involvement of youth in global change

After a long process of writing, rewriting, adjusting and readjusting the country strategy plan one thing stayed the same. One focus area never changed: Nigerian Youth. This is not strange and surprising as in ‘People First’ VSO internationals new strategy youth also gets a big role to play in development.

The youth position paper ‘VSO and Youth’ is written in addition to the strategy to explain the important role youth fulfills in global development. According to the UN Population Division young people form the largest demographic group globally. Some figures to give an impression; in 2010 29% of the population in more developed was younger than 25 and this was 60% in least developed countries in the world. With these figures in the back of our minds VSO International recognises three core principles governing their work with young people. The first is applying an integrated approach to youth work. VSO recognises young people as actors, leaders and collaborators in development as well as targets or recipients of development programmes. Also participation of young people is essential, moving young people from targets to actors.  Involving and taking on greater responsibilities and agency in the designing, planning and implementation of development work. Final core principles of youth work, such as: learning by doing, supporting young people to be able to make the contributions they want and develop in ways they see as critical.

When you look around you in Nigeria, or maybe a bit broader West Africa, you see a huge group of young people; most of them un(der)employed or even unemployable. No wonder more and more funders are starting to focus on the youth as a tool to development. VSO Nigeria has now several programmes, in past and present, especially designed to involve Nigerian youth in community development. We have Nigerian Graduate Volunteering Programme (NGVP), to enable personal growth for young graduates by supporting rural communities as teachers in schools. We also have had experience with Global Xchange and Youth Action as programmes with the British Council. For these programmes young people (18 – 25) from the UK and Nigeria worked together in communities for 3 months in a row. As the name Global Xchange is already suggesting, the young Nigerians also went to the UK. The focus in all these programmes is on personal development and understanding of under-development of rural communities in all contexts.

Now VSO Nigeria renamed the Youth Action into VSO International Citizen Service (VSO ICS), this was in collaboration with the Department for International Development (DFID). Young Nigerians from all backgrounds will be recruited to work together in rural communities with similar UK youth. They will work in communities in Oyo, Kwara, Osun, Kaduna and Cross River State. The outcomes VSO Nigeria aims for with this programme are clear. First of all it aims for personal and social development for participating youth. Youth from all backgrounds are encouraged to take part in ICS, with this VSO Nigeria hopes to anticipate on interaction between different levels in society. As well as building confidence based on positive experience.  Secondly there is focus on community development. The groups will work closely together on projects within one community. This way VSO wants to make bigger impact in that community. The last, but not least, aim is to build a global network in which the youth will be acting as advocates for international development and agents for social change in their own communities and beyond.

As VSO ICS will start in July 2012, most partners came to Abuja for a participatory workshop on how to shape and build the programme for the different states we will be working with. Hope World Wide in Osun and Kwara state will kick off the programme. They did get a lot of support from all the other partners that will step in at a later date during 2012.

NYSC Reforms

Ever since the election violence there is the question should NYSC stay of should they stop the programme? Most votes now go for keep it but change it. Make it less military and more social and use it as a proper preparation for future work or business. So now there are reforms in the NYSC, The minister of Youth Development who is responsible for NYSC, as it is a parastatal of his Ministry, says it has to become more responsive to the national needs. He mentioned that all staff of NYSC needs to get on board of ‘the transformation train’ as it is now starting to move.

The reason why it was set up after the Biafran war was to create unity and understanding of all cultures in Nigeria and prevent any such thing as the Biafran war from happening again. The Corpers, the young graduates that are serving for the mandatory year, had to come to training camps where they got a introduction training, after the three weeks they are based at different organisations, their primary assignment, where they have to do some kind of internship. Most of these interships are not well organized and leave the corpers to do nothing, which results in corpers not showing up and wasting one year. Next to this primary assignment they have to do community development work and with this they can win awards, some of the awards give them employment, or a better chance to employment, straight after the NYSC-year. Some corpers belief in working hard for these awards others leave it like it is as they expect it to be a corruptive election anyway.

Now with the reforms the NYSC should become more dynamic, responsive and relevant to the nation and the future of the corpers. How they are going to arrange this is a big question mark. They did expand their administrative structure, they got more directors, but do they know what they have to do? Do they have a new strategic plan? How is this massive organization going to change? I think NYSC is one of the biggest employers in Nigeria. So many people are working in the headquarters and all state and local government offices. It is incredible. 

One thing I know and that is that VSO is now writing a plan to at least make a small difference on education and agriculture. The NGVP that I am working on will be different in the future, we are planning to implement it in the traditional service year. During the introduction the new Corpers are encouraged to attend one of the special schemes, one of those will be the NGVP scheme from October. We will recruit the best motivated and best skilled for our NGVP to support schools and communities in education and farming. As Bola and I are working on the proposal now it starts to look like a realistic scheme for which we should be able to get funds.

Only if not for the full harted ‘NO, we cannot work with VSO on NGVP’ from the Director General(DG) I would have full confident. The NO was to be clear for the NGVP post-NYSC as it is now. So for the current programme we have to find good funders quickly. However for the new NGVP as een in-service scheme in the mandatory NYSC year I still have hope. An not only I have hope also Mrs Awakasien, my counterpart within NYSC. After the meeting she got appointed as new assistant director for national volunteering, which give a bit of hope that the DG is willing to look into that. I guess he didn’t hear this part of Kenna’s story when she was introducing the reason for the meeting.

As it comes now to the end of my placement I hope it will all be okay next year, at least for the new NGVP. How it will all work out for the old one I don’t know as I have the idea that multitasking is not the best in this place.

getting started

Lots of things are going on lately. Finally my work is getting started now I get to the end of my placement. It is a strange feeling though getting to the end of my placement. I have mixed feelings about Naija, about my work, about the sustainability of the programme and about a lot more. 
Lately I have had some discussions with Yakiem about the NGVP and my role and responsibilities. I don't understand it anymore, at least if I have to describe my feelings about those discussions. I have to hand the NGVP over to partners but there are no partners and I also am not allowed to identify them and start the path to partnership with them, at the same time Yakiem provided me with all the information how to start a partnership. Then you have Yakiem, who is starting up new partnerships just on a hunch and in Kano (a city where we as international VSO’s are not allowed to go). We have had a meeting with Ladidi who came for this occasion to Abuja, she asked for help in teacher training for current teachers as only 25% of their teachers was qualified as teachers, but Yakiem is so focused on NGVP that he didn’t really listened to this and just started talking about how to implement the NGVP in the Kano State Senior Secondary School Management Board (KSSSSMB). Ladidi was a bit struck back because they have enough teachers, even a lot on a list to be employed.  
As second frustration, out of experience, I know that no Governmental organisation is willing to take responsibility as long as they sign something official. So I really try to get them involved, but Yakiem is questioning it all too much. I don't know if it is trust or anything but it is annoying as I see NGVP die if we don't start signing contracts of one sort or the other. 
But I just told him I will not take any decisions anymore, I will let him decide what is needed, I am almost leaving and shouldn't stress myself too much. With this in the back of your head the next part of this blog will sound strange and dubious, because I still try to get organisations on board to carry on this NGVP. Last week for example I have had a wonderful first meeting with the Ministry of Science and Technology in Lafia. It was a advocacy visit for NGVP and VSO, to see if we can become partners in improving science education. They looked like a quite well organized small Ministry with a lot of good ideas. They have a resource development department in which they develop teaching aids for science and vocational training. They showed me around after we have had a small chat about their wishes and our opportunities. They also took me to one of the four vocational training centers they have in Nassarawa. Really nice! They are really trying to give school drop-outs and unemployable youth a change to start their own business. After each course a participant is entitled to get some materials to really start of a business. No money but materials, which I think is good. There are two different programmes one for children that don’t have their WAEC or NECO or any other exam-certificate, and one for young adults and women who need to generate their own income and want to do this through a trade. At the surface it all look quite well organized, but to get a real impression VSO needs to do a OrgScan or Organsation assessment. Together with the first impressions I gave this advice to Yakiem as a conclusion of my visit.
Somehow I sometimes think I am doing the right thing although it isn’t always what Yakiem wants or expects. At least I know I am appreciated by the people I work with and the organisations I start talking to. Appreciation that is shown in different ways, like getting a big heap of yams and a ride home by a private driver ;-)

strategic thinking is hard

This week I was for one week in Ilorin to start a strategic planning process with the Ministry of Education and the stakeholders of the Nigerian Graduate Volunteering Programme.

The first day was all about the Memorandum of Understanding that VSO has to sign with the Ministry, so for this day I only invited Ministry staff. I had hoped all directors would be there and the Permanent Secretary would take part in some sessions, but it was a bit too much to ask. The Honorable Commissioner did do the opening and that meant a lot to the staff. They felt supported by this gesture, which made them more open en free in their plans.

I tried to make it as participatory as I could without leading them to much in certain ways. During the first activity, a small discussion about the partnership principles, I understood that you will have to structure the discussions otherwise they will go nowhere or anywhere. I also noticed that the discussion culture here was different then in the Northern states, where hierarchical systems are more important; a normal staff there will never openly disagree with a senior. Here it was totally open and they were even looking a bit funny when I told them that I wished for a discussion without hierarchical limitations. It was a nice feeling. I know I steered the discussion a little bit too much into the ‘ownership’ question, as this is most often the hinder for an equal partnership. The participants, as I expected, saw ownership as a financial commitment and said that for that I only could go to the Honorable’s office. So I had to encourage them thinking about ownership in different ways. Was hard but we got some good imput.

The second activity was the SWOT-analysis on the functional and organizational activities in the Ministry as well as to reflect on relations with other stakeholders. This was interesting; we worked in groups of 5 to get the first information on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. So much came out of this; almost every group had their own unique input when we were collecting the information on central charts. Then the difficult questions started, questions that Nigerians in general don’t ask. You could notice they had problems linking the four categories from the first part of the exercise to answer the analytical questions. It was hard to organize this discussion and to keep the participants focused on each question at the time. During the writing of the report that evening I discovered that I had answers to questions I thought I forgot to ask. I was lucky, by the way, that a Corper was writing the note during the whole meeting. Although she did a bit chaotic and I was really happy with my good memory, whitout her help I wouldn’t be able to get these answers al sorted out.

After the lunch only half of the group turned up for the final part, this happens more often in Nigeria; lunch is seen as a last activity. After lunch also light stayed away what made it really hard for the participants to respond adequate on the questions and to get them involved in writing objectives for the Memorandum of Understanding. So I speeded through this and left it for the MoU-committee to finish.

Day 2 was with all stakeholders in NGVP; this was a bigger meeting with 30 participants at the prime time. The introduction on VSO and NGVP took only little time after which the first activity, stakeholder analysis, started with a thought shower. Who are the stakeholders in the NGVP? We came down with a list of 18 stakeholders of which MoE and NYSC were seen as major ones, but also the schools, media, communities and philanthropist were seen as important stakeholders. It was funny that only one person mentioned VSO;-).

The rest of the day was about the future planning; what do we need to do to make it work? I short we can say ….. this will depend on the committee that will be working on de framework and plans …. And ofcourse finance! Money is so important. There needs to be a big stakeholder who is willing to lobby for this programme to get the money from other stakeholders or investors.  This because the Ministry is most likely not willing to pay for the whole amount of the allowance and getting the allowance from different places will ask to much organization. I at least have a lot of input from this meeting and a committee who will work on writing a plan for NGVP Kwara.

Links tour

This week we have had guests from Ethiopia, VSO Ethiopia and partners were interested in the National Volunteering schemes of VSO Nigeria. We have had 5 weeks to prepare for this tour, VSO Nigeria didn't have time to organize all this as this month is incredibly busy so they hired a temporary tour guide, Betty, to organize all. In the beginning all went well there was nothing much going on. Joel, and other international volunteer, and I were helping Betty with the visits to the field as we both work with national volunteers. Joel is based in PanYam in Plateau State and works for Secure Lively hoods, farmers in his region use community volunteers to help during the farming season.

All well till Kenna, our country director, came back from her study tour to South Africa, there she got to understand that no VSO Ethiopian staff was coming but more federal ministry staff. She got nervous with this knowledge and we had to change our plans for te tour as we had to arrange a meeting with some persons at at least the same level as the guests. So we ended up having to arrange a meeting with the Governor of Nassarawa State, as I and Andy do have our contacts within that administration. Although our contacts told us that the Governor was travelling we still had to try to arrange this meeting.  A lot of stress that is what is gave us, especially Kenna.

During the week it still was unclear if we would or wouldn’t meet with him on the Wednesday. As we left for Lafia on Tuesday to guide the guests along two participating schools in Nassarawa we showed what the NGVP was all about. The National Volunteers in the schools were terrific in answering all the difficult questions the Ethiopians asked. They were especially interested in the NYSC in relation to NGVP and the training they get. During this day Betty got the question to organise a meeting with the Director of NYSC. She dared to say it was no problem we could just go there. I looked back at her and told her there where major security issues at that office and you cannot go in just like that with an international group. Thereby we have had big problems getting a meeting before so she couldn’t promise something like this. But in the end on Friday we had the meeting and it turned out to be an important one for me as I finally met the person who is the brain behind my scheme. I hope I will be able to speak with her more often as she can give me good background info and she can get me deeper into the NYSC organisation to settle this programme better.

Kagbu B good practice!

 As you might know I did organize a workshop last month, in February. One of the results of this was that 2 of my Nigerian Graduate Volunteers thought they had to share what they learned. Share it maybe with their colleagues in the school. So they started talking about their plans with the principal of the school and they wanted to share their plan with the chief of the local government inspectorate, CEI. The principal at first was okay with the idea as long it wasn’t too big. They shouldn’t invite me or other volunteers to help them. Also their move towards the local government was that well appreciated. But the principal took them because he knew they should inform them about the program. When they came back from that meeting they came back with a bigger plan than ever. The CEI really liked the plans and wanted to join in on the first one after that he would see if it is possible to organize it in other schools in Nassarawa Eggon local government area. His colleagues in the office didn’t agree though they said these plans were an insult for the serving teachers in the schools. They had their education and were properly trained teachers. The CEI was furious when he heard this argument, he said them of all should know being a teacher is an ongoing learning process and if the teachers are not willing to learn they should not be the ambassadors of learning. Hear, hear!! Thank you CEI. So now after this meeting my volunteers came home and they had to think about organizing a workshop that can be copied into other workshops in other schools. So the Saturday that I spend in Lafia was a good moment for us to meet and talk about the plans and the sessions in the workshops. How could they best go about it? What were the best sessions to copy from the workshop they have had in February? What did they need for those sessions? Who would they ask as professionals to do a session? Habu and I gave them some pointers and I promised that I would be there during the first workshop in the series as it is always nerve wrecking to do something like this for the first time (and of course I wanted to experience what they picked up from my own workshop in February and I didn’t want them to fail in the heat of the fire with the CEI and DCEI in the room as VSOs name was also on the line) So we decided that Saturday that I would come to Kagbu B on the Wednesday before the workshop which would take place on the Thursday. I promised to bring materials like flipchart paper, markers, jotters and biros so we could prepare materials that they can use over and over again during the series of workshops in the different schools.

It was nice to stay in a small community like Kagbu B. Kagbu B is a small town, not connected to water or electricity as we can say not really connected to civilization. This is not because there are no well-educated citizens, but more that the people that permanent living in the village don’t want too much involvement and money from the outside. They have a pride that they can fix things themselves. Even all teachers in the school are coming from their own community, which is quite special. I stayed in Fatima’s room while she moved for one night into another room in the block that was realized by the principal for volunteers and corpers assigned to this school. Nice rooms, but without toilets, at least you have to walk 100m to go to a squatting toilet that is not just in the bush.

The Wednesday was about different kind of prep, we had to think about a programme, Clements already found some nice quotes to put up on the walls which had to be written on cardboard. Students helped us with that, as I was trying to involve the students a bit more than just writing by asking them annoying questions (my students will recognize this immediately, I always ask why they do the things they do them, want to let them think about their actions) about what the most important words were in the sentences.  In the meanwhile Fatima was cooking and preparing lunch for the next day. That afternoon Clements had to do an extra lesson for SSS3 to prepare them for upcoming exams so I observed to see if his ways changed, and they did! Clements was a different person in front of the classroom compared to the first time I saw him. He even told me that he now likes teaching as he first loaded it during his corper year. YEAH! Did have impact on him! That evening we started preparing flipcharts. I had the feeling I really needed to guide them in this. They were somehow insecure about what to write or draw.

The Thursday morning Fatima had to go to Lafia to get the drinks and snacks for the lunch and Clements and I were to decorate the hall. The other Nassarawa volunteers came in an hour before the programme would start and they had to play their own role during the first and second session. It was funny to see how relaxed they were about this. They didn’t really prepare themselves as well as I would like to see them do, but I let them. I wanted to see what would happen so I could reflect on this. So around 10.30 we started as the CEI and DCEI arrived and the teachers all had eaten their breakfast. The first session was the ‘learning tree’: going back to the roots of learning in the early childhood. Fatima and Stephen were leading this session. After that there was a good practice and bad practice example by resp. Eduard and Stephen. Eduard was interrupted by the leaving of the CEI and didn’t really prepare his session well why I was not too happy about this good practice lesson. Good practice should be good practice in whole not only because you introduce a game during a lesson. Preparation is so important for a good lesson!

I liked the sessions to the basics of learning and learning styles after which the DCEI presented a paper about the importance of the teaching job. We closed the day with the introduction of four different games teachers can easily use during their practice.

All and all it went well, I am proud of what I saw and experienced. It was good to see all my Nigerian Graduate Volunteers from one state work together like that. I know this is the beginning of more in this group of youngsters. Thank you you just made my work proven sustainable!