Blog: Learning

We've convened a crisis meeting of the Forum's members in order to draw up a planned response to the Government's National Development Plan - the Plan with no chapter on housing. Members also looked at the Position Statement I'd drafted the week before, which we're placing in the Times of Zambia - a government paper, so we altered the tone a little bit!

I spent the rest of the week visiting members to carry out the baseline survey. The week was sort of topped and tailed by highlights. At the beginning we visited two women's co-operatives in rural areas, teaching women skills like brick-making and land rights issues. The week ended, however, with a visit I'll never forget. If I said I enjoyed it that would be inappropriate - nobody could enjoy seeing the appalling circumstances some people live in. We visited two compounds, one in Lusaka and one 200 miles north in Kitwe, to conduct focus groups with the residents' committees. In Lusaka, about 2,000 people live in the compound in homes that range from breezeblock constructions to shacks that are collapsing around them. They draw water from shared taps located around the compound. Everywhere is dirt and dust. Some people, usually women, set up their own business, ranging from a single table with a few vegetables to brick-built grocery shops - and loads of hairdressers. I was taken to see the school, which was spotless and being repainted as I was there. A gang of schoolchildren, in their navy blue uniforms, were chatting and giggling on their way from school, just like a crowd of Cardiff schoolkids. Everywhere I went I was followed by a growing crowd of small children. At first they mutter 'muzungu' (white person) but when I wave at them I get dazzling smiles and waves back. And then when I attempt to greet them - 'muli shani' - they burst into laughter.

The residents' committees in both Lusaka and Kitwe are simply inspirational. They're politicised, aware, committed; they spoke in dialect but I continuously heard the words 'advocacy', 'sensitised' and 'empower'. They have the will, the intelligence and the inner resources to achieve what's needed to lift these communities out of abject poverty, if only the infrastructure we take for granted was put in place for them.

Some good news, after our crisis meeting my colleague secured a meeting at the Ministry of Finance the next morning, and a committment to revisit the Housing Chapter to try, with the NGO's help, to make fit for reinstatement in the National Plan. It's a start.

Just found out that next week I'm going to be part of the team (is 3 people a team?) carrying out a baseline survey on all ten of the Civic Forum's members as requested by the Forum's funder. I'd been told to earmark 2 days to help out with this; have just come from a meeting outlining 5 days, including Saturday, travelling all around Lusaka and outlying towns and villages. Bit of a surprise to me frankly but fantastic opportunity to meet more people - especially people who don't work for NGO's!

Finally, finally feel like I've started work. I've spent hours in the back of a very hot car driving around a gridlocked Lusaka, a crash course (nearly literally) in NGO culture. But met some amazing people along the way though.

I wrote a press release and was very excited when the comms person from the organization we share offices with told me he'd take it to the journalist he was meeting that evening. Unfortunately, i hadn't counted for the dire network connection in our offices and lack of networked printer, so I couldn't get the press release to him, by hard copy or email. Not so exciting.

Then wrote a letter to the Minister for Finance and National Planning, an open letter we're placing in The Post and a letter to housing stakeholders inlcuding the World Bank. All part of our preparation for a crisis meeting. The Zambian government has published their Sixth National Development Plan, but left out the chapter on housing - madness if they want to deliver on their other priorities like health and education.

The Post is the paper with highest circulation figures, and very much holds the government to account. Unlike UK high-circulatin 'newspapers', The Post is crammed with political items, including a substantial international section. Not a celebrity in sight. How refreshing.

I think I'll be doing a lot of responsive stuff like this, as well as working on the longer-term strategy, but it's all useful as we talk a lot about voice, audience and tools.        

Yesterday we had our second toddler session in the gallery. We will be holding the sessions once a month and each month will look at a different theme - this month the theme was Autumn, and the one before looked at farm animals. The sessions are quite informal giving the little ones a chance to play and experience our different activities and to socialise with the other children. Another important part of the session is that it is bilingual, so the staff who are working (Ffion,Iola and myself this month) can speak in Welsh or English to the children, and the songs that Ffion led at the end were also in Welsh. It's a nice way for English speaking parents to begin to learn Welsh with their children.

So, what do we do? yesterday we had an art and craft table where the children could decorate pumpkin shapes or leaves, make leaf rubbings (although I find this is often a bit difficult for the under 3's!) or do some drawing. We also had a sensory tray filled with leaves, plastic bugs, fircones and dried lemon slices; coloured and scented playdough (yellow playdough was vanilla and the orange one cinammon and spices) with different cookie cutter shapes to play with; a sandpit and fircones (the sandpit was going to be our sensory tray and we were going to change it each month, but the children seemed to enjoy playing with the sand so much we didn't have the heart to change it! What I might do though is dye the sand at some point so it will be a little bit more exciting!); soft toys to play with and a quiet area with picture books. The picture books we had yesterday were 'Cwymp y dail' by Sian Lewis which is a Sali Mali book about Autumn, 'Cawl Pwmpen' by Helen Cooper - a nice autumnal book about pumpkin soup, 'Hibernation Station' by Michelle Meadows and Kurt Cyrus - an unbelievably cute story about animals hibernating, although perhaps a little too 'american' for some tastes (not mine!), 'The Tiny Seed' by Eric Carle - i love the illustrations in this, 'I am a Bunny' by Ole Risom and Richard Scarry - an adorable simple book about the seasons, and my find of the month, 'Autumn' by Gerda Muller - this was perfect for a bilingual session as it doesn't have any words (I didn't realise this when I ordered it) and consists of illustrations of the type of things that happen in the autumn - leaves falling off the trees, rainy weather, making leaf rubbings, making jam and hibernating animals. It's a lovely book to look through with a child as it lets them make up the story themselves.

We ended the session with a song about Autumn, and sent them all off with a leaf bag and a leaf spotting sheet in case they wanted to have a walk around the museum.

Next month our theme is buildings

Just met a journalist, who wants to do something with our story about the Government leaving housing out of the National Development Plan (which I still think must be an oversight?!).

He's taken our press release and he loved the open letter, and he's coming back on Saturday to do interviews. Result.