Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Shirin Ahmed: Ndibwami Integrated Rescue Project

Through the Yale AIESEC Exchange program, I spent eight weeks interning with the Ndibwami Integrated Rescue Project (NIRP), a grass roots relief and development organization that provides support and care to poor and disadvantaged families living in the Masaka-Rakai districts of Uganda.  

Along with 4 other interns, I spent the first few weeks of my internship conducting interviews to assess the medical, social and economic needs of a local village community in Gayaza, located a few miles from the center of Masaka town. Although we had been told that English is the official language in Uganda, we soon found out that very few people spoke English in Masaka. I am therefore very grateful to the local volunteers at NIRP who assisted us in preparing our questionnaires and helped us communicate with members of the local community in Luganda (the local language). These interviews were very insightful and gave me the opportunity to gain an in depth understanding of the daily challenges that people face in this village. In the process, I learnt valuable lessons on how to conduct field research and frame questions that are culturally sensitive and do not raise undue expectations of local inhabitants.

During our interviews, we came across many HIV/AIDs victims living in the village. Most of them were single women, living under absolute poverty, with no assets and a sustainable source of income to support themselves and their families. Most worked on farms that belonged to other families but expressed that their poor health conditions made it physically challenging to do this kind of physical labor for long hours They also told us that it was difficult for them to visit TASO (The AIDS Support Organization), the HIV/AIDS testing and medical facility in Masaka, because of their inability to pay for transportation costs to TASO (located in Masaka town). We set up a meeting with the Center Manager at TASO to discuss the possibility of an outreach program that could provide testing and counseling services to these patients in Gayaza. However, we were told that Gayaza is not far enough and therefore it was not cost effective for TASO personnel to deliver medicines and testing services. After analyzing and discussing these challenges with our boss, we organized these victims in an HIV/AIDS group and established a weekly vocational skill-training program. One of the members of the group volunteered to offer tailoring lessons to other members every Thursday of the week. In this way, the group could mobilize themselves and learn valuable practical skills that could benefit them in the future. Our group also raised money and donated livestock to this group to help them overcome some of their financial challenges.

In response to the multiple cases of malaria that we encountered during our needs assessment interviews, we decided to plant a garden of herbal medicines used to treat malaria. While not as effective as drugs received at the hospital, the herbal medication will be accessible to the entire Gayaza community at no cost and will continue growing for many years. We hope that the herbal garden will lower the rates of malaria infection in the community or at least serve as treatment until the infected persons can afford to visit the hospital.

We also collaborated with a “Work Together Women’s Group”, a self help group that had been set up by a previous intern as a way for women to mobilize themselves and work towards a sustainable livelihood. We started an initiative to plant a community vegetable garden of cabbages, carrots and green peppers to help them achieve a more balanced diet and sell the excess in the market to generate income for the group. We trained these women and asked them to contribute some of their savings to the project to help them understand the principles of short and long-term investment and allow them to gain a sense of ownership. Every Tuesday, we assisted these women to help prepare their vegetable garden. Although working on the garden involved intense physical labor, something I was not accustomed to, working alongside these women made me feel productive and allowed me to make a tangible contribution to their lives.

In addition to the HIV/AIDs group and the Work Together Women’s group, we spent the rest of our time working at a Restoration Center, a primary school for children between the ages of 4 and 12. Many of the students had been orphaned by AIDs and were living in difficult conditions. Together with the students, we planted a passion fruit garden outside the school to contribute to the nutritional enrichment of the students and the economic wellbeing of the restoration center.

The one downside of my internship was that like most local NGOs in Uganda, NIRP had limited funding to support most of these projects and relied on donations to carry out most of its activities. In order to overcome these financial limitations, we set up a blog (http://gayazarestoration.tumblr.com) to raise money for our various projects. The blog has information and pictures of our work in Gayaza and the amount of money we raised for each project.

Although I was often frustrated with the lack of structure within the NGO and the difficulty of communicating with locals, this summer was a great learning experience for me as it allowed me to step out of my comfort zone and truly understand the realities of life and the daily challenges that people face in Uganda. Interning through AIESEC also gave me the opportunity to integrate in the local culture and meet interns from all over the world, friendships and memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life.


Shirin Ahmed is a Senior in Ezra Stiles College.