Community participation and consultation: talking to the chefes

After the initial meeting with local leaders and the workshop I wrote about the other day, it was time to meet with the different representatives of the community to inform them about the project, evaluate their interest, answer their questions and doubts, and ask for their input.


Here is how the meeting went:

Initially we were concerned about not being inclusive enough, but as it turned out, there was a fair amount of women present and the age range was also broad enough.

The report back from the team was that the meeting went well and there was enthusiasm for the project.





The discussion was conducted in Changana*, a Bantu language spoken in Southern Mozambique and one of the most common languages in Maputo together with Portuguese.

What were they saying? Not sure, but it looks like it was funny.

Representatives from VSO, the city and Cruz Vermelha Moçambique.

Where did all this take place? In the neighborhood of Chamanculo C, a part of Maputo outside of the cement city.

 Below are a couple of photos** taken around the neighborhood.

 

 

* If you want to learn some Changana, check some everyday vocabulary here.

** Photos by Elizabeth Kuttner.

Inmersión cultural total

Menos de 48 horas en Maputo y nos encontramos en mitad de una fiesta mozambicana con todos los ingredientes: ambiente acogedor, deliciosa y abundante comida, estupenda música + canto + baile y cálida compañía. Mejor bienvenida imposible. Cómo no enamorarse de Mozambique..

Haciendo de cuenta...

¡¡¡Impresionante!!!

Uruguaya-canadiense, italo-canadiense, holandesa, caribeña-estadounidense,
inglesa, rumana y finlandesa. Mismo internacional.

La atracción de los hombres a la carne y el fuego parece ser universal.

Matapa, couver, feijoada. Yummy.

* Fotos de Sally Mitchell

Full immersion: Workshop on participatory tools for poverty relief

The workshop at the Red Cross Mozambique (Cruz Vermelha Moçambique) was to begin the process of bringing an Urban Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment tool to the Chamanculo* community. The 2-year long pilot project that will begin this year is the result of a team effort to create a program that would empower locals to strengthen their neighborhood by using existing resources in the community.

Exploring ways to apply a disaster prevention tool
for poverty reduction in an urban setting.

Recruited to translate from Portuguese to English.
With Program Support Specialist Seija Anttonen.

City representatives and representatives from the Red Cross.

Representative from local NGO,
Associação Cultural Bonga-Mbilo.

*Chamanculo is an area of Maputo to the north-west of the “cement city.”
*Photos by Elizabeth Kuttner

Maputo celebra 125 años

En 2012 Maputo celebra sus 125 años de existencia. Nacida como Cidade de Lourenço Marques, cambió su nombre luego de la independencia. Maputo quiere decir “ciudad de las acacias” y así se veía en sus comienzos:

Estación de trenes

Transporte: ferrocarriles

Plaza de taxis

Tiempo libre: sobre la playa de Polana, actual Club Naval

Hospital

Mercado municipal

Sello conmemorativo

Teatro Vicente Gil

Zona "Baixa" de Maputo

Transporte público: tranvía

Transporte público: bus

Transporte público: tranvía

Good intentions gone bad

“What do you think of international development?”, asked our new friend Joca.

“Do you want the political correct answer or the cynic one?”, retorted Fadi.

The truth is, international development has been heavily criticized in the last couple of decades. And not without reason. Fortunately, I don’t think anybody is so naive anymore to buy into the “Oh, we’ll go and save the world” kind of mentality. As pitfalls and mistakes have been exposed, people and organizations have become more savvy about how to generate positive change around the world.

One clear case of good intentions gone wrong was exposed in the documentary “The T-Shirts Travels.” The film shows how secondhand clothing, given away as charity in the West, ends up in Zambia (Mozambique’s neighbor to the northwest), enriching the middle person and ruining the local clothing industry in the process.

‘Every single clothing factory in Zambia went out of business; we do not have a clothing industry left in the country because the secondhand clothes are coming in.’ Mark O’Donnell, spokesman, Zambian Manufacturers Association

You can see the 50-min film here:

Want to know more about the issue? You can read it here.

It takes a whole village to raise a child

Less than 48 hours in Maputo and we’re invited to a party. There, I met a very entrepreneurial young guy. As president of the Associação Cultural Muodjo, he approached me to see how we could  collaborate. A couple of days later we met and I interviewed him to find out more about the organization.

As it turns out, this small local organization works with street children, supporting them in a myriad of ways with the help of many volunteers from the same community, as well as national, and international volunteers from Germany, Brazil and other countries.

They do provide daily services to 60+ kids, quite a feat given the very limited material resources they have. Some of the organization’s most pressing needs? A steady source of funds, permanent and trained staff, food, educational materials, a new building that allow them to provide workshops, donors who would like to sponsor the expenses of the kids’ schooling. What they lack in things, they more than compensate with human input.

Want to know more? Here is an extract from Muodjo's strategic plan:

Not all street children are orphans. A considerable proportion of the children we work with surely know how to answer the following questions:

• Where they lived before opting for the life of the street
• What were the reasons for leaving home
• Who lived in the house they left
• What would they like to be in the future

In some cases parents know the whereabouts of the child but are not interested in seeking and bringing them back. This indicates the need for a program to create awareness among parents, extended families or possible surrogate for subsequent reintegration, and continuous monitoring.

BOARDING, EDUCATION & ASSISTANCE SCHOOL

The ideal would be to reinstate all children back with their families, but this is no always possible. For this reason, the organization aims to provide a boarding school, a place where they can obtain social assistance to attend school and be provided with life skills training.

   

Even with this short abstract, it’s clear that the challenges are manifold. To support the approximately 600,000 orphan children in the country many other organizations are trying to do what they can, sometimes with minimal resources as this one.

 

Education in a little village in Northern Mozambique

It’s a small, small world. In the past couple of weeks, friends have connected me with several people from all over the world who happen to be working in Mozambique or with Mozambique. That’s how I found out about a community choir (the Gettin’ Higher Choir) in Victoria, British Columbia, that supports programs in southern Africa, including the Kapasseni Project in Mozambique.

Shortly after I was having a Skype chat with Shivon Robinsong, co-director of the choir. She told me about the Kapasseni Project, an inspiring grass-roots project started by a Mozambican couple, Joseph and Perpetua Alfazema, who had come to Canada as refugees and returned to help build schools and clinics in their hometowns.

Luckily, we have the opportunity to re-live the beginning of the project, from building the first school to the amazing progress achieved a few years later.

In the first film, we see when Joseph, Perpetua and Shivon visit Kapasseni for the first time:




The second documentary was filmed 12 years later and shows all what had been achieved during that time.



The first generation from that initial Kapasseni school is about to finish high school. About 25 young men and women who would like to continue studying. The challenge now is to see how to take that next step.