Reflections

Hello!

We are currently in the midst of writing our final report for the summer, a document which summarizes the primary outcomes of our projects and partnerships for the past three months and outlines their ongoing activities. Writing about our accomplishments this summer has forced us to reflect on the experience as a whole, including the many lessons we have learned along the way. 

Here are some of these lessons compiled from our International Team and Community Consultants:
Although these lessons were shared by Canadian and Tanzanian SIHA members alike, these insights will shape each of us in different ways moving forward. Our most important lesson, however, is that despite the countries and oceans that divide us, we have far more in common than we had previously thought. In this sense, we have never been closer.

Thank you for reading our blog posts. We hope they have been interesting and informative.

Kwaherini (Good-bye!)

SIHA International Team 2016

A Week in the Life

As SIHA International Team members, some of us have found that it difficult to verbalize to friends, family, or potential sponsors, the work we really do here. If we built schools, for example, people understand - there is no need for further explanation. We, on the other hand, “engage with key local and international stakeholders in the development and implementation of sustainable community driven health initiatives,’ a mandate with activities that are more difficult to explain than laying down bricks or building the walls of a school.

As we acknowledge that our work may not be as “clear-cut” as that of other groups who work or volunteer abroad, we thought it would be helpful to provide a rough timeline of the week in the life of a member of the SIHA International Team.

Please note that activities in this chart were drawn from various weeks of Summer 2016 and may not necessarily reflect those of future summers.

As you can see above, our time in the office is spent one of two ways - working on current project activities or planning for the future of SIHA’s International Branch. The latter may include activities such as creating an updated curriculum for the pre-departure sessions of next year’s team, or formulating a document that outlines our long-term goals. As the current travel team becomes next year’s executives members, the experience gained from these strategic planning meetings such as facilitation and knowledge of organizational processes will prove invaluable.

Thanks for reading! Talk to you later this week.

SIHA International Team

Road Trip

As Travel Team members of SIHA’s International Branch, we have to make many decisions on behalf of SIHA as an organization regarding projects. Planning projects can be thought of as taking a road trip and planning your route. The project plan ensures our activities (our route map) line up with SIHA’s Guiding Principles (route restrictions) so we can successfully achieve our objectives (reach our destination). While some decisions may come easily, others may challenge our personal beliefs or a clear choice may not be evident. The challenge lies in ensuring our plan aligns with our mission and vision and in justifying actions we wish to take. 

In the spring, the International Team members signed up for projects that interested them, or to which they felt a personal connection. We came to Tanzania looking forward to empowering people or organizations in addressing barriers to health in their community. However, following extensive in-country research and data collection, perhaps a given project for which we initially signed up no longer seems to fit within SIHA’s scope, or barriers have become too extensive to foster effective, sustainable change. This accurately describes the situation some team members are facing with few of the projects this summer.

                                                                                                                                                                
              Therefore, although we may be passionate about what a given project is trying to accomplish, our plan for the summer may in fact be to implement the steps necessary for it to discontinue. Regardless of the emotional implications of the situation, it is important to remember that our involvement in a project that is outside of our scope or capacity may be more detrimental to communities than helpful. As we are in the midst of evaluating our current initiatives and implementing steps involved in closing out some projects, this topic is especially relevant. Should we continue down the same road, take a detour, or just stop the car altogether? These are all important questions to ask ourselves as we write up our project plans.

       Luckily, each project team was able to submit a rough draft of their project plan before our trip to Zanzibar! Check out this group picture on Prison Island:

Life of Pi-esque Boating Adventure!

Safari njema! (Safe travels!) See you next week!

SIHA International Team

Little Victories

Mambo vipi! (What’s up?)

 

As we enter into our fourth week in Tanzania, a hot topic of discussion among us team members has been the amount of impact a group of eight students can realistically have over the course of three months in our host communities. A misconception about our working abroad is that we are donating our time to help those in need, when in reality the amount we gain from this experience far surpasses the amount we actually have the capacity to give. And as we begin to meet with members of community who have their own expectations of SIHA, this can be a very overwhelming thought.

 

Nonetheless, awareness of our limitations as a student-run organization is an important step. As the impact of the change we strive to make is not always immediately apparent,  it is important to be patient and remember the “little victories” that we accomplish along the way. For example, during a recent meeting, a leader of the Maasai notified us that as a result of SIHA providing subsidized bed nets to people in his community last summer, there were no Maasai deaths from malaria over the past year. Comments such as these reminds us that although our efforts favour our personal development over tangible impact in the community, our small accomplishments are appreciated and should not be dismissed. 

Thought-provoking discussions at our weekly Strategic Planning Meeting

Although three months is not a long time to be in-country, our lovely community consultants, Charles and Gladness, are in Tanzania year round to continue with project activities after our departure. As this is the first year community consultants are working with SIHA, we look forward to observing how their presence maximizes the impact we have, including improvement in project continuity, community engagement in projects, and community relations with SIHA.

 

Thank you again for reading. Next week we take a mid-summer trip to Zanzibar! Talk to you then.

 

SIHA Team 2016

www.siha.ca

Quads of Steel

Hello again everyone!

This week our team was at a bit of a standstill. In accordance with a new Tanzanian law that places stricter regulations on the activity of volunteer groups, we were not yet permitted to work to our host communities. With everyone’s mind becoming saturated from hours of project research, in the latter part of the week we decided to exercise our legs instead of our minds and bike to the villages in which we will be working to become more familiar with the route and the villages themselves.

Biking to the villages proved to be more difficult than anticipated, but nonetheless gratifying and enjoyable in its own way. Some challenges faced while biking in Tanzania include riding through deep sand, sharing the road with motorcyclists, beating the heat, and warmly returning greetings to roadside locals who were all eager to say “Hi” to us Wzungu (foreigners).

Gladness & Moni biking home from Kikongo

Eight kilometres southwest of Mlandizi, one of our host villages is Kikongo, in which SIHA’s health initiatives have been targeted primarily towards malaria and water sanitation. A highlight of our first visit here was being shown the rainwater collection system SIHA implemented back in 2012. It was exciting to see something we have been reading about in reports for the past year first-hand. On a second visit to Kikongo we also had the opportunity to meet with the standing WEO (Ward Executive Officer) to introduce the new team and inquire about his potential involvement in our projects.

SIHA also works in Mwanabwito (a village roughly twelve kilometres west of Mlandizi), the breathtaking route to which more than compensates for the longer bike ride. While waiting in Mwanabwito to have our introductory meeting with the VEO (Village Executive Officer), the SIHA team had the pleasure of watching schoolchildren exhaustingly playing ball for hours on end. We remembered, however, that water is only available 3 kilometres away at the Ruvu River, really driving home the issue of access to clean water in this community. In all, our time spent in Mwanabwito provided some necessary context for many of our projects this summer.

Our sixth team member, Maria, joins us today. We are excited to catch her up to speed in all that has gone down since our arrival and introduce her to all the lovely Tanzanians we have met thus far.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Baadae!

Website: www.siha.ca

Hamjambo from Tanzania!

Hey Everyone,

            We are SIHA’s International Travel Team reporting to you live from Mlandizi, Tanzania. SIHA is a student-run University of Alberta-based health program organization situated in the non-governmental field of public health. The 2016 team decided to start this blog to better inform potential SIHA applicants, future travel team members, and sponsors about the work we really do here.

We are all excited to have arrived in Tanzania and have spent the first week settling in: getting the hang of the local market, embracing bucket showers, and researching projects. Our team this year consists of our lovely project manager (Allie), our senior advisor (Jacqueline), two community consultants (Gladness and Charles - without whom we would be lost), in-country representative (Melkiory), as well as six travel team members: Moni, Jonas, Diana, Maria, Morg. A, and Morg. S. Our projects this summer are related to maternal health, malaria prevention, water access, and support of local organizations involved in health promotion. As SIHA as an organization is currently undergoing a transition from resource-based projects towards capacity building, our role this summer is to reassess our current projects so they better align with SIHA’s updated vision and mission.

This upcoming week we will be meeting with community members from Kikongo and Mwanabwito (the villages we work in) to inform the next steps to take with our projects. Work aside, our whole team travelled to Bagamoyo on Sunday and spent the day drinking coconuts, playing sports, and relaxing on the beach. Yes, it’s not all work over here! We have all fully adopted the concept of ‘Africa time’ but we will try and send out an update once a week.

Asante Sana (Thank you very much!)

If you want more information on SIHA check out our website. www.siha.ca

(Charles and Diana are missing!)