Blog 1

Well, this is my first post from Northern Ghana! Saboba District to be exact. The district is like a province, and I live in its main town. My bad on the delay in the writing, but after you see the caliber of my writing, you will probably thank me that I only write once in a while! Lol…..But I am definitely going to try to write a lot more and the best would be if you have any topics or things you want to hear about, I will try on that. For those of you who were in University English with me, you know that its not a very strong subject for me :P….but I think if I write on what people are interested on, that might be more fun to read. Also to that, this post is a little more work-related and if you have questions, or would like to talk about things happening here or the work that is being done, that would be amazing too. I would love to hear your questions, ideas, and thoughts because your perspective is valuable and always helps…and I really love learning, talking and collaborating.

So for this first one, I thought I would write a bit about what I am doing here. I am working with the District Assembly (like district government) to encourage evidence-based decision making. What does that term mean? That’s what I am trying to find out still! J But basically what it boils down to is that the District Assembly is in charge of choosing where boreholes (water sources), schools, health centres, latrines (toilet holes), essentially any infrastructure are built. What we are trying to promote and help with is the planning process in all of these – ensuring that the appropriate amount of data collection, analysis, and strategic thinking goes into making the decisions on what infrastructure is built and where it goes. The planning process is vital because:

a) Funds are limited (only few communities can be assisted at a certain time)

b) There are communities out there that are in dire need: some communities which get all their water (drinking/bathing/cooking) from a river/pond, or those which have 0 children going to school because it is too far or they are blocked by water, or those communities which have to travel 3-4 hours by foot to reach a health facility which may be too expensive.

Our goal (the organization I am with – Engineers Without Borders) is that with an effective planning process, the communities that are in most urgent need will be helped first with the right interventions when there the opportunity exists (funds are available). Now, as you can imagine, it is not as simple as finding out what the communities need and providing them with it. There are many other factors which come into play (let me know if you want me to go in more detail about this). But we figure that if we help the District Assembly provide as much clear evidence and useful analysis on where infrastructure should be placed, then it will give the best chance that people who are in greatest need will be most effectively helped.

Now a little more about my role. What we are trying to do here is build capacity to plan. Essentially, whenever something is being done, we are encouraging the government to go through a planning process! There are two parts to this – building the capacity and skills to collect data, organize, analyze (using the computer), and perhaps more importantly, encouraging the mindset and behaviour to plan, strategize and make decisions based on detailed evidence.

So for me, this involves trying to be a part of any process, however big or small – (whether its being part of the financial budget team for the district, monitoring current projects, preparing strategic plans and community needs to the national & regional governments/donors, typing annual reports, even organizing shelves of old data or collecting and entering data for a district-wide needs survey). And then trying to build the desire and capacity with everyone to consult different officers and departments, collect data, analyze it (primarily using the computer and best friend, Microsoft Excel!), and utilize it to make conclusions or decisions. The eventual dream is that this type of rigorous work will not be included only in planning, but it will become common-place in monitoring & evaluation, or testing out and justifying any initiative that is done by the government, etc.

Ok, I do not want to ramble too much….I am sorry for this long post! And really if it sounds complicated, it’s not! In one line – using data as evidence for decisions! The complicated part is getting this done! Haha.

Anyways, I promise that the next post will be shorter and hopefully I will get a little more interesting everytime or my writing will improve.

Lastly, I also just wanted to say how much I miss you all back home. There isn’t a day I don’t think about you all, and hope that you are all doing really great! Probably the thing that has hit me the hardest is how absolutely grateful I am to have incredible family and friends.

Much love!

P.S – my e-mail is shamir.tanna@gmail.com if you get a chance, shoot me an e-mail on how you are doing – would love to hear about anything. I can’t get on Facebook from here (yeah…it hurts bad! And I am trying every which way to connect somehow.. lol…….So if there are updates on FB, its from my sister)..… And again if there is anything you would want to hear about or you want to talk more about my work above or things happening here in general, that would be really great – let me know by email. Thanks so much.

PPS – I thought every post I would try to include an inspirational quote. These babies get me by a lot of the time (in addition to a little Akon music)! J

“You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this think we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down” – Mary Pickford