September 2008 Project UB Update
A PDF of this report can be downloaded here.
A Focus on Training
A key focus of Development Nepal’s activity in Sunsari over the last six months has been providing training for UCHEP staff and the facilitators in the new Project Ujyalo Bhabisya communities. So far two major training courses have been undertaken, and a third is taking place at the end of August.
Training in Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) took place at the end of May. Ten new facilitators took part, along with four Project Ujyalo Bhabisya (Project UB) and UCHEP permanent staff. PRA is a key activity to be used to ensure Project UB meets the real needs of the communities it operates in.
The participants learned about PRA tools such as social and resource mapping, wellbeing ranking, and problem identification and prioritisation. These tools are used to create a village profile: determining a community’s needs, taking into account both the resources available locally and challenges faced by the members of the community. The training was delivered over five days through a series of lectures, games and discussions. Learning was consolidated through practical exercises in the field.
Two of Project UB’s key activities undertaken by local facilitators are the adult literacy classes and children’s supplementary classes. To enable the facilitators in the new Project UB communities to run these sessions, a seven day course in non-formal education was run in early July. The new facilitators learned how to teach literacy and numeracy through a combination of lectures, games, songs, presentations and group discussions. They were taught practical skills for lesson planning and delivery, with an emphasis on making classes engaging so as to maintain the interest of the students and therefore increase the effectiveness of the teaching. In addition, the facilitators were given an insight into the different factors that can negatively affect or cut short learning.
In each of the new communities, Project UB has set up a savings group. These groups encourage people to pay into a revolving loan fund, which provides the opportunity for them to borrow from the fund when they feel they have a viable business idea. In order to make these groups a success, and to more generally promote the habit of saving, a course is currently being run by the Facilitation Centre for Business Development (FACEBUD) – an organization specialising in micro-credit enterprise programmes in Sunsari – for those members of the community who will be running the savings groups.
The FACEBUD course will cover the concept and process of saving; the responsibilities, role and regulation of the saving/credit mobilisation committee; the role of group members in saving/credit mobilisation; identification and mobilisation of local resources for group and community development; and practical skills for maintaining savings ledgers and pass books, and for monitoring the progress of the group.
Building Capacity for Sustainability
Project UB and UCHEP staff have attended each of the training courses that have been run this year to build up their capacity to deliver the training themselves in the future, including any refresher training that may be required. In this way we hope to guarantee as much as possible the sustainability of the project, as well as increasing Project UB’s efficiency by reducing future training costs. Building the capacity of local actors transfers skills to communities, develops confidence and reduces dependencies.
This process of institutional capacity building and training of local facilitators will continue over the course of the year. We hope that future training courses will give the facilitators the skills to deliver:
- business and income generation training
- kitchen gardening training
- hygiene, sanitation and nutrition workshops
- sexual and reproductive health workshops
- instruction in basic rights, and gender and social inclusion
Nepal Floods
The Koshi dam on the Saptakoshi river in Sunsari district of Nepal collapsed on Monday, 18 August after breaching surrounding embankments, flooding neighbouring villages.
Our main co-ordinator at UCHEP has informed us that the former Project UB communities at Madhuwan-9, and West Kushaha-6 and 7 have been directly affected. Telephone services are almost entirely unavailable, and the highway linking the east and west sides of the country has been severely damaged in parts.
Project Ujyalo Bhabisya is continuing to function within 2008 communities and the savings group training is unaffected.
More information on the flooding can be found on the BBC and Development Nepal will post updates online on the status of present and former UB communities as more information becomes available from UCHEP.