Guli Community description

 

Guli rural community is one of the communities in Guli locality (administrative unit) and is the capital of the locality.  It locates at the northern side of Kosti and Rabak the capital of the White Nile state. It’s about 45 km far from Kosti urban locality. Guli community consider as a conventional community with an approximate total population of 15,000 individuals representing 10 different ethnic groups.

It locates at the west bank of the White Nile River which is closely bordering the community. At the eastern side the community bordered by the new high way road linking /connecting another locality. There are 6 schools (4 primary schools 2 of which for males and 2 for females separately) and 2 secondary schools/high schools one for males and 1 for females. There are also: a clinic and traditional health unit, a mosque, inactive youth center, inactive crafts center and active water station. The community is connected with electricity lines.  

Economic: The major occupation of the population is rain-fed and irrigated agriculture mainly traditional farming with animal husbandry and traditional fishing. 

Underlying Theory of Change Problem or opportunity:

As far as there are several problems in the community, there are available opportunities as well.. The main problems facing the communities as of the findings of the study, were related to poor livelihood assets, limited access to decent work. The low income of the majority of the community members increased the social gap and increased their vulnerability to risk of inability to fully cover their urgent basic needs’ expenses.

 

Considering the issues raised by the community representatives, there are available opportunities that can be invested to tackle community problems. As the community members are aware of the issues affecting them, they are on the other hand able of playing a major role in solving them based on their historical success in mobilizing education support which resulted in constriction of 2 schools and rehabilitating the others, connecting the community with the electricity.

 

There are physical resources in the community that could be of a most value for the community such as river Nile, agricultural lands, and community enabling culture. In addition to the availability of 3 development agencies, community members association abroad, members of community in state and national government.

Every human has the tendency to help and support and that is an opportunity for smart partnerships at different levels, individual, institutional, governmental, local and national. 

Short term outcomes

  • Increased community awareness about working together in groups for economic development.
  • Strong community entities form most of the population ready to make collective decisions and take collective actions towards livelihood development initiatives
  • Self-selected different groups from poor women, men and youth formulated and engaged in planning, initiation of income generating practices.
  • Increased income diversity of the groups’ members.
  • Improved socio economic activities, community events number, contribution mobilizations.

Long term outcomes

  • Abled autonomous energetic community members that manage community development initiatives properly.
  • Sustained community led projects are in place.
  • Sustained and improved quality of life among community members.  

Practicum central issue

In this community, there are several issues but the focus will be given to the most important issue that will contribute in solving the other issues.

Specifically, based on the findings of series of focus group discussions, public meetings and most importantly community assessment/study curried out recently, the way forward of my practicum has become very clear. The main identified issues detrained the practicum central issue.

“Building Harmonious and Empowered Community through participatory livelihoods’ promotion and protection”. 

This is the central issue of the practicum based on the socioeconomic gaps identified by the community, for instance: The main gaps identified are mostly related to low income, poor livelihood infrastructure and assets especially among poor, high unemployment among people especially youth (both gender), weak participation of minorities, women and youth in livelihood opportunities and community decisions that concern their development.

Approach

Continuous understanding the structural causes of this problem with community, additional participatory mapping other available resources in the community and see how target community members make a better use of them to shift themselves to batter livelihood level.

 

The main approach to be followed is generating and encouraging community to restore the energy and promote community collective work platform. The approach is to use what is available in the community by the community members themselves. Groups of segments will be encouraged to work together and form their own entities. Upon determining community interested groups of segments (women, men, youth), a platform for promotion of initiatives will be created and mapping and ranking of most important and applicable initiatives will be agreed upon by the community.   Once community initiatives/project is done, and from a regular learning, ideas for implementation and improving will be shared with groups to maintain solidarity and improve related performance.

 

The approach will look at inclusion of minorities, poor, women and youth as the most vulnerable groups who have unseen power, power that requires encouragement and suitable platform to ignite. As long as the main issue is related to livelihood and income generating, diversity a poor person can become an active member in a group. Poor community members are poor because of what they think and others around them think and that is not real, they definitely rich if they realize their capacities. 

Strategic Components Where I am now

Throughout my long 7 years of experience in community development I see the challenge of implementation of development activities in terms of adoption by the community but after learning more about social change and community empowerment in the recent online and residential program, I realized the logical process to be followed to maintain social change.

After India residential, I started applying what I learnt in the program in my community and mainly engaging community in identifying their needs, participatory analysis and mapping of resources as well as successful engagement of important key people in the and around the community through application and Delphi method which identified the most appropriate empowerment indicators.

In addition to this, managed to facilitate raising awareness of community members about community empowerment as well as implementation of student directed project which resulted in formation of community change ambassadors from youth and women who will play a vital role of community mobilization and awareness raising initiatives.  

Where I hope to be at the end of the practicum

Through my appropriately designed practicum, I would like to reach to actual application of community-led and managed socio-economic measurable initiatives that afford every member of the community access to active participation in livelihood, economic development (where income is generated and improved among individuals and groups) as well as social increased social interactions. Other than that, I would like to be in a better position of promoting for and increasing adoption of SEED-SCALE through documenting SEED implementation process and advocate for. 

How I propose to get from where I am to where I want to be.

Starting form what has been achieved so far in the community, and following SEED-SCALE, and the step by step community guidance of using their own energy to promote harmony through livelihood development and socio-economic empowerment.

More specifically, 3 levels of community actions will be followed as:

Level 1: supporting community leaders groups better understand SEED- SCAE principles and how to youth community spirit and power, available resources and how to make partnerships.

Level 2: promotion of self-managed community youth group that works mobilization of resources and technical support for institutions for youth vocational and skills development.

Trainings for skills,

 

Level 3: promotion community-based and managed initiatives that can be obtained during the process of community needs and power analysis. There are proposed interventions such as savings mobilization and community projects generations in agriculture, fishing using community fund. With energy of the community the process starts and then linkage will be created, maintained with INGOs, community representatives in the state and national government.

Last but not least, participatory development of community monitoring mechanism to monitor progress according to identified measuring indicators.