Uganda - Lesson 1

Hi again! It has been a few weeks since my last post, but I have been hard at work getting ready for my departure. Here is a snapshot of my preparation in numbers:

2 - months until I land in Uganda

19 - days until my first half marathon (!!)

21.1 – kilometers I will be running in the half-marathon

16 – kilometers in my latest long run

2 – days of first aid training

380 – number of pages in the Luganda language textbook I have been studying

20 – approximate number of words I can say in Luganda so far without my notes

5 – number of immunizations I have already received (more to come)

50 – percent of my fundraising goal that I have raised so far

3 – blog posts written (including this one)

6 – passport photos I sent to Restless Development in London to get my Uganda visa

Everything is really coming together.

BUT, there is one thing about preparing for this trip that I did not fully anticipate, which is the…

1 million – questions I have received about Uganda! Is it safe? Where is it? Isn’t that where Idi Amin ruled? What are the politics like? What about HIV/AIDS? Where did you say it was again?

I believe that an important part of doing development work is learning about the country and culture where you will be working. So, in an effort to both prepare myself and better answer these questions, I will be doing a series of blog posts about Uganda. This first post will cover the basics.

10 facts about Uganda*

1. Uganda is located in East Africa, north of Lake Victoria. It shares a border with South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2. The country’s population is 34.6 million. The population is the second youngest in the world, with around 50% of the population under the age of 14 and 78% of the population under the age of 30. This begs the question: why are young people so often excluded from development?

3. Uganda’s per capita GDP is $1,300. By comparison, Canada’s is $39,400.

4. Yoweri Museveni, the current president of Uganda, came to power in 1986. The country was a one-party state until a referendum reintroduced multi-party politics in 2005.

5. Uganda faces international pressure for its conduct in both internal and external conflicts. The international community has criticized the Museveni government for its involvement in the DRC throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as its handling of its own civil war with the Lord’s Resistance Army in the northern part of the country.

6. The country has many characteristics common in developing countries, including high maternal mortality and infant mortality. The fertility rate in Uganda is the second highest in the world, with 6.69 children born per woman. I can’t even imagine having six kids!  This means that the population size in Uganda is projected to nearly triple from 2010 to 2050.

7. Only 13% of the population in Uganda lives in an urban centre. Even though urbanization is on the rise, the country has the 3^rd most rural population in the world.

8. Ugandans suffer from HIV/AIDS, although the prevalence of the disease has declined in recent years. Around 6.5% of the adult population directly suffers from HIV/AIDS.

9. Despite strong economic growth in recent years, youth unemployment in Uganda is a staggering 80%. With a rapidly growing working age population, the country will need to drastically expand its economy.

10. Restless Development has been working in Uganda since 1997. They have conducted 15 years of youth-led development work, reaching over 200,000 young people.

Alright, so now you have the basics, and we all know a little bit more about the geography, history, politics, economics, and population characteristics of Uganda. However, if I learned anything in my many years of schooling, it is that facts alone do not tell the whole story. So, until I leave, I will be writing about different aspects of Uganda and how this all relates to development and the work I will be doing. 

Finally, don’t forget that I am still fundraising and I need your help! I would love it if you would sponsor me to run my half-marathon on November 20^th. Please visit my fundraising page or see me in person. 

Cheers, and keep reading. 

L

*Sources: Restless Development, BBC, CIA World Factbook

Why Restless Development?

Now that I have introduced myself, it is time that I introduce Restless Development. This is the organization that I will be working for while in Uganda. A lot of you are probably wondering why I chose this organization over the many others that offer international opportunities, why I chose to volunteer my time as opposed to looking for a job, and what I am actually going to be doing on the ground. This post will answer these questions, and hopefully persuade you to support me on my journey to Uganda!

One of the challenges of doing a one-year masters degree was having to worry about what I was going to do afterwards. I felt like I had already been through a similar process in the last year of undergrad. This time, however, I knew that I wanted to get some experience working in a developing country. Despite my love of studying development and contemplating these issues in papers, conferences and Model-UN simulations, I was feeling a bit restless. It was time to (finally) leave academia and tackle things in the real world.

Looking for a job in development, however, can make anybody a bit crazy. You need experience to get experience! You need experience plus a sub-sub-sub-specialization in creating rural, small-scale, gender-mainstreamed, income-generating, organic agriculture projects! Want to work for the UN? Well, they aren’t hiring nationals of your country this year! You want paid field experience too? Good luck with that. Before giving up completely and switching my MSc degree to something 'practical' like finance (the ‘other’ side of the LSE), I decided to attend the international volunteering fair up at SOAS.

I have long been skeptical of volunteer abroad programs, so I went into the fair with low expectations. After all, I was going to have a Masters degree in Development. I couldn’t justify paying money to spend three weeks in a developing country to do a job that could easily be done by somebody who lived in that country and needed paid work (like construction, which is a focus of a lot of these projects). I wanted something that would give me a longer period of relevant experience and hopefully some training so that I could one day get one of those elusive development jobs. I also wanted to do something that would let me use some of the skills I already had.

Then, I found Restless Development. I talked a bit to the young woman behind their table, but in the chaos of the volunteering fair I didn’t really make a decision to apply with them until I started researching the organization in my own time. The more I found out, the more I liked what they had to offer.

First, youth empowerment is one of the most important issues in the world today. The Arab Spring can arguably be attributed to the restlessness of youth fed up with not having their voices heard. Young people also make up a huge percentage of the world’s population, and are concentrated in developing countries where unemployment is high. Restless Development tackles this issue by giving young people the knowledge and skills to participate in policy-making processes and make informed decisions about their reproductive health and livelihoods. 

Second, Restless Development offered me a chance to use my skills. As an International Volunteer Peer Educator, I will play a direct role in delivering information about reproductive health and livelihoods to young Ugandans by running workshops, setting up and supporting youth clubs and resource centres, working on community outreach and organizing public events. I spent a lot of my time in university organizing conferences, chairing meetings, and helping other young people get informed and get involved. These were all things that I could do again but in a different context. As well, all Restless Development volunteers get a month of training at the start of their placement, and all of us do the monitoring and evaluation of our projects. On top of learning to fundraise, this experience is invaluable in the development world.

Finally, I chose Restless Development because their methods speak to the quality of their work. I really love the fact that Restless Development uses not only international volunteers, but nationals and locals as well. This means that in Uganda, I will be working with young Ugandans who can ensure the sustainability of our projects and continue to be leaders in development in their own country. I know that while I won’t radically change the world in six months, I will learn from and share my experiences and ideas with young people who affect policy today and will continue to do so in the future. This isn't just empty optimistic rhetoric - last year, Restless Development led a group of youth-focused organizations to develop the country's first ever Youth Consultation on the National Development Plan. Six of their twelve recommendations have actually been included in the new national plan, and trained youth leaders are monitoring the plan's implementation. 

I am embarking on this experience hoping to contribute, but expecting to learn a lot as well. Keep reading to find out what my perspective on development is like going into Uganda, and how it changes.

L

Hi there!

Hi. Welcome to my blog.

If you’re here, reading this very first post, chances are it’s because you know me in real life, or because you know somebody that knows me, or because the Google algorithms failed and this blog showed up. Hopefully if you’re reading this in the very far away future, it’s because I am wildly successful, having dazzled the world with my solutions for problems in international development (with accompanying TED talk, obviously). Either way, I am still going to introduce myself.

I’m Lauren. B.A. Soon-to-be-MSc. Also a foodie, a feminist, a romantic, a voracious reader, a runner, a linguist, a philosopher, a nerd, and a fashionista, when I am not in leggings for months on end (thank you, grad school). I LOVE to travel and want to go everywhere. I have just finished the requirements for my MSc in Development Studies at the London School of Economics. After 18+ continuous years of schooling, the past 8 of which I spent much time thinking about international politics and development issues, I’m heading into the real world. In January 2012 I will be heading to Uganda for six months to DO development work for the first time. I am SO excited!

In Uganda, I will be working with an incredible organization called Restless Development. Their mission is to place young people at the forefront of change and development by empowering youth to engage in policy processes, to make responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health, and to acquire the skills needed to pursue meaningful livelihood opportunities. This means that I will be working with young people for young people to make sure that we take charge of our own present and future.

This blog is a way of keeping my amazing friends and family updated while I am living on yet another continent! Until my departure, I will be posting updates about my trip to Uganda, information about fundraising (more on this below), and my thoughts on various issues connected to development work. I hope that when I return from Uganda, this blog can continue to be a place where I discuss important current issues and debates as I find my own place in the world.

Finally, this wouldn’t be a blog about development if I didn’t start to answer the following question: what can you do? I am very fortunate to have been able to study development and to have the opportunity to do work on the ground. However, there are still many things you can do if you are not going to devote weeks or months or years or a career to development but you still want to make a difference. Here are my starting suggestions:

1. Support me! I need to fundraise $6700 to support my trip to Uganda. This not only covers my flight, training costs, and living expenses for six months, but also supports the projects I will be working on as well as Restless Development’s other ongoing work. I have already raised over $2500, and I will be holding some fundraising events throughout the fall (stay tuned, especially if you are in Calgary or Vancouver!). I am even running a half-marathon (that is 13.1 miles, people) in November. I will be calling on you to donate, so please visit my Just Giving page, or see me in person. Any amount helps.

2. Stay informed. Read this blog, read books (fiction and non-fiction), and read a variety of news. Being informed has infinite benefits for you, your community, and the world. You become smarter (and smart is sexy, if you ask me). Your democracy and your planet can become healthier if you make more informed choices. You can learn to sort through a barrage of conflicting information (Does aid work? Why do we give so much with so few results? How do we know what organizations to support?) to make a positive difference in the world. To this end, I will be sharing a recommended reading list and book reviews in the coming months.

3.   Share the love. Share this blog with your family, friends, co-workers, significant others, and twitter followers. Let them know that I am fundraising, and I will love you forever. Also, be sure to talk to them about current issues! Comment on this blog, share your opinion through your own social media platform, and educate others.

I hope you enjoy following me through my next great adventure.

Until next time,

L