Picture 1: Me talking about monitoring and reviewing projects with the Church in Burundi Picture 2: Aftermath of the fighting in Khartoum in May
Picture 3: Simon at the Anglican Bishops Conference
Dear All,
Sorry it’s taken us so long to write our latest update on Sudan. As many of you now know we have reduced our work in Sudan for this year and have been asked by Lambeth Palaces International Development department to assist the Anglican Churches of Burundi and Zimbabwe with their current projects.
Burundi
Burundi is a tiny landlocked country in Central Africa with Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda surrounding it. It is just south of the equator and lush hills and mountains cover the land, it’s a beautiful place, people call it the Switzerland of Africa. It has recently been plagued by civil war between its two main ethnic groups: the majority Hutus and ruling minority Tutsis. All Burundians speak the same language – Kirundi.
Simon and I spent a week in Burundi. Bujumbura, the capital and where we spent our time has a distinctly 70’s feel from the concrete buildings to people’s hairstyles and clothes. It felt a bit like stepping back in time. We were there running a training for all 6 Diocese of the Anglican Church of Burundi which has funding for a large school regeneration project with schools being rebuilt after their destruction during the civil war. Each Diocese is responsible for its own building work. We gave a training focusing on the basics to have in place when implementing a project, also basic Financial Management processes, how to monitoring and evaluate Projects and an introduction to report writing.
While we were in Sudan in March I found out that I was pregnant and by the time we were conducting the Burundi training the morning sickness had well and truly kicked in. Although it wasn’t really morning, it was more like all day nausea which kept coming in waves often when I was talking to the group, I had to make a few dashes to the bathroom but on the whole I don’t think people noticed. Everyone was quite quiet and not very used to the participatory training that we offer. It was difficult to gage how much of the training they would feel able to implement in their own programmes. We hope however that further time with them over the year will help us to see how they are working.
Sudan
Khartoum Fighting
Due to my pregnancy Simon went back to Sudan in May on his own for one month. Unfortunately for him, within his first few days back in the country there was serious fighting in the Omdurman area of the city yesterday between the JEM Darfur rebel group and Government forces. The clashes that took place were right by where he was working. He and other church staff members were face down on the floor until a lul in the fighting when he managed to move to a house nearby and was able to get food and water. Problems continued in the area through the night but subsided in the morning and he was able to leave Omdurman for a safer area. He was fine if a bit shaken up.
Malakal Diocese
Malakal have just received their money for this years school building work which is focusing on the strengthening of the current schools, giving them fences, water guttering and tanks and verandas. Simon spent time with the Diocese helping them revise the current budgets and splitting them up school by school. The work should start this month.
Mothers Union
Rebecca Ator Yor, the Mothers Union worker who was appointed for Malakal Diocese last year is getting on well. She has been making parish visits and plans to run a health workshop for women next month including a session on HIV/AIDS. The Mothers Union are very keen to start their own income generation project and so I have been helping Rebecca look at ways to fundraise to start a café and write her first proposal. The population of Malakal town is growing with large influxes of returnees. Many returnees coming from the camps in Kenya and Ethiopia have an advantage in obtaining work over the general population of the town as their education levels; in particular their English literacy is vastly higher. Because of this they think a cafeteria could generate a small income which the MU hope would help to fund Mothers Union activities.
Zimbabwe
At the beginning of June, Simon was asked to go out to Zimbabwe to participate in a conference for all the Bishops of the Anglican Church of Burundi. The church there is being funded by Lambeth Palace and USPG to run a number of different community development projects.
Simon found his trip to Zimbabwe incredibly easy despite all the current issues going on as it is so more developed than somewhere like Sudan. Things like good infrastructure and very high literacy rates meant that getting places and communicating concepts and discussing ideas was very easy.
Each Diocese is running a project and the Bishops were coming together to discuss their progress with each-other and to think on how they can improve on how they are working. Simon helped to facilitate this forum and also provided some small trainings. The trainings were on:
- Project Management with particular attention given to the basics to consider when implementing a project.
- How to monitor, review and evaluate projects
- The basics of Strategic Planning and Project Planning as well as how to do a capacity assessment in order to aid realistic planning.
Each of these trainings were followed by break-out Sessions in which Participants to split into groups to talk about how they are currently working, how they will monitor and evaluate as they progress with the programmes they currently run, how they planned for their current programmes and what people think they can do in order to improve their own planning processes.
The current situation in Zimbabwe is making it hard for these Diocese to run their programmes, especially the extreme hyper inflation in which the only way to protect some of the value of the project funds is to keep it in British Pounds until the day it needs to be spent. It is thought that the constantly changing prices of goods currently means around 30% of projects funds value is being lost.
Simon is back to Burundi this week and I will update everyone on his return,
Best wishes
Keren xx
Sorry it’s taken us so long to write our latest update on Sudan. As many of you now know we have reduced our work in Sudan for this year and have been asked by Lambeth Palaces International Development department to assist the Anglican Churches of Burundi and Zimbabwe with their current projects.
Burundi
Burundi is a tiny landlocked country in Central Africa with Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda surrounding it. It is just south of the equator and lush hills and mountains cover the land, it’s a beautiful place, people call it the Switzerland of Africa. It has recently been plagued by civil war between its two main ethnic groups: the majority Hutus and ruling minority Tutsis. All Burundians speak the same language – Kirundi.
Simon and I spent a week in Burundi. Bujumbura, the capital and where we spent our time has a distinctly 70’s feel from the concrete buildings to people’s hairstyles and clothes. It felt a bit like stepping back in time. We were there running a training for all 6 Diocese of the Anglican Church of Burundi which has funding for a large school regeneration project with schools being rebuilt after their destruction during the civil war. Each Diocese is responsible for its own building work. We gave a training focusing on the basics to have in place when implementing a project, also basic Financial Management processes, how to monitoring and evaluate Projects and an introduction to report writing.
While we were in Sudan in March I found out that I was pregnant and by the time we were conducting the Burundi training the morning sickness had well and truly kicked in. Although it wasn’t really morning, it was more like all day nausea which kept coming in waves often when I was talking to the group, I had to make a few dashes to the bathroom but on the whole I don’t think people noticed. Everyone was quite quiet and not very used to the participatory training that we offer. It was difficult to gage how much of the training they would feel able to implement in their own programmes. We hope however that further time with them over the year will help us to see how they are working.
Sudan
Khartoum Fighting
Due to my pregnancy Simon went back to Sudan in May on his own for one month. Unfortunately for him, within his first few days back in the country there was serious fighting in the Omdurman area of the city yesterday between the JEM Darfur rebel group and Government forces. The clashes that took place were right by where he was working. He and other church staff members were face down on the floor until a lul in the fighting when he managed to move to a house nearby and was able to get food and water. Problems continued in the area through the night but subsided in the morning and he was able to leave Omdurman for a safer area. He was fine if a bit shaken up.
Malakal Diocese
Malakal have just received their money for this years school building work which is focusing on the strengthening of the current schools, giving them fences, water guttering and tanks and verandas. Simon spent time with the Diocese helping them revise the current budgets and splitting them up school by school. The work should start this month.
Mothers Union
Rebecca Ator Yor, the Mothers Union worker who was appointed for Malakal Diocese last year is getting on well. She has been making parish visits and plans to run a health workshop for women next month including a session on HIV/AIDS. The Mothers Union are very keen to start their own income generation project and so I have been helping Rebecca look at ways to fundraise to start a café and write her first proposal. The population of Malakal town is growing with large influxes of returnees. Many returnees coming from the camps in Kenya and Ethiopia have an advantage in obtaining work over the general population of the town as their education levels; in particular their English literacy is vastly higher. Because of this they think a cafeteria could generate a small income which the MU hope would help to fund Mothers Union activities.
Zimbabwe
At the beginning of June, Simon was asked to go out to Zimbabwe to participate in a conference for all the Bishops of the Anglican Church of Burundi. The church there is being funded by Lambeth Palace and USPG to run a number of different community development projects.
Simon found his trip to Zimbabwe incredibly easy despite all the current issues going on as it is so more developed than somewhere like Sudan. Things like good infrastructure and very high literacy rates meant that getting places and communicating concepts and discussing ideas was very easy.
Each Diocese is running a project and the Bishops were coming together to discuss their progress with each-other and to think on how they can improve on how they are working. Simon helped to facilitate this forum and also provided some small trainings. The trainings were on:
- Project Management with particular attention given to the basics to consider when implementing a project.
- How to monitor, review and evaluate projects
- The basics of Strategic Planning and Project Planning as well as how to do a capacity assessment in order to aid realistic planning.
Each of these trainings were followed by break-out Sessions in which Participants to split into groups to talk about how they are currently working, how they will monitor and evaluate as they progress with the programmes they currently run, how they planned for their current programmes and what people think they can do in order to improve their own planning processes.
The current situation in Zimbabwe is making it hard for these Diocese to run their programmes, especially the extreme hyper inflation in which the only way to protect some of the value of the project funds is to keep it in British Pounds until the day it needs to be spent. It is thought that the constantly changing prices of goods currently means around 30% of projects funds value is being lost.
Simon is back to Burundi this week and I will update everyone on his return,
Best wishes
Keren xx
