Chinelo's GNU Scope of Work (SOW)

Before we go far into the week, it is important to keep track of my Scope of Work
 GNU Fellow Scope of Work for Chinelo Odiakosa

Title: GNU Fellow:  Monitoring and Evaluation learning from and support to the Building Local Capacity Project (specifically the Migration Corridor).

LOE:  March 26th – April 20th 2012 (20 working days) in Southern Africa Region with the BLC Project

MENTORS: Kathryn Reichert, BLC Monitoring, Evaluation and Communications Director
 Zuzelle Pretorius, BLC Senior HIV Technical Advisor

LOCATION: Pretoria, Migration Corridor Zimbabwe (Beitbridge and Chirundu South)


The GNU fellowship

The GNU is a yearly fellowship opportunity awarded to two MSH staff that has shown a long term commitment to the field of Public Health. Successful interventions serve as a memorial for the three MSH staff that died in a ghastly plane crash outside Afghanistan – Amy, Carmen and Cristi. It is on this premise that the BLC project was selected as host country.

Initially, my fellowship Title of Activity & Rationale was that: In several projects the component of gender mainstreaming usually sounds like a herculean task especially because of its vast and imaginary form. Women and girls are still worst hit by untold vulnerabilities pervading them. GNU awarded fellow – Chinelo Odiakosa would wish to document engendered best practices inherent in a thriving HIV/Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) project and ascertain the mid-term program outcomes that the component of mainstreaming gender has had in the lives/wellbeing of OVC & caregivers’ especially female-headed households.

Due to the constraint of getting an MSH project centred on holistic OVC care and gender asides from the beneficiary’s project (CUBS, Nigeria) and BLC OVC project, there was a change of plan to engage the SA BLC project on HIV prevention to garner existing intervention models which can be replicated in other MSH country projects. The bottom line is to move with the pace of the BLC project and learn from existing interventions. (Good idea since I wish to spark up the fire in another direction other than OVC so we chose the BLC prevention project)

Purpose

To learn from and support the BLC project on monitoring, evaluation and communications especially on HIV prevention on mobile populations and affected communities

Background

The Building Local Capacity (BLC) for Delivery of HIV Services in Southern Africa Project is a five-year project (2010-2015) which contributes to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional HIV/AIDS Program (RHAP) goal to strengthen the overall sustainability, quality, and reach of HIV/AIDS interventions in the region. The project builds the capacity of governments and civil society entities in the Southern Africa Region, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, to implement policies and health services for those infected with and affected by HIV and AIDS. The three key program areas include care and support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), HIV prevention and community-based care.
Through the Migration Corridor Initiative, the BLC project is scaling up HIV prevention capacity building activities to civil society organizations along the North-South and East-South transport corridors in Southern Africa. These capacity building efforts will enhance improved, evidence based and sustainable HIV prevention services for mobile populations and the affected communities. North Star Alliance which is already operating Road Wellness Clinics (RWCs) along these transport corridors will be the primary partner to achieve this goal. Five initial sites, RWCs, at Beitbridge, Chirundu South, Chirundu North, Mwanza and Ngwenya have been identified to kick start the journey for quality HIV prevention services for mobile populations and the affected communities.
Participating in this project will be mutually beneficial for both Chinelo Odiakosa and BLC as the proposed assessments will generate information to enable the team to better understand the needs of the target populations and identify capacity needs of civil society organizations participating in the Migration Corridor Initiative. In the process, BLC will also be able to generate baseline information for its key HIV prevention indicators.

Key Activities with the fellow

• Orientation to the BLC project including monitoring, evaluation and communications systems and approaches (by Zuzelle).

• Conduct a literature review of partner organizations’ current prevention models, regional HIV prevention policies for mobile populations, other research or survey publication to understand current prevention strategies and models. (Guided by Zuzelle)

• Review North Star, PEPFAR and SADC HIV prevention and care indicators – and compare these indicators with the BLC PMP indicators (Guided by Jabulani and )

•Conduct focus group discussions and In-depth interview at North Star and/ one local site (Beitbridge) with affected community members (Truck drivers) establish how they are affected by the HIV pandemic (Led by Zuzelle)

• Develop a powerpoint brief of the preliminary findings highlighting key potential partners, their capacities and capacity needs, strengths and weaknesses of current HIV prevention models, keys prevention needs of affected communities and key recommendations (by Chinelo)

• Share a powerpoint presentation of the CUBS-Nigeria Gender Assessment Framework, CUBS Organizational Development Tool, CUBS Peer Education Model and the IGA intervention with BLC team in Pretoria (By Chinelo)



Deliverables:

• Literature review report
• Report with recommendations for indicators
• Trip report
• Consolidated Migration corridor project report
• Brainstorm on incorporating Gender perspectives into HIV prevention

Other activities engaged in same day I arrived were the USAID 101 presentation by Kathryn L. Hoeflich the BLC Regional Grants Manager and the Cake-cutting send forth of Sylvia.
After work, a stroll through Hatfield restaurants led me to the Barcelos where I found food indeed – that I could eat; although it would have been more adventurous to locate a traditional spot for locally made SA foods.


Real Official Demands

This is my second day in SA. On arrival at the office, I took time to work on the reviewed scope of work discussed by Zuzelle earlier which I shared virtually to the team. The next thing was to work on my PowerPoint presentation of key activities of the CUBS project in Nigeria but this was overtaken by events of drafting the literature review. I and Mathabo – the M&E officer of the OVC project in Lesotho visiting Pretoria was also at the City lodge, this gave us time to walk around Hatfield mall during lunch and from the hotel discussing and exchanging knowledge on our various projects. Later that evening I spotted an Ethiopian restaurant where I was able to get spaghetti, interesting!!



Project Exchange learning

Today I had to check out from the hotel as I was to move into the MSH guest house. It was an interesting time at the office. Continued my work on the literature review, downloaded the endnote software for organizing a library of references/bibliographies for reviews and meeting with the BLC team again. A meeting between Zuzelle, Roselyn, Jabulani, Mathabo and I as we discussed deeper into OVC programming and monitoring as well as the migration corridor project. At the end of the day we had come to understand more about each of the country’s project in the exchange talk – talk about Iron sharpening Iron….

Finally, Charles the MSH logistician dropped me off at the MSH guest house, wow!! It was so serene and more than I expected. Lots of flowers around the compound, an epical look, a balcony where one can step out and see the sunset and night lights, a mini kitchen, groceries for breakfast, a bedroom with lots of wardrobe compartments and a sitting room with TV and DSTV connection.  Hmmm… sounds nice. We were worried that I would be lonely but it was just ideal and peaceful, situated in an area called Waterkloof a few miles away from Hatfield – I was hoping I could find a church around though. I heard an unreliable gossip that lots of South Africans are Christians but they barely attend church (subject to verification), they do believe in Christ though, sounded weird because I felt people usually visit the homes of people they love, if they do love Christ why not His house? Well, bottom line is serving God in a unique way, different strokes for different folks I guess. But I did verify the information and found out it was not exactly true. I put up a light dinner, watched movies, updated my blog post and off I was to bed.

Views from MSH Guest House, Waterkloof, SA

The 2011/12 Gadue-Niebling-Urdenta (GNU) Fellowship Award program by recipient – Chinelo Odiakosa-Mmakwe, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for the Community Based Support for OVC Project (CUBS), Nigeria hosted by the Southern Africa Building Local Capacity (BLC) project.

The GNU fellowship is an annual award granted to two staff of Management Science for Health (MSH) worldwide that has shown a long term commitment to public health.  Outcomes of the fellowship commemorate the achievements of the three MSH staff that died in an airplane crash outside Afghanistan.

My Purpose in South Africa (SA):  To learn from and support the BLC project on monitoring, evaluation and communications especially on HIV prevention on mobile populations and affected communities between March 26th – April 20th 2012 (20 working days) in Pretoria and the Zimbabwe Migration corridor (Beitbridge and possibly south Chirundu)

My Mentors: Zuzelle Pretorius, BLC Senior HIV Technical Advisor and Kathryn Reichert, the BLC Monitoring, Evaluation and Communications Director

Aboard the plane

With a sense of euphoria mixed with anxiety, I joined Dana Airways from Port Harcourt, Southern Nigeria to the bustling city of Lagos state known as the commercial capital of Nigeria on Sunday 25th March 2012. 

Although we landed in Lagos by mid-day, we began the long wait to check-in by 5:30pm. After a slight delay we finally left the hot airs of Nigeria by 10:35pm aboard the South African airways. I must thank Zuzelle Pretorius and Jabulani Nkosi of the BLC project who sent me my accommodation details and SA mobile phone number respectively well before my departure, it made leaving a bit bearable with my family and colleagues satisfied that we could keep in touch.

Dumela Le Amu Getswe! Sani Bonani! Welkom to South Africa (SA)

With the million twinkles of light in the dark morning sighted from the airplane, and being my first time to SA, it was no wonder that the city appealed to my senses. By 5:30am on Monday 26th March, we finally landed at the OR Tambo international airport, Johannesburg where Aaron of Solant Travel & Tours drove me from Johannesburg to Pretoria the office location. My first intrigue was the right hand driving position in SA, never seen so much people driving from the right hand side before – I kept missing my directions when entering the vehicle. We were greeted by the already fast moving cars of early risers in SA. Interesting places like the posh Irene houses of south Pretoria where Aaron envisaged my owning a place there with my future grandchildren; to the University of Pretoria and South Africa respectively, we weaved our way through the wide but traffic laden roads of Pretoria to the posh City lodge hotel in Hatfield. A guest was already occupying the MSH guest house for a couple of days so the City lodge was an alternative. Tired and worn-out, it was a huge relief when Zuzelle gave me the go-ahead to start the day a bit late. With a serene outdoor view of the landscape from the hotel window, I could barely fight the snatching claws of slumber as they pulled me into the soft pillows of the classy lodge. By 11:10am, I finally met the large BLC family. Zuzelle introduced me to the staff and gave me an informative guide containing a map of Hatfield, information about my hotel, transportation, restaurant suggestions, other information like changing money and security as well as Staff contact information for the BLC project all with an highlight – Welcome! Dumela Le Amu Getswe! Sani Bonani! Welkom