sell you on taking their bus, find out where you are going, and sell you food for the road. We got on the bus to Mzuzu at 11:30am, and left Lilongwe at 1:30pm. Here, buses wait until they are as close to full as possible before leaving – even if theoretically they are to leave at a certain time.

We sat there sweating for a few hours, as more people, mattresses, and chickens boarded, and were relieved to finally lurch onto the road after a collective bus prayer. Having taken several long Greyhound trips in Canada, it wasnt too bad – but by the time we arrived six hours later we were incredibly hungry and about to pee our pants. As we drove into the Mzuzu bus depot, apparently either our white skin was glowing, or our freshly minted Kwacha were emitting a tell-tale odour, and taxi drivers ran alongside the bus shouting muzugu, taxi, muzungu, where are you going, and even came onto the the bus to try to make a deal. Luckily, Duncan and his roommate came to pick us up, and we sent Gen in a taxi to Nkhata Bay (about 1 h further north, where Devon is based).

Duncan just moved to Mzuzu after spending most of the last year (1^st year of his APS placement) in Karonga district – a bit further north – working with the district government there, and some other projects. After spending nearly a year living in the village without running water or electricity, the new place is a step up. Duncan and 3 awesome roommates from Zimbabwe live in a house in the Zolo Zolo informal settlement; he is definitely the only white person to be found in the area, so despite moving from the village he is still highly integrated into Malawian culture and life, and speaks Tumbuka like a champ.

Funnily enough, we learned on Tuesday that Zolo Zolo is a target beneficiary area for CCAP, one of the NGOs Duncan works closely with, for a latrine upgrading program. Even more funny is that Duncans latrine is in pretty bad shape and ripe for upgrading. But despite working in water and sanitation, he and his roommates are hesitant to spend the money up-front to make the transition; gives some good insight into èbeneficiaryè behaviour and challenges with these kinds of programs! Although initially I was turned off by the latrine (particularly after sliding down the slippery hill twice on my way down from it), after a few days I too realized how easily you can get accustomed to something, and become reticent to change.

Another thing to get accustomed to was (and is) garbage disposal. There is no system for pick-up or disposal (though some cities do have it); most people collect their waste outside the house and incinerate it from time to time. It took a few minutes for Duncan to convince me that it was definitely ok just to chuck my used kleenex out onto the lawn…standards of environmentalism in Canada definitely come into conflict with the reality here – suddenly you find yourself nonchalantly chucking a tetra-pack into one of the gutters, whereas in Canada you would have saved that to recycle or take in for 5 cents!

While the house has electricity, there is a water tap outside the house that mostly works during the early morning. They fill up big buckets to fill their water needs for the day, and use this for cooking, bucket-showers, drinking, etc. This was my first real bucket-bath experience, and it was actually much simpler than I imagined, and a bit less shocking to the system than a cold shower. The process (well, I assume its the process, though maybe I do it wrong) involves filling up a bucket of water and taking it to the room (about closet sized), and essentially squatting in a shallow plastic basin, splashing the water from the bucket onto you with cupped hands, and doing your best to soap down and rinse this way. Upon finishing up, you drain the grey water out of a small hole in the wall. Voila! Not so bad.

We hung out with the roommates on the first night, watching some televangelists and discussing a particular one that claims to save people every hour. Religion is a big thing here, with coexists with witchcraft. I haven’t had too many conversations on this yet, but it always throws me off guard to hear super intelligent people talking about witchcraft – but that’s my bias. Jaydil (roommate) was telling me that you just know when it happens, you can feel it passing through your body. He also said that since Duncan and I donèt have family here, we should be safe, since it usually works through family members.

It was really interesting to talk to Jaydil and his friends about living in Zimbabwe; most of them moved here several years ago once the situation really started to deteriorate. A few of them mentioned wanting to return to Harare, saying that there are more business opportunities there than in Malawi, more exciting things to do, and apparently the inflation is stabilizing now that they are on the dollar.

Hanging out with the roommates made me realize how little I know about R&B music, and that I really haven’t watched music videos in probably about 10 years. They watch a LOT of music videos – Akon is one of the favourites, and many living room dance parties are had. Often the music starts up around the same time as the roosters start crowing, and lasts long into the evening as packs of roving dogs start howling.

In terms of the Zolo Zolo social scene, the first night we walked through houses and maize fields to one of the local Bottle Stores (more or less a bar – some are bigger than others) to celebrate Duncan’s birthday. I felt completely out of place and awkward, but it was definitely a good experience – I even was taught how to play Bao, a common game here, with chess-like similarities and handfuls of marbles. On Tuesday night, ironically International Women’s Day, we went to watch the Arsenal-Barcelona football game in a small thatched hall, packed with benches upon benches of men cheering and reacting to plays. Football is a BIG deal here, so it was quite intense! Being packed in like sardines didn’t prevent me from starting to nod off, each time being jarred back to reality as a great or scandalous play occurred. I suppose all the other women were at home taking care of kids, doing cooking/washing, and enjoying all the other perks of women’s day…

In the mornings, we ate some white bread and avocado/tomato before heading to the office. White bread! I almost forgot what it tasted like, but its often the only kind of bread you can get here. We headed to the market to get supplies on the first morning, and I realized I was no longer able to greet people as I had learned in Chichewa, since they mostly speak Tumbuka in the North. At one of the stalls there was a bag of what looked like dog food which we enquired about, only to learn that it was a love charm – which incited major laughter on the part of the women there! I think that most people in the area just assumed Duncan and I were married, as the only two non-Malawians around. Even staying at his house was a bit funny, since I stayed in his room – which he later needed to explain to his roommates that it wasn’t as it appeared!! Now that he’s based in Mzuzu, it will be common for him to host co-workers passing through the area, so its quite possible he will start to gain quite a reputation…

On the first morning, we walked up the dirt road and flagged down a random car that I soon learned was a shared taxi. Since no minbuses go out to Zolo Zolo, shared taxis are the cheapest way to get into town, and are a lot more fun! The taxis aren’t marked, or really distinguishable from any other car, but somehow the whole system just works. The next day we swapped the shared car taxi for bike taxis, called ‘Sacramentos’, hopping on a cushioned seat behind the driver and winding through the side roads, to the exclaim and laughter of many passers-by – apparently Muzungus on a bike is just a bit too much to take! This is by far my favourite form of transportation so far – video to come once back in Canada.

See the next post for more on my time in Mzuzu!

Over the past several days I’ve heard a lot about allowances and trainings/workshops – often in conjunction with each other. As I mentioned in an earlier post, EWB doesn’t offer allowances for our decision-support services – the costs can typically be incorporated into routine operating costs of the district. Trainings are done at the district office, generally on a 1on1 or small group basis. But what the heck are allowances all about? Past EWB staff Enam Rabbani describes allowances below; he is focusing on meeting or training allowances – though they can also be provided for things like field work, or additional responsibilities that are added to an official’s plate.

“For those who aren’t familiar, when government officials have meetings, they typically have it off-site and are given cash for ‘daily subsistence allowance’ and accommodation.

Typically, DSAs average at MK3750 (for central Ministry) and accommodation costs can be anywhere from MK7000 to 12 000 per day. Some people will stay at a much cheaper accommodation or while others will just drive home and keep the change. For a five day meeting you’re talking about quite a few kwachas.

The justification offered by the government is that officials are pulled in various directions when working in Lilongwe, so to ensure their 100% focus on the task at hand they need to be off-site. (For other types of allowances, it may be that it takes extra incentive to motivate people to get out to the field, or that by taking a few days away from home they are sacrificing other income generating activities that they have going on the side)

Well, this system creates a huge incentive to schedule meetings as often, and with as many people, as possible. Meetings become the default mode of operation and it sets the expectation of getting paid every step of the way.”

Not only is this expensive for NGOs and government, but it also takes people out of the district and their regular work for periods of time – some estimate that about 30% of an average District Water Officer’s time is spent in trainings. You might expect that this would be regulated by the higher-ups, but systems of upwards accountability are weak, and often people in the Ministers offices are part of the same training circuit! This culture has gotten to the point that people automatically expect to provide and receive allowances, and will automatically request them in order to move forward with a project – this bloats costs, and tends to reduce the office slash individual,s buy-in and ownership of the project at hand.

Its not that the idea of doing workshops and trainings is wrong. To the contrary, its important to have ongoing professional development and skill-building in any job. But its also possible to have overkill. The large quantity of these trainings is further exacerbated by the fact that they tend to be run with a blanket, un-targeted, and often uncoordinated (duplication occurs) approach, and with little concern to the specific needs, goals, or interests of individuals. For example, UNICEF recently ran a GIS mapping workshop for district staff, but not all will use the information – in fact, they might not find GIS useful for their district at all.

I asked Owen after one of our district meetings whether people ever say no when NGOs or donors come in offering a project and allowances slash trainings. His perspective was that sometimes people will call bullshit when activities seem unnecessary or useless, but this is rare. There are incentives for people to attend, as NGOs want them there and they likely dont want to get on the bad side of potential or current funders. Apparently many other NGOs also recognize this practice as being ridiculous, but they are benefiting too. Often they get specific time-bound funding for these kinds of activities; mass trainings are also easier to run than 1on1 training and take less time.

At the bottom line, this approach allows NGOs to take responsibility only for the activities and direct outputs, not the outcome of the training. This is rather irresponsible, as its unreasonable to expect that the trainees should or can take on full responsibility for the outcomes either especially when the trainings may not be relevant, and they have many competing demands on their time (the level of this came out clearly in our meetings – its a difficult job managing so many different relationships each with their own interests and sets of requirements, reporting, and timelines – not to mention trainings )

In his briefing paper, Enam explains that a common argument is just to increase peoples salaries in response, but goes on to tell us that wage ceilings imposed by the IMF to avoid inflation make this difficult, and potentially undesirable. I also imagine that the culture would be more challenging than to break out of than this.

What is your reaction to the idea of trainings and allowances? Are there ways out of this seemingly entrenched situation? Is it even as bad as I am making it out to be?

A lot of this goes back to discussions around the lack of accountability in aid and development. It also reinforces the need for stronger communication and feedback loops between the field and donors. Owen sees some potential for this, especially with the access that social media can provide – for example, trying to bring local opinions on the playpumps up to donors in the UK through tweeting a video. Another is EWB’s Failure Report (http://www.ewb.ca/publications), which for Owen led to a conversation with Water Aid based on the failure he shared, and how they can learn from it; in broad strokes, “just being here is huge; it can cut 80% of the bullshit”.

As Vernon Lobo (X) explained at conference, his X firm funds, assesses and supports start-ups, but they have a policy that they fund companies within 100km of their office in order to be able to get into the office, and get their hands dirty, especially if things start heading south. Contrast this with many donors, agencies, and NGOs, where decisions and strategies are drawn up in London and Washington. Canada’s International Development Agency has only about 10% (please correct if I’m way off here) of its staff based in their areas of work – the rest sit in Ottawa the majority of the time.

Do you think its possible to bring this kind of approach to the development sector? What do you think it would take to make the change?  How does EWB fit into this?

A quick post-script on salaries and currency

• NGO salaries: 10x government salaries; this leads to NGOs poaching pretty much all the best university graduates (numbers of grads are still fairly small)
• As a result, we tend to see lower capacity in government, districts
• EWB salary is about 3x the government rate
• To put things in perspective, I just took out 40,000 Kwacha to last me probably 2 weeks here. This is the same as the monthly salary of a District Water Officer – who has bills to pay, family to feed, etc.
• Note: 1 dollar CDN = ~150 kwacha