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Project Description:

The goal of this project is to provide Ugandan university students with a hands-on grassroots volunteer community experience. This project will help provide the work skills necessary for Uganda’s future leaders to become productive members of society.

There are very few employment opportunities or internships available for students to gain work experience in advance of graduation. Healthy Child Uganda (HCU) has initiated elective multidisciplinary student community placements, student-community twinning and volunteer recognition programs that aim to provide additional opportunities for mutual learning on the part of students and HCU village health volunteers.

The relationships established in project communities will encourage, stimulate and maximize student learning. During month long community placements students are encouraged when they see the impact that their combined efforts achieve on the community level.

The student community twinning project sees each student within a small cohort of development studies students being paired with a local community. Each student spends at minimum of one day per month in the field working with his or her community under the supervision of a HCUproject trainer and MUST faculty. There is great potential for community members to impact their own health, and to stimulate discussion about how community-based projects operate; including strengths and challenges of such programming from a health perspective.

In both programs students have a chance to offer their skills and enthusiasm to communities where village health volunteers work. Students will work with village health volunteers to provide health education in homes, villages, and schools. They will work together with communities and their leaders to develop community action plans to address the most important needs and health issues identified by the communities. Medical students will shadow health workers at community level health centres and practice growth monitoring and immunization techniques at child immunization days and bed net distribution events.

Update from the field: November 2009

We currently have 6 development studies students paired with one village each. They have now met at least once per month with their communities for the past year. Each community has worked together with the student preparing a plan to manage the problems in their village. One village has been organized and now make handcrafts for sale. The students have helped the 6 villages together to also negotiate a marketing and transportation strategic to help get local cash crops and handcrafts in bulk to a larger regional market. Another joint venture initiated through student linkage has led to improvements in feeder roads to all the villages which previously has terrible problems with transporting sick children and goods for market. Next month, students will be making presentations of their achievements to Mbarara University.

Update from the field: September 2009

In the months since our June report, the twinning project has been continuing steadily; our six Ugandan development studies students travel regularly to their respective twinned villages and continue to work with the local population on specific community projects. For example, in Rugarama the objective is to build a road that will connect the village to the closest maintained road. In July, the students made a presentation to the community and led the discussions on poverty analysis. These results will be used as the basis for an action plan, to be developed by the community at its next meeting.

Funding for the twinning projects has provided these Ugandan students with hands on development experience in rural communities. In the coming months, Healthy Child Uganda will conduct an impact survey with the participating students and their trainers and will hold focus group discussions with the communities. On the basis of this evaluation, a proposal will be made to formalize the program and secure future funding. This will be submitted as a multidisciplinary proposal to the Faculties of Development Studies, Medicine and Science. The project serves as an example of how a small amount of funding can be leveraged to achieve a significant impact.

At a recent presentation by twinning students, Mr. Bariyo Rogers, representing the Dean of the Faculty of Development Studies said “this is strength; we have to build on it. This is the right dose and we should not drop it.” He recommended that this approach replace conventional research methods where students “just sit in class and create a problem, go on internet and copy what others have come up with. This (twinning project) is real experience, hands on experience. Whether it’s done well or not is not an issue, the reality is that students have been to the community, they have at one time been disappointed by the community participation but on the other hand they have something to celebrate!”


Update from the field: June 2009

From February to June 2009, Christmas Future has funded six Ugandan development studies students to travel to their respective twinned villages and to work with the local population on community projects. The type of projects are each determined by village consensus on priorities and are meant to both help the villages, while giving hands on experience to Uganda’s future development workers. In Kyagaju village the group has established a bed of sapling trees for planting and two local women’s groups have started a handcraft project. In Kacwamba the village decided to establish a nursery school with parents funding the teacher’s salary. They also would like to build a storage facility for their produce so that they can form a cooperative and be able to sell their produce in bulk. In Rugarama, the village is working on building a road from their village to the closest maintained road. They have also organized a cleaning day where community gathered to clean the local trading centre. In Kitookye and Mabira villages, road construction is the main focus with challenges looking for local funding for culverts for swampy areas.