Updated Arrival Guide and Twaweza Library

The Intern Arrival Guide has just been updated (Twaweza Guide International 290710) with some information about daladalas, a map of Dar es Salaam, and flight layovers. Thanks to Jacqui and Johannes for the feedback and help. The updated file is now available on the Google Group. Also, we can look forward to a Kenyan version of the Arrival Guide, thanks to Uri in the Nairobi office.

Also, a new website has been created for Twaweza Library: http://twawezalibrary.wordpress.com

It is a resource for literature (academic papers, books, reports, etc.) relevant to Twaweza's work, with summaries and links to the original documents. Hard copies are available in the office and copies of the literature on the server. Unfortunately, due to copyright issues on the literature, the website with the posted documents cannot be made public and is for internal Twaweza reference use only. An email has been sent to the listserv with the username and password, but you can email me if you still need access. If you would like to contribute to the library, a guide/template for posting to the website has been uploaded to the Google group also (Protocol for Uploading to Twaweza Library).

My Internship at Twaweza

Internship at Twaweza is a serious thing! There are procedures tofollow, interviews to be done, and prepare some writings beforeintern admission. I have been interning with Twaweza as InternAdministrator from November 2009 to June 2010. I have been working inadministration and finance departments. During my stay,I assisted theAdministrator and Accountant in the following: daily recording ofoffice utilities and reporting, updating assets register, and fillingvarious office documents. I also organized paid receipts to Twaweza'spartners, arranged for interns' work permits, managed preparations forstaff meetings, ordered publications for Twaweza library. I alsohelped to organise office repairs and maintenance, as well as preparingdifferent administrative reports. Twaweza is a good place for anyperson who wants to gain experience. Every intern is assignedspecific tasks to perform and report monthly on thework that he/she was performing.My personal experience was really nice! I met people from differentcultures and we were able to exchange cultural experiences, make visits to each other, cookcultural foods, exchange ideas, and practice some Swahili wordstogether etc. I had an opportunity to learn new things about otherpeoples’ cultures,hear about what other people do and think aboutsocial life, and to eat delicious foods cooked by my fellow interns.So, through Twaweza I was able to meet new friends who taught me a lotof things about their cultures and their personal experiences. I realy likethe way people live at Twaweza, working together as a team; also Ienjoyed learning sessions where we were able to learn new things likeprevailing media issues in Tanzania and how to make movies through window moviemaker. I also liked Monday staff meetings where we met and everyperson gave report of what s/he did the previous week and what they will bedoing in that week . Monday staff meeting gave me a clear picture of staffseriousness in their assigned duties.

The power of an SMS?

There is no shortage of articles out there on mobile phones in Africa. It is easy to read about the rapid growth of phones and the revolutionary services available such as mobile banking. You also hear about how mobile phones are bringing life saving information and support to rural clinics, helping farmers get better prices for their goods, aiding disaster relief efforts and allowing everyday citizens to become government monitors. All this brought to you by the power of SMS. In 160 characters someone can send you a diagnosis, the market price of wheat, the location of a group of people who need water and food and about corruption occurring in a community.

As I start to look at Twaweza partners and their SMS-based projects I am going to think more about who is actually engaging with these sorts of projects and using SMS be a citizen reporter. While we in the US or any other developed nation could also be using the internet to lobby a Senator, or write a letter to the editor about an issue we care about, most of us are using it to update our facebook page and check World Cup scores. So what triggers someone to decide to use their technology resources for civic participation? Is it the issue, is it someone's personal characteristics? We already know it requires a certain education level and status to be able to write a text message and have access to a phone. But what else leads to successful uptake in these programs?

Another question is even once NGOs have gathered data from citizens who send in SMS reports about community issues will governments or other organizations trust the data enough to change policies or programs or otherwise respond?

I head off Monday to the Twaweza partner Daraja which is about to kick off a citizen water monitoring project. They will launch a media campaign to let people know the short code where they can text in to report a broken water point in their community. It should be interesting to see who will be the early responders and what reasons spark their participation. (Though this information will become available well after my visit.) This sort of information as it becomes available should prove helpful to other Twaweza partners and organizations considering similar projects. Also down the road as we see the government and community response to data gathered we can start to better address this question of: "Just how powerful is an SMS in creating change?"

What I've been doing with Uwezo

I am doing my internship with Uwezo, one of Twaweza's partner programs, which administers a large scale, household-based assessment of basic literacy and numeracy skills in East Africa. Part of my job has been to work on Uwezo's communications materials. These include updating the website's content (www.uwezo.net), creating a powerpoint and flier to explain Uwezo, and writing an op-ed based on assessment results. In addition to creating content, I've also had an opportunity to think strategically about what would be meaningful ways of communicating about Uwezo's theory of change and the assessment results. I'm also helping prepare for a quarterly meeting, assisting with the process of completing annual plans, budgets, and reports. This has been an opportunity for me to catch a glimpse of the behind the scenes operations work that goes into running an NGO.

In August, I'll have the opportunity to travel to a village in Uganda to conduct fieldwork. The purpose of the fieldwork is to explore how people in the village felt about Uwezo's assessment, and how they responded to the feedback about their children's learning. As a former elementary school teacher turned public policy student, I'm particularly interested in seeing how ordinary people view education. This is an exciting chance for me to observe, ask questions, and hopefully make some worthwhile observations that I can share with Uwezo and Twaweza.

Twaweza Intern Arrival Guide

I have been putting together and intern arrival guide for the past few days, thank you to everyone in the office who has contributed to it! It is the final draft of the guide, so any comments will be welcome. The advice section may be updated as I receive more responses, but the basic structure will be more or less the same.

Please let me know if the guide is missing out on something important (more information about visas, housing, transport, life in Dar es Salaam, or about the internship itself). I've posted the drafts of the intern application and arrival guides on the Google Group server, so that you can directly view and edit the documents. Thanks for all your help!

First days...

We are launching a blog, so that it can serve as a platform for us to share our experiences with future interns, our friends and family, and the general public. This will catalog our reflections about the projects that we are working on and on life in Dar es Salaam. I hope that you all enjoy this brief glimpse into our work and our lives here!

I've just begun to develop a new information packet for arriving international interns, please feel free to add any useful information. I am at a bit of a loss on the costs of some items (it's only my second day in Dar) but I'm sure the other interns can help to contribute:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASt9HF8OQ3zeZGdiNHBiZnBfMTQ4ZHc3M3J3eGQ&hl=en_GB

Also, the application has been restructured a bit. Comments/edits are welcome on that as well:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASt9HF8OQ3zeZGdiNHBiZnBfMTQ1Zm1jeHhqM3g&hl=en_GB