So like...what do you actually DO in Rwanda?

Sometimes the obvious and mundane are necessary. This is a blog about what I'm actually working on here in Rwanda. In case you were curious.

I am interning with CARE International here in Kigali.  CARE’s tagline is “Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty”, which I believe makes me some kind of super hero. The office here is involved in a variety of different projects…water and sanitation, gender-based violence, early childhood development, HIV/AIDS, orphans, environmental issues, etc. I’m working in the Orphaned and Vulnerable Children department, specifically with the COSMO project which essentially gives community support and mentoring to orphans living in child-headed households. (Brief background information: a government-funded study in 2007 found that according to the meticulously drafted criteria for “vulnerable children” a full 83% of Rwanda’s youth were defined as “vulnerable”. I met a group the other day that was recently commissioned to find different data with modified criteria. I'm not sure if it's because the government is embarrassed by the state of affairs or if the criteria really were too broad. Maybe both.) CARE is looking to transition itself out of this project in the Musanze district of Rwanda (near the Congo border…gorilla territory, and sometimes guerilla territory), so I have been commissioned to do a comprehensive "service mapping" of the area.

Basically, they want to know ALL of the organizations that provide services to the current beneficiaries of the program, what they specifically offer, and how to obtain those services. The idea is to come up with a final tool that could be of use to local mentors so that the children will be able to continue to be aided after CARE pulls out. Also, it will only help the service providers if they themselves have a better understanding of who does what for whom. Rwanda, in addition to being the Land of 1000 Hills, is also the Land of 1000 NGOs. Unfortunately, I get the impression that many of these programs are not all that well coordinated with each other, creating a lot of duplication. (Perhaps a blog entry for later.) This exercise should expose some of that. It will also help in the "impact evaluation" of the project. For instance, if we find that certain services simply are not offered, that would explain a lack of access.

It may seem fairly easy to collect this information, but remember that I do NOT speak Kinyarwanda, nor do phones work all the time, nor do people always keep appointments or return forms or e-mails (or so I've been warned). Doing business in rural Rwandan highlands is not on my list of things at which I excel. There is also a fairly involved "political" process with which to contend, so everything we do has to be routed through and approved by district officials as well. It's an interesting process.

As part of my professional project for school, I’ll be conducting interviews with child heads of household about their social interactions. Long story short, there’s a lot of research out there about physical/biological needs of orphans, and even mental health needs of orphans (particularly those who’ve suffered trauma), but there’s not much in the way of research or programming concerning peer relationships/friendships/play as a constitutive element of being…well…happy. Or at least not clinically depressed.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m also dabbling in the Early Childhood Development (ECD) area, currently working on researching “best practices” for home based early childhood care models. CARE is building three ECD centers up in Musanze, but they’re also evaluating the sustainability of having children cared for in the home rather than investing in physical structures. I'm putting together a literature review to profile existing success stories.

And there, folks, is a very dry yet informational blog post. Thanks for reading.