Professional Summary

Dear friends and family,

I am presently working as a professional volunteer in Western Tanzania for an international, US based organization. In this capacity I am the regional program coordinator for an exciting initiative entitled Tujenge Pamoja, which means working together in Swahili. Tujenge Pamoja is being newly implemented in Western Tanzania (Kigoma and Tabora) regions. I have joined the team during the initial phases, which means facilitating establishment of the main office in Kigoma region and, soon, the satellite office in Tabora region. I have been actively involved in recruiting and managing new staff, coordinating interns from the United States and Uganda, as well as soliciting data. As the program coordinator I am the liaison between the local communities and organizational headquarters in Washington, DC. This involves introducing our new activities to the local leadership and administration as well as to the potential beneficiaries—indigenous and community based organizations (CBOs) caring for orphans and vulnerable children. Tujenge Pamoja is seeking to build the leadership and technical capacity of these organizations to provide better quality of care to this vulnerable population. One of the means that we have been able to enact this vision, thus far, is through workshops for the directors and leaders of these organizations, which allows us to simultaneously garner the level of capacity as well address relevant training needs. Through a self-administered survey we have been working to identify all CBOs in the region. I have been moving through the region to meet these organizational leaders at their sites of work in order to see how they serve their communities. In this vein, I have been developing assessment tools utilizing techniques of observation that I learned while serving as a social welfare officer in New York City, including child safety and risk assessments and other needs assessment tools.

All in all I am enjoying this wonderful experience living in a new locality, which is deeply impacted from structural challenges quite different from those I see on the streets of my native Bronx, New York City—but which are every bit as devastating. With the amassing of political refugees in Kigoma from Congo and Burundi, especially, along with an active HIV/AIDS epidemic, child labor, and poor employment opportunities, I see a crucial opportunity for development, especially participatory development. I am thinking all the time about what difference I can make, as a simple girl from the U.S. and how a merging of skills which I have acquired in my academic and professional career could be useful by some small measure here, such as post-colonial analysis, poverty studies, health, aid and welfare policies, identity studies, and intergovernmental processes.

I am uncertain how long I will be fortunate enough to serve in this capacity as a volunteer without financial remuneration and desperately hope to be able to remain in direct contact with vulnerable populations, on the ground. My vision is to learn quickly from the people I meet, as I am awestruck by the generosity shown by communities with few and fleeting resources to take care of their own victims. The volunteerism which I am witnessing in Kigoma is akin to that which I observed and documented in my thesis research in the Philippines, where I observed lay village women providing integral health care to their peers, where there is often 1 trained medical doctor to 50,000 or more persons in a rural locality. I hope to honor the message that the informal orphan and vulnerable caregivers from Western Tanzania show me every day, as volunteers from their own communities, by doing my part to make sure that their work is acknowledged and that changes at the policy level reciprocate their efforts.

I know for certain that more people from inner cities and under-represented populations should be involved in the decision-making processes which impact disempowered people, the world over.

In my endeavor I have countless people to thank who have made such a voyage a reality for me. I have been away from home for nearly six months and am seeking employment and research opportunities which will sustain me in this mission. Please keep me in your thoughts and hearts as I navigate this uncertain terrain.

With love, heartily,

Christie

Check out this video featuring my field work in Kigoma, TZ:
http://http://current.com/items/90739278_capacity-building-field-research-in-tanzania-with-ark-foundation-of-africa-kigoma.htm

Originally posted: Friday, August 21, 2009 at 1:27pm