Canadian sustainability
The budget I had allocated for transport finished yesterday and I had to take the car back to Sputnik Car Hire in Lilongwe. The three weeks has flown by with busyness. I used the occasion to check out the Canadian agencies working in the country to establish links and see if any of them can help pick up the Canadian end of this sustainability exercise, now that we have established the sustainability of the project here at the Malawian end.
I went to see what was left of the CIDA office and was informed that the last three professional officers, 2 Malawians and a Brit, will be out of work at the end of November when Canada closes the office permanently. The DFATD, formerly CIDA, desk representative had come up 2 days before to announce the closure. I had planned an hour or more of sharing what we were doing in Makupo and Chilanga, but it was just a series of goodbyes and hand shakes and good lucks, over in 15 minutes. Much as I have little time for the aid industry I left with a sense of great indignity, that the Harper government had removed this last pretense of caring for some of the most disadvantaged people in the world.
My visit to WUSC was much more profitable. Jacob Mapemba is an amiable, extremely competent country director with 9 professional staff running a variety of programmes. They bring as many as 40 volunteers each year and are involved in many programming initiatives. WUSC's new 5 year plan takes effect next April and will feature economic empowerment for women and youth as its focus. Lonjezo and Jacob shared phone numbers and email addresses and he will let us know of funding and placement possibilities for the future. He was forthright and forthcoming, so we need to improve our project writing and reporting skills to take advantage of these opportunities. He will encourage his volunteers to use the guesthouse as a way of learning about village life.
Engineers Without Borders Canada is housed in a small house behind a big house and staffed with about 6 long term people who are sprinkled around the country in water, sanitation and logistical support and evaluation with the Ministry's Health Surveillance Assistants programme. Their big effort is the placement of as many as 15 - 20 engineers in short term positions during the Canadian summer months. I met Holly Lafontaine from Windsor at the DEHO office in Kasungu and we had lunch together. She described some of the programme to me. They operate on very little budgets, use buses to travel and live modestly in local communities. They are not really connected to the established NGO network and work directly with local partners in the Ministry of Health or Water offices in the districts. Check their website. www.ewb.ca I was impressed by the failure report.
Their Lilongwe base is just around the corner from the CPAR office. They are in a big old colonial house with the classic big 4X4 carrying their logo and of course the flag. The programme manager is Joseph Zimba. I explained the work in Makupo/Chilanga and my purpose in visiting. He gave me an overview of their programme, which ironically has very little health component to it. They operate in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi and have only ever been involved in clinic building in Uganda. Dokiso Nchama our doctor friend in Cornwall travelled to Malawi on one of their familiarisation trips in the late 90s or early 2000s and had checked with them in Toronto to see if he could solicit any interest in helping with this clinic. They declined and the programme manager here reconfirmed that their programming was already set and did not involve any clinics for the time being. www.cpar.ca
I am not particularly discouraged by the apparent lack of interest. We are coming out of the blue and they have already established programmes, priorities and planning that they are committed to. Nonetheless, I think it would be wise to approach each one of them again through their head office and local representatives to keep the Chilanga clinic and its Canadian connection alive for possible future support. We should add to these the Presbyterian Church in Canada who rebuffed me because they don't support Canadian initiatives. Another movement toward more long term Canadian support would also be the link that we propose to build with the OPSEU health workers sector. Still another initiative would be to approach the doctors who are either from Malawi or who have worked here to check in their networks for help. Dokiso and I have discussed the idea of getting visiting doctors to come to Malawi. With our guesthouse at Makupo and the clinic across the road it would be a good place to contribute their expertise for a month or two at a time.
Ideas are not hard to find, it's something else to make things happen. As Stephen Leacock once said, “Writing is easy. You just write down what occurs to you. It's the occuring that is difficult.”More soon.
The budget I had allocated for transport finished yesterday and I had to take the car back to Sputnik Car Hire in Lilongwe. The three weeks has flown by with busyness. I used the occasion to check out the Canadian agencies working in the country to establish links and see if any of them can help pick up the Canadian end of this sustainability exercise, now that we have established the sustainability of the project here at the Malawian end.
I went to see what was left of the CIDA office and was informed that the last three professional officers, 2 Malawians and a Brit, will be out of work at the end of November when Canada closes the office permanently. The DFATD, formerly CIDA, desk representative had come up 2 days before to announce the closure. I had planned an hour or more of sharing what we were doing in Makupo and Chilanga, but it was just a series of goodbyes and hand shakes and good lucks, over in 15 minutes. Much as I have little time for the aid industry I left with a sense of great indignity, that the Harper government had removed this last pretense of caring for some of the most disadvantaged people in the world.
My visit to WUSC was much more profitable. Jacob Mapemba is an amiable, extremely competent country director with 9 professional staff running a variety of programmes. They bring as many as 40 volunteers each year and are involved in many programming initiatives. WUSC's new 5 year plan takes effect next April and will feature economic empowerment for women and youth as its focus. Lonjezo and Jacob shared phone numbers and email addresses and he will let us know of funding and placement possibilities for the future. He was forthright and forthcoming, so we need to improve our project writing and reporting skills to take advantage of these opportunities. He will encourage his volunteers to use the guesthouse as a way of learning about village life.
Engineers Without Borders Canada is housed in a small house behind a big house and staffed with about 6 long term people who are sprinkled around the country in water, sanitation and logistical support and evaluation with the Ministry's Health Surveillance Assistants programme. Their big effort is the placement of as many as 15 - 20 engineers in short term positions during the Canadian summer months. I met Holly Lafontaine from Windsor at the DEHO office in Kasungu and we had lunch together. She described some of the programme to me. They operate on very little budgets, use buses to travel and live modestly in local communities. They are not really connected to the established NGO network and work directly with local partners in the Ministry of Health or Water offices in the districts. Check their website. www.ewb.ca I was impressed by the failure report.
Their Lilongwe base is just around the corner from the CPAR office. They are in a big old colonial house with the classic big 4X4 carrying their logo and of course the flag. The programme manager is Joseph Zimba. I explained the work in Makupo/Chilanga and my purpose in visiting. He gave me an overview of their programme, which ironically has very little health component to it. They operate in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi and have only ever been involved in clinic building in Uganda. Dokiso Nchama our doctor friend in Cornwall travelled to Malawi on one of their familiarisation trips in the late 90s or early 2000s and had checked with them in Toronto to see if he could solicit any interest in helping with this clinic. They declined and the programme manager here reconfirmed that their programming was already set and did not involve any clinics for the time being. www.cpar.ca
I am not particularly discouraged by the apparent lack of interest. We are coming out of the blue and they have already established programmes, priorities and planning that they are committed to. Nonetheless, I think it would be wise to approach each one of them again through their head office and local representatives to keep the Chilanga clinic and its Canadian connection alive for possible future support. We should add to these the Presbyterian Church in Canada who rebuffed me because they don't support Canadian initiatives. Another movement toward more long term Canadian support would also be the link that we propose to build with the OPSEU health workers sector. Still another initiative would be to approach the doctors who are either from Malawi or who have worked here to check in their networks for help. Dokiso and I have discussed the idea of getting visiting doctors to come to Malawi. With our guesthouse at Makupo and the clinic across the road it would be a good place to contribute their expertise for a month or two at a time.
Ideas are not hard to find, it's something else to make things happen. As Stephen Leacock once said, “Writing is easy. You just write down what occurs to you. It's the occuring that is difficult.”More soon.
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