Grace Alice Mukasa is Practical Action’s new East Africa Regional Director. Here she reflects on her first two weeks with the Practical Action team in Nairobi.
Six years in the UK (the hub for international development and great source of support and funding for Africa) has been a privilege as well as learning experience.
As I travelled from London to Nairobi, my journey was full of mixed a
nd competing emotions – a sense of sadness for the many great friends I was leaving behind, great excitement but also huge anxiety about the future, high expectations, hope, energy, and above all passion…!
I had been inspired to join Practical Action through friends’ stories that it is ‘a unique player that is practical, uses technology, is innovative and produces cutting edge packs on development realities’. I wondered whether the reality would live up to the hype?
I was humbled, listening to our field coordinators Abdul Hari and Sam Owili (based in very poor and marginalised pastoral communities of Lodwar and Mandera), as they proudly elaborated how Practical Action had managed complex partnerships, facilitated pastoralist livestock herders to negotiate peace, access pasture and markets across boarders hence increased incomes and ensured a decent meal for their families – that takes a lot of courage and a belief in long term change.
Staff have shared with me compelling stories of Practical Action’s innovative work in the urban slums of Kisumu, Nakuru and Nairobi. Thanks to them, poor women in urban slums have access to clean and safe water, meaning a reduced workload and protection for their children from water-related diseases. Thanks to them, community groups have also been mobilised to lead and financially benefit from processes of garbage disposal and use of energy saving stoves, addressing multiple dimensions of poverty.
My first impressions? Practical Action has a unique way of doing development. Its programmes are grounded in the realities of some of the poorest and most marginalised people in East Africa. Practical Action does not do things for these people, they actually engage them and ensure they acquire new technological knowledge, skills, relationships, markets and resources to continue driving the changes that they want. And Practical Action is very generous. It ensures its work experiences with the poorest people, their ways of organising, working with government and using technology, are not only documented but shared widely so that many other poor people, development practictioners and governments freely learn and apply. And Practical Action staff are so dynamic in their roles. In the morning I see someone in gumboots and a t-shirt going to the Kibera slums to work. In the afternoon I see the same person confidently wearing a suit – going to negotiate a donor contract or lobby ministry officials to take up lessons from work in the field into policy, or to replicate, expand or allocate resources.
My plan is to harness the energy in this innovative team to deliver to its maximum. The challenges should be turned into concrete actions. Opportunities must be fully exploited. We can deliver, communicate and grow. Can you imagine a region where many formerly very poor women, girls, men and boys are technologically confident, have secured their livelihoods, are influencing the policy makers and live long happy lives? That is what I want us to do here.
But I have to meet and hear from them first! In the next two weeks I will have the privilege of going into the field to meet with ‘real people’ – the women, men, boys and girls whose lives we strive to improve, in Kisumu (western Kenya) and Lodwar (in the north). Well, I hope to listen to their stories, observe and learn from their realities. I hope to come back even more passionate, impatient and inspired to develop a shared vision with the team here – to work with excellence and make a difference in the lives of many poor and disadvantaged people in East Africa– stay tuned.
Raed the next part of my blog here.