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Archive for Environment

To Landfill or not to Landfill?

December 6, 2011 at 11:22 am · Filed under Anke Boone, Environment, Vietnam (VNM), daily life

Currently, most districts in Binh Dinh Province (Vietnam) have unsanitary landfills (see pictures) where they dispose their waste. These dumpsites are extremely polluting and cause a lot of harm to the environment and the people. For that reason, our project will support the construction of sanitary landfills in 4 districts (Hoai Nhon, Phu My, Tay Son, An Nhon) of Binh Dinh Province.

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Gedachten vanop het Peruaanse platteland

November 25, 2011 at 10:12 pm · Filed under Agriculture, Environment, Hannes Van den Eeckhout, Peru (PER)

(Versión español abajo).

Na bijna twee jaar werken in de Ecologische Nationale Boerenvereniging van Perú (ANPE PERÚ) – en recent terug van een week terreinbezoeken met de kleinschalige ecologische landbouwfamilies die deel uitmaken van het ecologische project waar ANPE PERÚ voor staat – kan ik enkel hulde brengen aan deze mannen en vrouwen van het Peruaanse platteland. Het zijn zij die zorgen voor het behoud van de biodiversiteit en voor de gezonde en duurzame voeding van hun families en hun volk. (Om een vlotte tekst te bekomen, zal ik niet telkens boeren én boerinnen herhalen wanneer ik het heb over “een ecologische boer”, zonder afbreuk te willen doen aan het belang van het thema van gendergelijkheid).

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L’impact du développement de l’élevage de volaille sur l’environnement

November 23, 2011 at 11:51 am · Filed under Environment, Gilles Michelin, Mali (MLI)

Cet article explique l’impact sur l’environnement du Projet d’Appui aux Organisation Féminines par le Développement de l’Elevage d’Espèces à Cycle Court (PAFEC) mis en œuvre par l’ONG Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgique (VSF-B) et son partenaire malien Initiatives Conseils Développement (ICD). Lees verder / En savoir plus »

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“HOMO CONSUMUS vs. HOMO RESPONSABILUS” AMELIORE L’ECO-EFFICACITE DE TA COMMUNE A TRAVERS LE JEU

November 20, 2011 at 6:54 pm · Filed under Environment, Peru (PER)

Comment introduire le thème de l’environnement au sein d’institutions publiques locales où l’on est souvent confronté à de nombreuses limites comme le faible budget, le manque de ressources humaines, le manque de connaissances ou de capacités ? Le Programme CSE y répond à travers son travail sur l’Eco-efficacité.

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The System of Capacity Development

October 2, 2011 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Education, Environment, Social Development, daily life

This summer i participated in BTC’s summer seminar (august 2011). I attended a 2-day session on “Systems thinking”. Good old school biology and chemics came up again: a system exists of elements and their (inter)relationships.

And as i am working in this project in Vietnam where i focus on “institutional-organisational capacity development”, it’s very “done” to consider capacity development as a system.

Here’s the “model” that may be useful to explain that system:

As you can see, this ‘system capacity development’ exists of the following elements:

- individuals
- groups
- networks (networks of groups; networks of networks)

Apart from the ‘elements’, there are ‘relationships‘ between the elements. That means the elements (individuals, groups and networks) influence each other in one way or another.

In the context of the project i’m working in, the elements are:

- individuals: directors, managers, staff (of:)
- organisations: government agencies, service providers, user organisations, social organisations, etc.
- networks: how are the organisations linked to one another? How are organisations organised among each other? Here we talk about the “institutional set up”, for instance, a coordination mechanism (clear division of roles and responsibilities of all actors involved, with according procedures to work, etc), or an accountability mechanism (who is accountable to whom? who checks on whom? what are controlling procedures? etc).

Relationships between these elements are endless. Some examples:

- the influence from individuals on organisations could be: leading (a director leads an organisation), demand responsive (a service supplier adapts to the demand of its clients), being accountable (the government is accountable to the citizen for its public expenditures), …

- the influence from organisations on individuals may be: motivating (the working atmosphere within an organisation may be motivating for an employee), regulating (cfr. the rules in a prison that count for a prisoner), …

- the influence from organisations on networks could be: coordinating (one organisation has the authority to coordinate the other organisations in the network, for instance to ensure waste management in a town several organisations are involved and need to be supervised as a whole: transport & road infrastructure division, environment division, education division, social/civil society organisations, village leaders, private company collecting & transporting or treating the waste, etc.), blocking (an organisation may not be supportive of the work that needs to be done within a collective of organisations), …

- the influence from networks on organisations: increasing knowledge and performance of an organisation through experience and knowledge sharing; slowing down activities and output of an organisation as many organisations may need to give their approval; …

- influence from networks on individuals and the other way around… think of some examples.

So, if we talk about “capacity development”, we have to address all ‘elements’ in our project, because they interact with each other. A typical example – training an employee may not work if not at the same time his working environment (organisational procedures, structure, culture, …) also improves.
So… a combination of the following “capacity developing” activities is optimal:

- to develop the individual level, you try to ensure individuals have the opportunity to learn whatever they need (e.g. on-the-job coaching, trainings, study visits, … to learn something technical, to learn from strategies or implementation methods, …)
- to develop the organisational level, you try to stimulate the people in an organisation to recognize what could be improved within the organisation to have a better output & outcome (eg organisational culture, organisational structure, human resources development, leadership, management systems & procedures, financial resources, …)
- to develop the institutional level, you may want to coach a whole consultation and decision-making process that ensures participation of many relevant actors (eg. government agencies, private sector, user organisations, social organisations etc), and that leads to improved coordination between the actors, improved controlling mechanisms, improved public service delivery for the beneficiary population…

… And for all of these developments, at any level, ofcourse, you need engaged, committed people who see opportunities to develop and improve… (counts anywhere.)
Good luck.

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Le cinéma d’animation comme outil de sensibilisation. Une première au Rwanda.

September 12, 2011 at 3:37 pm · Filed under Anne-Sophie Hubaux, Environment, Infrastructure, Rwanda (RWA)

L’intérêt du cinéma d’animation ?

  • Il permet de faire passer des messages de manière didactique ou ludique, sans nécessairement devoir utiliser le langage
  • Sans parole ni sous-titre, le film peut aisément traverser les frontières… Et toucher un public d’autant plus important, sans grands efforts
  • Comme c’est quelque chose de rarement vu au Rwanda et dans la région, on espère que ça puisse marquer les esprits… Et que du coup, le message ne passe pas inaperçu

Voila pourquoi c’est le canal qui a été choisi par le programme énergie de la CTB au Rwanda et son partenaire Rwandais, le Ministère des infrastructures, afin de sensibiliser aux économies d’énergie au Rwanda.

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Droogte in Oost-Afrika Voorspeld

July 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm · Filed under Agriculture, Environment, Health, Rwanda (RWA), Sarah Van Steenwinkel

“De hongersnood en humanitaire crisis in de Hoorn van Afrika had vermeden kunnen worden door de rondtrekkende veehouders meer te ondersteunen”, betoogt Josti Gadeyne:

Mensen lijden als vee getroffen wordt

De hongersnood in Afrika wordt veroorzaakt door de droogte, maar is natuurlijk een gevolg van een complex cluwen van economische, ecologische en politieke factoren. Door dit artikel hier op mijn blog te plaatsen wil ik niet beweren dat alle problemen vermeden hadden kunnen worden door de pastoralisten beter te ondersteunen. Maar, ze vormen een heel belangrijk ondereel van de problematiek en het is niet slecht dat er eens wat meer aandacht naaruit gaat.
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Ca reste un peu, quoi…

July 18, 2011 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Environment, Pascale Vanderputten, Senegal (SEN), daily life

Cette expression typiquement sénégalaise pourrait être traduite, dans mon interprétation toute personnelle des choses, par: “Hé bin, on n’est pas sorti de l’auberge”. Ou, soyons modérée, par: “Les amis, on a encore du pain sur la planche”.

En matière d’environnement, il est certain qu’au Sénégal,  du pain, il y en a encore plein la planche. Lees verder / En savoir plus »

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WSSP in Quy Nhon – What?

June 29, 2011 at 10:15 am · Filed under Anke Boone, Environment, Vietnam (VNM), daily life

Our Project

Let’s start with what WSSP means: ‘Water Supply & Sanitation Program’ in Binh Dinh Province (Vietnam). As the name already mentions, our project has two main components: solid waste & water supply. More in detail, the water supply component includes building cost-efficient infrastructures for irrigation and drinking water supply. The solid waste component promotes efficient collection of municipal solid waste and invests in facilities for solid waste treatment.  All this combined with reinforcing the local capacities in planning, management, operation and maintenance facilities and developing a long-term awareness raising strategy.

My Field: Awareness Raising (AR)

In our project there is a big focus on sustainability. What will happen when the project is finished? For this reason it is really important to work through already existing structures. If you do not do this, everything you’ve been working for might collapse after you leave. And obviously, that is not what we want. So, how do we do this for awareness raising?

For Awareness Raising we work through EPA (Environment Protection Agency on the Provincial level) for the solid waste component, and through PCerwass (National Center for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation) for the Water Supply Component. We discuss pretty much everything with them: activities, strategies, studytrips, trainings. We try to make them responsible for the awareness raising part. This is where the other big term of development work pops in: ownership.

We try to make our partners OWN our awareness raising component on every level. On provincial level we work, as I said, with EPA & PCerwass; on district level we work with a District Task Force (DTF) and on commune level we work with the Environmental Communication Teams (ECTeams). These ECTeams are the ones that actually have to organise the awareness raising activities (roleplays, contest, performances, village meetings, household visits). For every commune we have three ECTeams: one for primary school, one for secondary school and one for the commune.

So, we build capacities of all these local agencies and try to involve them as much as possible into our project. If they believe in it, if they own it, the project will succeed. If they don’t, the project might have no long-term impacts and all our efforts might be for nothing on the long-term.

Now, My Role:

Junior Assistant in Awareness Raising & Communication, which means:

  • Develop a long-term Awareness Raising Strategy, including pilot and extension phase.
  • Organise trainings and workshops on the need for clean water, solid waste management, communication skills, monitoring & evaluation etc. for our District Task Forces and ECTeams.
  • Conduct regular visits to the communes and districts to attend their awareness raising activities, evaluate the past activities, discuss their future activities and give comments on their communication plans.
  • Develop booklets, posters, t-shirts, manuals that our ECTeams can use during their awareness raising activities
  • Develop a website

If you want to read more about our project, you can visit our brand NEW website: http://binhdinhwssp.wordpress.com/

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Results achieved so far

June 24, 2011 at 10:51 am · Filed under Environment, Infrastructure, Jeroen De Waele, Tanzania (TAN)

Dear all,

It has been a while since I posted a comment here and don’t expect exciting impressions from a young European in Africa this time. Today, I want to inform you about the advancement of the project for which I am working as a Junior Assistant. Therefore, I decided to write this article in English, as the Tanzanian counterpart might and should also be interested in this topic.

For those of you who want to skip the technical part of this article: please scroll down and find an interesting video showing the progress made in social commitment!

So, what happened so far during my stay here?

  • Drinking water supply
    Lees verder / En savoir plus »

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