All this week I have been in a full-time training that
Southern Hemisphere puts on that teaches people all about program monitoring
and evaluation. It has been absolutely marvelous! Its been down in the Clock
Tower, a venue at the V&A Waterfront (so you know its all fancy) that
includes the conference center we’ve been using. Let me just get this out of
the way and say it – I LOVE THE FOOD. This week has completely spoiled me! We
go in and have coffee, then start at 8:30 and have a tea break around mid-morning.
This is the best tea break of all because they serve scones and muffins. The
scones are what I, the American, refer to as biscuits (although they’re just a
bit sweeter than biscuits), and they are served every morning with cream,
shredded cheddar cheese, and jam. This may sound odd, but cream tastes good
with everything so I just heap cream on my biscuit halves then put cheese on
one and jam on the other so I have a sweet one and a savory one. This morning
for example, I had 2 biscuits and a chocolate muffin because I just can’t help
myself. We then go back in and work until sometime after noon when we have
lunch. Lunch has also been SO delicious – we’ve had fish, chicken, shepard’s
pie, always lots of veggies, and yummy desserts. Then we were a little more and
have afternoon tea break at 3. At afternoon tea we eat biscuits, or what I
would call cookies. Southern Hemisphere covered the cost for me and the other
intern to go, which was very kind and its been amazing to not have to worry
about packing lunch or spending money on it. Oh and I’ve probably gained 5
pounds. The frequent tea break structure is simply genius. Whenever people are
starting to lose focus, we just go drink tea, get caffeinated and have a rest,
and then work is easy to start again.
The learning has been phenomenal as well. I’ve taken the
whole program eval course at UT, which was great for giving me a background on
all this, but it was a bit dry. This course, however, has been terrifically
engaging. The steps for creating a log frame for guide your evaluation were fun
– making a problem tree, doing objectives analyses, setting indicators,
learning about means of verification, etc etc. So it turns out, planning
evaluations can be quite fun, go figure.
What has also made this course amazing is the group of
people that are in it. There are really bright, interesting people from around
the country, 10 of us in all, from different sectors. We have workers from
NGOs, government, and policy-oriented work. On the first day we broke into three
groups in which we’ve been working most of the week on developing a log frame
for a project one of the participants brought from their job. I joined the
group that has focused on an HIV/AIDS prevention program in schools in
KwaZulu-Natal. A woman named Gethwana brought the project. Gethwana is amazing.
She is one of those people who you meet and feel blessed just to know.
At lunch the first day we were talking about Oscar Pistorius
because everyone here is reeling from it, and that led to talking about violence
against women in general. Gethwana told me that she was an abuse victim. She
wanted to leave her husband, but everyone told her not to because he would come
back and kill her. She responded that if she had just one week of freedom and
then he came back and killed her, that would be worth it to her. So she got a
good lawyer and ended up making her husband leave the house taking just his
clothing. And she’s still here today doing amazing work in KZN and on a
national level. She was my hero from that moment, but then as the week has gone
on and I learn more about her, I am blown more and more away. The next day I
found out she has taken 5 boys into her home who had substantial life and
behavior problems, and they’re doing great now. Today, I found out she met Brad
Pitt a few years ago. Had a meeting with him when he came to visit KZN and had
no idea who he was, but he ended up funding one of her projects. She won’t be
at the training tomorrow for the last day because she is flying to Joburg to a
meeting of this new government board or panel or something on gender issues.
She has been selected as the province representative to this board from KZN.
Her daughter came to pick her up and bring her to the airport after training
today and they gave me a ride home. We’ve exchanged information and I hope to
keep in touch with her, even maybe to visit her in KZN if I can. What a
blessing to have met Gethwana. And all the other great people in my course too
that I don’t have the space to mention!
My internship supervisory professor from UT, Tammy, also
visited for a couple of days this week and was able to attend the training with
me on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. I’m so glad she got to be a part of
this experience as well. I’ve felt quite disconnected from the school since
I’ve been here, in fact I’ve found myself forgetting that I’m a social work
student at all. So having her come was lovely. Plus she’s fun and we get along
very well. We got dinner with my supervisor from Southern Hemisphere on Tuesday
night and it was a great dinner. I’m hopeful UT social work masters students
can come to Southern Hemisphere in the future because its been a wonderful
experience; as well as one that has been very congruent with the learning in
the CAL curriculum.
So its been a wonderful week! I’m not looking forward to
going back to a life of no tea times with scones and free lunches next week,
although my waistline is. I’ll also get to walk to work again instead of
running frantically to the train station each morning to cram into minibus
taxis to the Waterfront. I got in the wrong one this morning… but that’s a
whole ‘nother story, ha. TGIF tomorrow!
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