Wednesday June 12th

We are staying in a small Hotel in a secure compound in the middle of Ruyigi only a 10 minute walk to the ActionAid office.

Presentation

In the morning I was given a detailed presentation of what ActionAid do, what they have achieved so far and how they impact the community. Very enlightening. I was hugely impressed about the transparency of how they work. I was told what assets are owned by actionaid, who is employed on what basis and for why and shown the budget. It doesn't get any clearer than that. The bottom line is they do unbelievably good work on a very limited budget.

ActionAid have changed their strategy from a reactive relief giving organisation to a long term strategy. They call it HRBA, which is simply Human Rights Based Approach. What this means is they empower the community with training and education and encourage self-help. That said they do combine this long term with some immediate support.

The present described many of the achievements of actionaid so far in Burundi, these include;

  

• Building new schools, over 30.
• Setting up granaries to supply cheap seeds.
• Associations Established; (Networks of people trained to help themselves)
• Saferu - Network of Women -164 Association members
• CADEC - Food Security - 147 Association Members
• REFARA - Reflect - Adult Learning
• Reseau - PTA
• RAAP - Food Security

3500 women and girls participated in sessions to teach about domestic violence with a proportion taking their cases forward and supported by ActionAid

Communities taking more ownership, running schools on their own. 

I've barely touched on the achievements, I am going to try and get a document from the action aid guys, they have them but they will need translating from French!

School Competitions

After the presentation we headed off to one of the local schools (built by actionaid) to watch the semi-finals of the local school competitions, the finals of which we will be watching on International Day of the African Child this Sunday June 16th. We watched a game of football by the boys followed by a dancing competition by the girls, very impressive. The football was played for most in bare feet on a pitch that wasn't a pitch but an uneven plot of land in the middle of the school.

The incredible part of all this bit was that it was the brainchild of Josias, the ActionAid sponsorship manager who has been with me all this time. The games were now in their second year and getting better each time. He had come up with the idea and presented it to the schools who followed up his idea and arranged the games. A great achievement for Josias, the schools and ActionAid. The aim of the games is to promote cohesion amongst children in the community, create awareness around issues that are affecting child rights and to promote child sponsorship for all children in the community.

Reflect Centre Visit

We headed back down to Butaganzwa to one of the Reflect buildings. One of around 40 built by action aid in the area. I had the Reflect centre explained to me but it wasn't until we visited did it's true purpose become apparent. to describe them, the reflect building are circular huts about 20 feet across with walls reaching about head height and post supporting a timber framed roof. They have benches arranged in a circle for the members to sit.

The purpose of a reflect centre is to teach literacy to the community and also agricultural or topical issues. Those who wish to join the program start a six month training course where they are taught to read and write as well as agricultural related info. The session we attended was teaching crop to prioritisation, at what time of the year as well as how to read and write the crop names. It also gives the community a chance to ask their own questions, raise initiatives or voice concerns. One which was raised for me was very relevant to the other sponsors back in the UK. There was a show of hands of how many parents that were attending this session had sponsored children, which was about half. One local man raised the point that because some sponsors don't send photos or even write, the children feel incredibly left out when they see others that do. It was an eye opener to see the impact that the sponsor letters has on the community first hand.

Once the six months training is up the members who were trained become their own association who can ask Action Aid for support for different initiatives. An example given to me was that sometimes land is not that fertile so they can ask action aid for a cow so they can use it's manure to increase their harvest.

Another role of the Reflect group is to Act as a self-funding micro finance source. To be a member of the Reflect Centre we visited, they started an initiative where members pay 500BF (20p) per week to the a fund which is then available to give as loans to a single member who has a particular challenge or initiative. The money is paid back with a 10% interest added, increasing the fund available to the community each time. These have been used for buying books for children to go to school during a period while a family is waiting for harvest to sell their produce. This seemed to be a perfect example of how Action Aid's HRBA works.