CED Personal Statement
I graduated in B.A Education in 1975. After that I taught in various secondary schools in Tanzania before training as an in service teacher trainer in 1994 under the British Council /Ministry of Education Project known as English Language Teaching Support Project
( ELTSP). After that training I joined
During my teaching career I got the opportunity to undergo 2 short courses in the
Working with adults soon became more meaningful to me because there was a room for sharing , participating , facing challenges and problem solving. That’s what life is all about. Some teachers were reluctant to start new teaching approaches because they claimed that they were time consuming, they may not finish the syllabus and the students may not be ready for this approach. I had to work out ways of helping the teachers to see the way it was possible for participatory approaches to take place in the classroom and also the way life in the classroom was changing fast to accommodate room for students to explore knowledge and facilitate their own learning and be able to develop reasoning skills. This I told them was going to help the children to learn better and also to assume responsibilities in life.
By then I was already a member of a Human Rights organization known as Kilimanjaro Women Information exchange and consultancy (KWIECO) and sometimes I would volunteer to do some legal counselling to women and children whose rights were being abused. That was my first experience of working with the disadvantaged groups in the community and this inspired me to do more for the needy.
Also, I came to realise that my training as a teacher was a rich resource which I could use outside these classroom. The psychology and sociology of education, the teaching methodology, both for children and adults were an asset to be used to enhance my career in the community.
In 1997 I was convinced by a friend to apply for a job advertised by “ Kikundi cha Wanawake Kilimanjaro Kupambana na UKIMWI” poplularly known as KIWAKKUKI, a community based, membership Non Governmental Organisation. KIWAKKUKI is a Kiswahili acronym for Women Against AIDS in Kilimanjaro. I was able to get the advertised job of Executive Coordinator and I have worked in this organisation from 1998 to date.
After joining KIWAKKUKI, I have done some trainings on Project Management, Strategic Planning, Gender and HIV/AIDS, Leadership, Logical Framework Approach and currently I am attending a Facilitation Organisational Development Course by Modules which ends in May 2007. I have also made several presentations at regional, national and international conferences sharing our community based experiences in Kilimanjaro. Some of these are about success stories of supporting youth who are caring for their siblings to conduct livelihood activities in order to sustain their families where there are no parents. Other community economic development presentations were about supporting the elderly to raise money to be able to cope with growing care demands when they have to be parents again.
Basically, KIWAKKUKI conducts community economic development activities through providing soft loans to youth, women members, caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children and surviving parents. We provide training in small business creation before giving loans ,
My Goals and Expectations:
I have many expectations in my own career as follows:
§ To make KIWAKKUKI a leading HIV and AIDS Community based Non Governmental Organisation not only in Kilimanjaro but also in
§ To lead an organization that lives to the shared values and organisational culture.
§ To be a leader who accepts learning from the past actions and from new inputs and implement them.
§ To display exemplary leadership of an organization led in a participatory approach with the inclusion of beneficiaries voice.
§ To scale up the intervention of economic empowerment of the people in the community who have been overstretched by the care demand due to HIV and AIDS
Therefore my goal is to attain the best of my profession and use it to serve those who are poverty stricken so that they attain some social, economic, spiritual and physical well being.
How knowledge, training and skills will help me in the work I intend to do in the future:
Although we are doing a lot of financial and economic related activities in my organization, nevertheless I have been living with some gaps in my career which deprived me the confidence to attain my goal of raising economic capacities of vulnerable communities. I trained in Arts subjects but I can see on the list of courses some new fields I will venture into. These include Accounting Systems and Practices, putting together Creative Financial Packages, Development Finance, Micro Enterprise support, Basic Economic Principles, computer based information systems, research methodology. And some others which I didn’t cover in my formal training but are essential in my current career.
The problem of AIDS is still in our community and worse still the impact is there to stay. I need to be empowered with economic skills to be able to be more dynamic and raise the standard of performance of my organization.
How do I intend to use the knowledge I will acquire in this Progamme?
§ As said above, KIWAKKUKI already provides economic support to the needy members in the community. These include People Living with HIV, Orphans and Vulnerable Children and Orphans caregivers. As a chief executive of the organization , getting these skills will enable me to be a better manager and a better leader of the economic related projects. I will help my organization to develop better proposals for micro credit enterprises.
§ I also hope to support other community economic providers with some of the knowledge and slowly multiply the skills to the greater community.
§ I use the computer a lot but I hope to enhance my skills and be able to get the best out of this technology. Modern project management is accompanied by some computer packages that simplify the work. I also hope to take advantage of this.
§ We do a lot of research at KIWAKKUKI and sometimes we have to present research findings at big forums. The skills acquired will help both myself and my organization to be better researchers and data analysts.
§ As a person who approves finances in my organization, this knowledge will also help me to manage funds in an appropriate manner.
§ One day I will retire from the NGO world and I hope to go on with my career even on a smaller scale perhaps in a CBO world!
Creation of A Personal Blog
This is part of my personal development journey. I am currently undertaking the MSc Course in Community Economic Development with the University of Southern New Hampshire and The Open University of Tanzania. I welcome my fellow “bloggers” to comment on my work and accompany me in my personal journey.
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