Appreciative Inquiry at Hamukaaka Village

On 18th December, a crew composed of 2 farmer/facilitators, 2 Community Development facilitators, 2 observers and I went to the Amasiko site to facilitate a three days Appreciative Inquiry (AI) workshop with the residents of the village where Amasiko is located.
While working for a Broederlijk Delen a Belgian NGO, from 1999 to 2004, I was exposed to AI and got a training in the TCDC training centre in Arusha Tanzania. It was a rather difficult paradigm shift to move a way from the conventional Problem Solving Approaches to an approach looking for success, achievements. what people are proud as a basis for a vision and development planning. Introducing it in rural communities here in Uganda has been a great challenge. So many communities have worked with external facilitation and learned about problem solving. How do you feel when every time a stranger comes to your village and s/he asks about what is wrong in your place?, what are your problems? Finally one sees his place only as place full of problems, without development opportunities. In some areas it's even worse: The more problems a village can produce in front of facilitators, the more help will come, is a believe in some communities. depressing isn't it?
Also in Hamukaaka village we faced a similar problem: During the introduction meeting, leaders expressed that their village is are poor, resident have no money, there is no development, no help, harvests are poor, there is sometimes famine..........
When we went for the Appreciative Inquiry Workshop, facilitators were wondering, will this AI make a difference?
Well the answer is easy: YES, IT DID MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Christina, one of the two observers wrote a beautiful story on her blog: http://christinaswwworld.blogspot.com/2008/12/special-holiday-treat-appreciative.html

I believe the village as a whole has made a paradigm shift and action is going on. Three groups developed a vision for the future, three themes are selected as plans for immediate action:

• Women want to put their capacities together, train each other in specific handicrafts items, produce and market as a group.

• Men are starting a commercial poultry farm

• Youth formed a new group to save money, make bricks and build permanent houses for for each of the members in turn building one house after another.

After Christmas a second workshop is agreed upon, to work out detailed action plans.


Women prepare a vision for the village


participants make a combined village vision




preparing a meal for all participants

CELEBRATION!!!!

Amasiko's immediate plans

Amasiko is still in it's infant shoes. In the last two years, neighbouring farmers came and sold us so far 12 small plots, totalling to about 1 ha of land, all sloping down to the lake shore. About 2/3 is along the shore of Lake Bunyonyi and very suitable for recreation, half of it is covered with eucalyptus threes and has good shade. Here we want to build a camping site and some cottages. The other 1/3 is agricultural land, and in use to grow some crops and rear some small ruminants (goats and sheep). This area for agriculture is still small and we want to buy some more land as soon as farmers offering more. This normally happens when they find a better piece for themselves, more fertile or nearer to their homes. At present a neighbouring plot is up for sale at 3 million Uganda Shilling, i.e. around Euro 1200,-

For the time being, we want to concentrate on developing camping facilities:

• renovate a local house to become a kitchen, and construct a firewood saving oven out of clay estimated @ Euro 300/=
  
• build an Eco-san toilet (composting toilet) with bathroom and a safari shower (uses firewood to prepare hot water, a solar heater is planed for once the eco-camp starts operating)Euro 3000/=
  
• levelling some five places for tents and planting with lawn grass Euro 200,-
  
• Construction of a jetty to allow easy access to the lake, (yes, lake Bunyonyi is free of diseases and one can enjoy swimming) Euro 100,-
  
• Construction of a chicken house to get them out of the vegetable gardens and off the camping site. Euro 300/=
  
• Renovation of one Mud&wattle house as staff house Euro 200/=
  
• Constructing of a log house Euro 500/=
  
• Building a water tank of 3000 litres with rainwater harvesting. (drinking boiled lake water is fine, but not very appealing to many foreign visitors I believe) Euro 250/=
  
• Buying some equipment such as tents, beds, mattresses, chairs, tables, kitchen equipment,
• Estimated at Euro 1,000/=

When all this is done, I am sure the place is attractive for people who like simple life in nature. and I hope to get visitors from around Uganda and neighbouring Rwanda to come and spend some relaxed time at our site. This should give us enough income to cover our operational costs and to develop the place further.
First of all we want to expand the agricultural land and secondly to set up some demonstrations in erosion control, soil improvement, vegetable and fruit growing, animal husbandry (dairy goats, chicken, pigs, later a dairy cow on zero grazing), thus al kind of activities local farmers could copy from us and which could become training facilities for disadvantaged youth.
Thirdly its our wish to build five cottages where people really can feel comfortable and spend some good time. we are still in a planning phase. we are just asking ourselves how luxurious these should be? And how big? Some friends advised to make it European standard, with a decent bathroom attached, bathtub, shower water-borne toilet, sitting room, two bedrooms all properly tiled. Together with an architect, we made some drawings of a round cottage with split level (as we are on a slope, this will save some land). each cottage to cost Euro 4000/=

So many plans are made and we are looking for ways of getting all this done! And we need all the support we can get, but also want to offer opportunities to get involved. If you have any ideas, plans, suggestions, questions or of you are interested to get involved, please contact us!

Involving the neigbouring community

For over two years, I am a regular visitor on the peninsula, sometimes staying a few days, alone or with visitors; just for a rest or doing some work on the site; sometimes to negotiate with a farmer who offers a plot for sale (actually we have bought 12 plots now totalling to roughly one ha, imagine the way land is split up into small plots, all a result of the high population growth rate, promoted by the Ugandan president).
In this way I had a chance to interact with many people living on and around the peninsula. I realised that expectations were high. "A muzungu (white man) always has a lot of money and now we are all going to benefit" is a message I hear repeatedly.

Neighbours come after work for a chat

During my work with communities in Uganda, I realised that there is a great dependency thinking, whereby rural communities believe that everything has to come free from outside. In fact I often was very disappointed, wondering what was wrong with so many rural people, making themselves so dependent on the outside world, not taking real action themselves to develop.
In the recent years, I got some training in Appreciative Inquiry and there is maybe an answer for this so important question: many years development workers have used problem solving approaches to identify needs, problems and deficiencies in rural communities and to find interventions to improve on those. However, it is not a surprise that local people stay behind looking at their village as a place full of problems which have to be solved by people from outside.
Appreciative inquiry is a strategy for purpose change that identifies the best of "what is" to pursue dreams and possibilities of "what could be". it is a cooperative search for the strengths, passions and life-giving forces that are found in every system to be used to create development.
In past employments as development worker i had the chance to use AI on a small scale and I was impressed by the change of mindset by rural people.
Two weeks ago, when i walked into our village, I was greeted by some youth calling me a real resident of the village. Than I realised that besides developing our Amasiko project, we should work with the surrounding communities, not by giving hand outs as expected, but bringing my capacities in to work together and make a development plan for the whole community using Appreciative Inquiry as a starting point.
Yesterday, I went to the village together with 4 farmers/facilitators I worked with in the past. we had a meeting with local Authorities LC1 village Committee and the parish chief. Of course the first questions where about what we are going to bring the village, how they can get development (money, animals, seeds............) from us. But after some deep discussions and examples from my farmer/facilitators, a meeting is agreed upon.
Next week we will spend 4 days with the community to work with AI as an approach to make a start for a Community Action Plan!!!!

All inhabitants, men, women, youth are invited and we expect around 80 people. each day to be ended with a shared meal, farmers have promised to bring the stable food, we are to supply some vegetables for the sauce, what an exiting proposition to learn more about my neighbours, know their achievements, capacities and dreams! And hopefully we are able to bring a change into the midset of our neighbours to beleive in their own capacities to bring positive change into their community.