Teo & Work

I am a Community Mobilizer for Community Integrated Development Initiatives (CIDI) a NGO in Kampala Uganda. She is responsible for promoting of safe water use, environmental sanitation and hygiene education in schools and urban poor communities.

ROLES at CIDI
• Program development, budgeting and implementation
• Conduction of Social Economic and Environmental Impact Assessment & training of fellow CIDI staff
• Manage, monitor and control program inputs and ensure that they reach the intended beneficiaries.
• Monitoring and evaluation of the performance of water and environmental sanitation project activities.
• Ensure preparation of program reports on time to meet deadlines.

ROLES IN COMMUNITIS
• Mobilization and sensitization and conduction of participatory planning together with targeted communities.
• Training targeted communities in issues of water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS, children’s rights, policy advocacy and operation and maintenance of WATSAN facilities.
• Training of Trainers (TOT) like Community Based Health Workers (CBHWs), School Sanitation Coordinators to spearhead the water and sanitation promotion campaign
• Collecting, documenting and disseminating findings and WES best practices to stakeholders and relevant institutions.
• Training targeted communities and pupils in operation and maintenance of water and sanitation facilities.

The following keeps me motivated in working in the water and sanitation sector

• Willingness of the community to participate in the implementation of water and sanitation projects specifically women and youths.
• Desire of the targeted communities to own their water and sanitation projects. This is one way of ensuring better operation and maintenance (O&M) of projects hence project sustainability.
• The fact that the main problems facing the poor, disadvantaged and the marginalized communities are related to water and sanitation, it motivates me to worker harder in addressing these problems.
• Good will of donors to support activities geared at improving the livelihoods of people also motivates me to ensure that value for money is achieved.

The following makes my work critical in ensuring the sustainability of water and sanitation projects
• My ability to involve local people and leaders’ right from planning to implementation level is very important as it creates a sense of project ownership by the community people themselves and thus better operation and maintenance for sustainability purposes.
• Being transparency and accountable to targeted communities is key in development as they help all concerned stakeholders to take responsibilities of their actions.
• Giving priority to gender responsiveness

Over the past five years with CIDI, I have learnt the following from the community members, students, and teachers;

• Involvement of local people and leaders’ right from planning to implementation level is very important as it creates a sense of project ownership by the community people themselves and thus better operation and maintenance for sustainability purposes.
• Transparency and accountability
• Capacity building to targeted community people in issues of water and sanitation and operation and maintenance the projects.
• Networking and collaboration also plays an important role in ensuring the success of the project.

The most challenging component of my job, specifically related to the water and sanitation project and mobilizing community members to be involved are;

• Increasing demand for water and sanitation services visa avis CIDI’s capacity to address them.
• Mobility of the targeted communities tend to hinder the sustainability of the projects (the urban poor keeps on migrating from one place to another) calling for continuous mobilization and sensitization and trainings in operation and maintenance of water and sanitation facilities.

Specific time or story that emphasizes the impact and importance of my role with the community and school members

Practical Training time in water and sanitation issues

• I love interacting with children and in anything I promote, I take part (act exemplary). This attracts pupil’s attention and encourages them to positively participate. On seeing me participate in the community clean up, Susan (a pupil of Trust preparatory school) said “if Miss Teo can clean why not me?”