Deem Vermeulen

I am already back in The Netherlands but I still owe you a reflection of the third and therefore last day of the Cross Country Learning Event (CCLE) in Tanzania. The first and second days are also covered in blogs.

During the third day we had a ‘ peer-to-peer assist'. For those who do not know the term, a peer-to-peer assist is a session whereby a project owner presents a problem/challenge to other project owners, with the request to come forward with suggestions for improvements or solving certain problems. People came forward with realistic problems and this session evoked sparkling discussions. For instance a certain project owner in Uganda was struggling with setting up a maintenance system in the periphery. How do you maintain contacts with the help desk organisations if your computer breaks down? And therefore if there is no communication, how do you financially maintain such a support/maintenance system? One of the options discussed was the suggestion for setting up a kind of fee for members/users so that we can finance such a maintenance system. A Tanzanian organisation had some experience with it, which helped actually its Ugandan counterpart to move forward.

Generally I learned that the peer-to-peer sessions indeed did assist the project owners with their problems and that the interaction between project owners did bring forward suggestions based on practical experiences. Is this remark an open door? I hope so.

We ended the three-day seminar with an evaluation session. It brought forward some nice remarks which I want to share with you.

• “Out of the three expectations I did only meet one. I expected Power Point presentations: no Power Points. I expected hand outs every evening: no hand outs. I expected knowledge: there was an overwhelming amount of knowledge.”
• “5 th October ( the closing date of the CCLE ) should continue.”
• “CCLE is a big library.”
• “Mali has inspired. It gives courage. Hope to meet again.”
• “Thanks for the commitment of IICD and Cordaid.”
• “Expectations were met. Do not stop here.”
• “We shared much more than in other types of seminars. It was not possible to sleep at this seminar.”
• “The level commitment was very good. Health does not know any boundaries and this is also shown in the East-West exchange.”
• “You made us take part of the whole process and the added value will not run away from me. “
• “Simple is beautiful. Very interesting and wonderful. Asante Sana.”

Thursday, 4th October 2007, the second day of the Cross Country Learning Event (CCLE) in Tanzania. A blog on the first day has also been posted.

It is remarkable to see how many people exchange information during a CCLE and it is a pity to see that you can never capture all the information which crosses the table. For me it also proves that there is a huge demand for information exchange and that the methodology used (open space) does bring forward the most important issues at stake, such as human resources and leveraging. In itself this is in line with the outcome of IICD’s M&E analysis. It is also encouraging to see that creating the right scene open ups the mind for an exchange. For the specialists in facilitation this might be an open door, but for people who are more focussed on determining directions it is good to be part of these exercises.

Leveraging
It also appears that leveraging is not just an IICD issue. It is a natural phenomenon which already takes place since ages. The only difference is that we tagged it as an IICD phenomenon. It is obvious that leveraging takes place if there are results, political willingness to expand and if there are the right circumstances. For instance in Uganda the project ‘Promoting Continuing Medical Education among Rural Health Workers by use of ICT’ of Uganda Martyrs University (UMU) is successful. UMU was approached by the Ministry of Health to expand the project to three other hospitals. At the moment of the request UMU was not ready to expand and therefore they turned the request down. The same accounts for the Kinondoni project, which I visited last Monday. People of Kinondoni are approached by other local governments to implement the project in their municipality. For these organisations it is difficult to do that because you need also the methodology to introduce such kind of projects, which means that they also use the methodology which made the projects so successful. This visit also taught me that maintenance of projects in some kind of form is important. I saw outdated software and a server room which was not suitable to be a server room. Leaking airconditioners does not create the right environment for a server room.

Dealing with governments
Another remark which strikes me is the fact that dealing with governments is not as difficult as often expressed by civil society. It is a matter of managing expectations and informing and even involving them at the start of the project. For some countries this might not be such kind of a problem because the mechanism is available to inform the government. What I understood is that Uganda has such kind of a mechanism in place. For some of the projects of civil society you need to seek the approval of the Ugandan government. Despite the fact that it might be a cumbersome process it also has positive effects.

At the CCLE, representatives of Malawi (CHAM and the School of Medicine) are present. I had a chat with them about our possible involvement in Malawi with Cordaid. They are very enthusiastic. Not so much for the funds, but more for the methodology we are applying and of which the CCLE is an example. I have been trying to temper their expectations and despite the fact that they were nodding I am not sure if I was that successful in the management of expectations. The fact that they are heavily involved in World Space receiver might be a hurdle to take, but may be we can integrate that in the approach.

Publicity
Another thing: there was an article published about the workshop in an English newspaper and it appears that the same article will be published in Kiswahili today. Coming weekend another article about ICT4 health will be published. Therefore COSTECH and IICD made a major step forward in putting ICT on the political agenda. What I also learned from this exercise is that journalists are stubborn people. You have explained very clearly the message you want to get across and they pick out one sentence. They have picked out my remark about the fact that the health services have improved as compared with seven years ago. Conclusion and lesson learned: journalists are independent but as interviewee you are confronted with the consequences.

Love for Africa
Enough reflection for the day. I am just looking out of the window and the first rainshowers are starting to poor in Dar es Salaam. It reminds me of one of the factors why it is always pleasant to be back on this continent despite all its challenges and difficulties. It is the sky. The combination of grey clouds coming in from the ocean, light softened by the rains and trees illuminated beautifully by the raising sun (it is just after 6:00 in the morning) makes the continent so beautiful.

See you in The Hague.

Deem