ValmirStar

At first glance Apac town looks like a roundabout surrounded by a few blocks of houses and some dusty tracks, though there is more to it then that.

Over 26 CSOs (Civil Society Organisations) and the district headquarter are established in the village. They tended to have contrary interests, however in the E-Society project they work side by side to promote civil services for the Apac society. After a handover of a day, my colleague left me with the partners to do some hands-on work. The first steps to link CSOs and the district government in a structural way were achieved in the in the first stage of the project. This visit more clearly ironed out the shared roles of the different entities. Through meetings with a couple of CSOs a pool was created, which could provide content for civil services, as for example Child Health Information for women, Market Price Information for farmers or Information on grant possibilities for youth. While at the same time the district would facilitate the process of digitisation of their accounting system and operational processes, so that the civil society will have better access to the district expenditures. It was good to see that despite the differences between the district government and the CSOs there is willingness to create openness and work more closely together.

This week is my first visit to the IICD country programme in Uganda. Within IICD, I am changing position and will be taking over the responsibility for project management in Uganda. In this trip a colleague is introducing me to the programme. So far the projects are really exciting. It is impressive to see how committed people are towards the projects. This weekend we visited the Health Child project, a new project which we are implementing together with Cordaid. Last week the project coordinator identified two rural communities to start Information Centers where women can be trained on Health prevention. The coordinator was a young woman, like myself. She quit her job in Kampala to live in the rural area to set up the centres. During the visit she and the rest of the implementing staff took us to one of the communities. The people were really keen on meeting us. They raised interesting questions, like how we would make sure that the elderly women of the community wouldn’t be excluded from this ‘innovative’ project. This shows that, fortunately, our end-users dare to be critical towards IICD.