Cynthia Rau, our Development Project Manager, has been blogging about her various experiences with Childreach International. From her trips overseas to her time spent attending conferences and events in the UK, read here to get her updates on our project partners and the issues confronted in international development.

10.02.11

Talk at the Overseas Development Institute:

Africa after 50: building on recent development progress

Speaker:

Punam Chuhan-Pole - Lead Economist,  Africa Region, World Bank
Dr Liesbet Steer - Project Leader Development Progress Stories, ODI
Patrick Gihana-Mulenga - Commercial attaché, Rwanda High Commission/ Rwanda Development Board
Mark Lowcock - Director General, Country Programmes, DFID
Will Day - Chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission

Laurie Lee - Deputy Director of External Affairs, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Chair: Alison Evans - ODI Director

Over the past decade, Africa has made remarkable economic and social achievements. Despite ongoing challenges, the region has made significant strides toward reducing poverty and vulnerability, improving health and education, increasing accountability, and protecting the environment. Economic, political and social transformations lie at the basis of these achievements. In addition, Africa is taking more ownership of its development as more African leaders and citizens are driving progress.

My notes from the talk

I’ll give a brief summary of the main points discussed.

The speakers started by stating that there has been widespread economic growth within countries outside of the oil industry in Africa.  There have been improvements in the economic performance of the banking and telecommunication industries and many others.  Many countries have seen not only an increase in enrolment in schools but completion of education.  Gender equality has improved and many of the human development indicators are on the increase.

Why is documenting successes important?

Africa has rebounded quite effectively from the global banking crisis with a growth of 4.7% in 2010 and an anticipated growth of 5% in 2011.

Long term development issues / challenges need to be reviewed and there are areas for improvement such as the slow agricultural growth, the delivery of education in schools, and governance.

We discussed some interesting examples – for me, most notably was Tanzania, where our School Improvement Programme is working to transform the state of schools in the Kilimanjaro region. It’s seen micro economic stabilisation, considerably helping its economic growth.

Interestingly, a focus on community support has proved successful. An example is the agricultural co-operatives which provide communities with more knowledge, support helping them to open up new markets.

17.01.2010: My trip to Delhi:

The purpose of my trip was to help train our international partners on how best to apply for funding, specifically concentrating on the use of log frames – a type of proposal method which ensures projects are well planned. To do so I had to venture out to some of our project partners located in remote slums. Here’s her blog describing her eye opening experience.

11 November: Delhi is very smoggy and ridden with traffic. I arrived midday and drove to the hotel.  Like many cities in the developing world, Delhi is rapidly expanding and over populated.

12 November: On our first full day of work, we met with the Head of one of our New Project Partners – New Opportunities for Women – and visited their centre for children, located in an urban slum.  The centre has 3 room dividers which were all painted by the children and the India on 2 Wheels Challenge event participants who visited in September.

The centre is an after school club for all children in the slum, designed to keep them safe and continue their education well after school has closed. The children were very animated and extremely confident.  Before I arrived they’d been practising their singing and play for Universal Children’s Day so they were still quite lively from that!  They go to school and then attend the centre from 2-5pm for remedial education classes in IT, English, Hindi and Maths.  I also met one of the new mentors; a fantastic and motivated young man still attending school while teaching Languages and IT to the younger children at the centre. He told me he loved teaching and was interested in becoming a teacher.  I just wished I remembered to bring the camera to get a shot of him!

14 November: Today I travelled to meet Parul Sheth, the Director of project partner Shaishev. I cannot begin to express my admiration for Parul.  I find that every time I talk to her I often rethink my views.  She’s very humble yet challenging, soft spoken yet commanding in presence and incredibly wise.  It’s clear that she is respected by everyone in the community.

Shaishev run one of my favourite projects, Balsena, a child rights initiative meaning ‘children’s collective’, which seeks to strengthen children’s access to their rights through a young persons’ union, the first independent children’s union in Gujarat district, India.

My meeting with Parul was very enlightening. We discussed how Balsena monitor and assess progress; how they get all the children to successfully participate in the Union (something which could be utilised across other child rights projects in India) and how Childreach International’s partnership will move forward into 2011.

After meeting with Parul I attended one of their child rights collective meetings to see the process involved.  On this day, parents were invited to discuss the issue of child labour and the Right to Education Act and what it means for them.  In exchange for attending, a snack, tea and coffee were offered along with a copy of the Child Rights and Right to Education Act so they could spread its messages to other members of their community.  In Bhavnagar City, there was a clear and inspiring push towards advocating for the importance of Child Rights.

15 November: Today I journeyed to Piplaj, a slum settlement in Gujarat (see the video showing the drive to the slum and the picture at the top). Our partner, Centre for Development (CfD), run education centres, filling the gap left by the government who have so far refused to set up schools in the area.  The children in the first two centres in classes1-3 were very focussed and hard working.  We tried not to distract the classes as much as possible but when we entered the classroom a few of them asked the Bal Dost (teachers) and myself to move away from the blackboard so they could continue their work. Amazing!

Also please take a look at my welcome into one of the classrooms, which I shot on my mobile (below). Despite having very little and poor living conditions, these children find all sorts of ways to have fun and fit in studying at the same time!

To give you an idea about the conditions these incredibly resilient children 
live in, take a look at the drive into the slums.