Narrative report by Erango Ersado

De partner vertelt... van 12 december 2016

1. Summary
This project is part of the Ethiopian Kale Heyewot Church Development Program conducted in Debel-Kejima.. The Project is addressing the needs of vulnerable children and the rural poor communityat Debel-Kejima community in Oromiya regional state of Ethiopia. This report is to highlight the World Servant Netherlands concerns, technical and financial support during the construction of this schooling components as the program is seeking to construct Schools in various communities . The project is intended to provide better access to and availability of improved quality Primary Education for the vulnerable children) from age 6 - 10 and above in the mentioned project schools children.

2. Introduction on the project
The project entitled “ Debel-Kejima school construction project /ET116/ “ . The project is to be implemented in one district of Oromiya regional state in the period of 2016. The project is approved as of Feb, 2016 with a reference of partner agreement of EKHCDC and World Servants Netherlands. The school construction project started at the Church’s own land
The first team of World Servants arrived in Ethiopia ( Debel-Kejima ) in July 15, 2016 .The number of the team was 28 . The participants took part in the construction of the building and became very successful.

Accomplished Activities are mentioned as follows:
3 . Operational level

3.1 site selection and school construction
After the project agreement was signed between EKHC and respected Donor (World Servants the Netherlands), the project office has held successive discussions with Debel-kejima kebeles’ administration office for briefing the essence of the project. In addition to that awareness raising meetings were held with the local community members and Church leaders to address the objectives, strategies and activities of the project. After completion of these processes, EKHCDC has obtained the standard school plan in order to start school construction. Before the building was started, the building materials were purchased and stored in the construction site and the basement work was started. . After the basement work, the WSN participants arrived in to start the hollow blocks/bricks work.

The school building plan was standard plan of Ministry of Education which is consisted of one block with two class rooms and one office that includes director’s office, staff room and store. In order to reduce the cost of construction, the World Servants team has built the hollow blocks wall and for the other construction works labor based contractual agreement was selected as an strategy.

i / Achievements:
1.1 Transportation service:
World servant team arrived safely at Bole air port according to the flight schedule and all EKHCDC team welcomed them. All World servant and EKHCDC team went to visit the previous school construction project in the compound of Sebeta children center and had their lunch there. After lunch both teams started to move to Debel Kajima and arrived in after 7.5 Kms drive where the community welcomed the guests and transported their goods for 1.5 kms.
1.2 Food item purchasing:
All necessary food items were listed out and purchased before team’s arrival and some food items like vegetables, fruits and meat were purchased every three days. The cooperation within the team in purchasing and transporting the food was good.
2.1 Community contribution and participation before team’s arrival:
 At the beginning, the communities were interested in participating in the project preparation and they did (road maintenance, bedroom repair, temporary latrine construction and provision of water for general purposes). Though, it was very good and encouraging at the beginning, but practically community’s participation after team’s arrival was not satisfactory as they promised and we expected.
 The communities were not able to mend the damaged wall cracks and openings as we agreed with world servant team leaders. Therefore, EKHCDC spend some amount of money for some workers to mend it.
 Preparation of temporary toilet room was also difficult to implement because the community has agreed to construct but finally they have dug only two meters deep hole. At last we hired few community members and we paid them.
 We organized used tent as dining room (for breakfast, lunch and dinner) closer to church building because of room shortages. Even though we repair the damaged school, it was not conducive to use it as bed room. Therefore, we decided to use the church for bed room of Female team members and teachers’ home for males. The males rooms were not well enough as compared to females, however, we tried our maximum effort to make clean and safe for all of them.
2.2 Community Contribution and participation during their stay:
 On the arrival of the team the welcoming ceremony of the community and their speech was very good but when the team started to deal with construction activities, the participation was poor.and we saw that very few people came and joined the team in some activities.
 As we saw the water source is very far away from the church. The community and the leaders promised to bring water from that distant water source but they couldn't assign people who were responsible to bring water at the beginning and we have suffered a lot for the first two/three days to get enough water for general purpose. Finally, the teachers have played vital role to mobilize the community and the community has fetched enough water every day using their donkeys as transport vehicle.
2.3 Children program
 It was difficult to get enough number of children in the afternoon because of the weather condition and the seasonal land preparation for planting Teff seeds and harvesting. However, the children program performed every day and they were very interested to attend the program even though they were few in number.
 During children program most young people have played different type of games.
2.4 Cultural program
Under cultural program we did several activities such as:
2.4.1 Local community home visits:
We divided the team in to five [5] groups and assigned one local guide from the community who can speak Oromifa very well and has a know- how/ knowledge of English and act as translator of the team. The communities were very happy and interested when the team visits their homes. Therefore, most of the households have prepared traditional Ethiopian Coffee for the team.
2.4.2 Arranging and visiting Recreation places:
On the arrival, we discussed with team leaders to arrange the place and when they planned to have a field visit. The first plan was to go to Ziway Lake and back to Debrezeyit. But because of poor quality mobile phone network in the area we were not able to communicate the manager of Debrezeyit guest house. Therefore, we changed our destination and went to another town (Hawassa). It was very good and successful trip.
2.4.3 Health Center visiting:
Before the arrival of the WSN team, EKHC has prepared and provided supporting letter to Sebeta health center to visit the status of the center and to observe its physical situation and to share the experience of Sebeta health center to the coming WSN team. They accepted the letter but they were so busy because of pandemic Diarreahea. Therefore, they did not have clear understanding with in them about aim of the team. Their expectation was looking for support for needy part of the health center. In addition to this, the team needs to visit the prisoners but the local police was not volunteer enough for the team to come in.
2.4.4 Local market visiting:
The team has visited a local market two times and enjoyed a lot. On the way, they also observed the funeral ceremony.
2.4.5 Souvenirs visiting:
On the last day, the team has visited cultural places of Adds Ababa.
2.4.6. Transportation:
We had agreed to have standby vehicle for emergency purpose at project site but we couldn't practically do all the time due to poor weather condition. Because of that sometimes the team was not able to get transportation service as they expected because the vehicles could not go to the village easily and especially on one memorable day they went on foot more than eight kms to visit the health center.
3. Food preparing:
All necessary food items were provided but the kitchen set up and materials availability for food cooking was not good. There was no enough power/electrical energy supply and we were forced to use charcoal and wood.
Because of low budget allocation we hired only one lady with one assistant to prepare food for all team members that was very difficult and full of challenges.
4. Translator:
The translators from urban area requested high amount of payment and our budget is not enough to afford it. Therefore, we used high school students as translators who are fluent in the local language [Oromifa] and tried to speak little English.
5. Transactions those where very difficult to complete፡
 We applied to Visit the prison but the local police have not allowed us because security reasons.
 The team had an ambition to have over night in the individual’s home but because of security problems and prior unawareness of the community, it became impossible.

5.1. Major challenges:
 Expenses shifted from one budget title to another
 unplanned budget expenditure ፡ (Temporary latrine construction, material and labor cost, house wall and roof maintenance)
 Communication and Transport፡ due to poor quality networking and unavailability of electricity and vehicle.
 Financial problem/low budget allocation for transportation service.
 Unseen expenditure, for example transport payment from air port to the guest house, from site to market, government office and other places were not budgeted,
 Unwillingness of governmental offices to exchange ideas with the team,
 Low community participation, because it was planting and harvesting time for the community and their children were assisting their parents in agricultural activities.
 Weather condition was not conducive for children and to drive a car.
 Lack of staff cooperation all the concerned staff was not willing to spend all their time with the team
 Most of the team members were sick probably it was because of food contamination.

6. Summary of overall facilitation achievements፡
6.1. Conclusion
Firstly, Peaceful arrival and departure of the team was one of the planned achievements and the school construction was performed with fair progress. Secondly, the children and cultural program was so smart to strengthen the relationship between Ethio-Dutch cultural attachments. Finally, provision of food for the team was successful with severe interwoven challenges. Generally; even though, there were lots of interwoven challenges, the overall project performance was very successful more than what we expected.
6.2 Recommendation:
Detailed activities of coordination and facilitation have to be listed out and curiously budgeted against to each activity. Moreover, with the development of the country, the price of some items (Materials) and services are ever-increasing within short period of time, hence requested high contingency plan. Generally we recommend that budget plan has to be thoroughly prepared and must be implemented based on allocations as much as possible.
3.2 Coordination
Accommodation: for man and women, they do have separate bed rooms and toilet. In Debel kejima they do have common dining room.
The food that the kitchen staff prepared was very delicious. The kitchen staff is an expert/chef in food preparation and keeps the neatness of the food including kitchen.
Beside the construction of the schools, they do have some activities that the team has implemented. Some of them are:

Cultural program: Visiting
From the very beginning, the world servant team has discussed with us and identified what issues should be done in cultural program with the EKHC project coordinators. The identified issues were : visiting different recreation or historical places like Lake Ziway , Gellila Monastry , Hawass lake , and visit different households those who are living in different life standards in Debel-Kejima . According to the team leaders and participants explanation, in historical places and factories visit they were much impressed and it was very interesting and enjoyable because for most of the team members it was the first time to come to Ethiopia and they admired the beautifulness of the country.
During the households visiting, the team leader assigned the visiting group not more than 5 or 6 members in each group and the group visited one house hold on one day for not more than an hour. In such visit, they discussed with the household members about ‘how is the living status of the community, education level, health condition’ and others related issues were raised to exchange some experiences based on the issues.

3.4 Transportation :
To visit different historical places, Education program office has contracted one Coaster-Bus with its driver for such specific transportation purpose to pay its mileage 20 Eth.Birr/KM based on the distance travelled. The contract was signed between EKHCDC and the Organization, EGST. Then the bus served them properly without any problem. Beside this, the office also assigned one office car with its driver to serve the guests until they finished their duty during their stay in the project site.

3.5 Safety / Field Security :
EKHCDC- Education and Child Development Program has communicated Adama woreda security office with regarding the security issues of the coming guests. Accordingly, we have arranged with government officials of Sebeta Hawass woreda security office and they have assigned guards on daily basis thus the guests were able to complete their mission as scheduled without any obstacles.

3.6 Cooperation with the World Servants project staff
The project staff and World servant’s participants have developed strong team spirit and mutual understanding in the working areas and came up with effective and successful project implementation.

3.7 Involvement of the stake holders
3.7.1 Applicants
At the welcome celebration ceremony, Community leaders and Local Church leaders came to school to welcome the guests and the delegate has made opening speech to the team. Similarly, at the farewell celebration party, the community leaders and members came to school compound and extended their appreciation to the team and Organization,WSN . Moreover, both parties have made some speech and the team delegates have presented some gifts to some colleagues who have contributed something in one way or the other for the Debel Kajima School Construction.
3.7.2 Staff
Provision of logistic for participants. Based on this topic, whole food items purchased and supplied from Addis Ababa city super markets by the project coordinators using the office car. In addition to that when the guests/participants wanted to use the Internet service, we transport them to Addis Ababa and Sebeta town as they have finished we returned them to project site. The coordination staff had been with the guests until the hollow blocks building of wall was finished

3.7.3 Beneficiaries
The Children:
In the children service activity, the assigned group members were well committed to the children service and they do have much experience to serve the children and they know how to handle the children..
The methods those they have used to serve the children were as follows:
1. As the children entered to the class room, the group began the daily lesson with some motivation activities .like singing the songs and asking some motivation questions.
2. Then began to tell some famous persons’ stories from Bible and then drama followed based on the stories.
3. After that they gave some abstract pictures to children for painting
4. And they observe the children’s effort and support them if they made any mistake
5. Finally , they took children to the field and played different games in the field
From such kinds of methodologies, the children were able to understand easily what they have learned and the child could not be bored in the teaching learning process

i. community
The community participation began by welcome celebration of the World Servant team .
The well come celebration from the local church and community member was very interesting part. The community leaders and church leaders, community members, local elders and the government bodies were presented at that celebration ceremony.
Wel- come speech was made from EKHC Education and Child development program, keble leaders and Church leaders to the guests. In Debel-Kejima Adults and youths have participated in different construction and other related activities like supplying construction materials for the builders but it was not to intended level. Though it was minimum participation, the guests were very interested in working with that community.

Development of the project : As one community varies from other community due to many reasons such as geographic set up, level of understanding, demographic organization, accessibility of the areas,seasonal weather condition,---etc, Debel Kajima was located at rural setup while Wonji Shewa is sub-urban community. Therefore, school construction at Debel Kajima was not easily facilitated as Wonji-Shewa due to aforementioned and related problems. Thus to finalize its activities,we together WSN and EKHCDC have worked very sacrificially and we will continue working hard until it is completed. Now it seems that it will be finalized very soon because we have tried a lot to mobilize the community and to develop deep ownership mentality. Thus as soon as its activities (plastering, roofing,---) finalized , we will submit the financial report of both schools.

Challenges
During the project implementation, there were some ups and downs. Among the challenges:
1. Financial limitation/fund: the project has been suffering from financial limitation .As you have seen in bill of quantity, the real budget for each construction school is 650,000.00 ETB .But the released budget for each school is 426,000.00ETB for the whole school construction and fulfill the facilities. Therefore, there is a big financial shortage to finish the started buildings.
2. Increase the cost of construction materials: Most construction materials price is raised up due to different reasons like fuel and unavailability of construction materials nearby construction site and others
3. Accessibility: From selected construction sites, Debel-Kejima project during the rainy season near to the site there is no regular road connection. In this case there was a problem to transport all materials by trucks and other cars to the site.

Lesson learnt
We have drawn different lessons from working Church community members and partner organization (donor).
 Team work spirit was developed,
 Shared responsibility was observed
 Real holistic ministry approach was practiced
 Love of God was practically applied
 Tolerance of the team members was admired.

A) Community participation and sense of ownership
With sacrificial support of WSN and EKHCDC and minimum effort of the community, now the school construction has come to this level.. The awareness raising activities and our transparency to the community helped us a lot to handle smoothly the project .The subsequent reply from the community side to maintain weather roads, fetch water, digging the basement of the school building, supply of latrine building poles, has to be appreciated.

B) Locally nurturing church ( Akaki KHC) is still trying to strengthen Debel Kajima Church and is very volunteer to hire some more teachers in order to facilitate the school for the benefit DK community and the local church DK itself