Empowering the community

With the scaling up development works to fight poverty, disease and underdevelopment in attempt to meet the Millennium Development Goals set by the world. SSI’s Samson Haileyesus sat down with Mulugeta Gebru, executive director Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organization (JeCCDO) to talk about community based care, JeCCDOand other issues pertaining to development works. Excerpts:

SSI: Could you briefly tell us about your organization and the activities you are carrying out?
Mr. Mulugeta Gebru: Our organization is called Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organization (JeCCDO) and was established in 1984. Back then there was a severe famine in the country particularly in the north where lots of children lost their parents due to the famine. There were about 1,000 children that we collected from different feeding centers and were brought into orphanages. The first task that we successful accomplished was to provide these orphans was care and access to schools.
Then in 1995 we started to look into the future of these children an idea to allow these children to make sure these children integrated back into the society was tabled and we started thinking about it at different levels. At the time there was also an enabling environment from the government the government was encouraging a policy in the country to de-institutionalize orphanages and they supported us. We started sharing this idea with the children our staff and our northern partners and the idea got accepted. But it came through a process it was not an easy one as you know change is always resisted but we tried really hard to have this idea accepted through different mechanisms
After our idea was accepted we came up with six year strategic plan and finalized it. We first started reintegrating the children through different mechanisms which included group training, business generating schemes, and the smaller ones were reunited with their families. We helped them retrace their families which was a long process which included sending the children back to their birth places and seek out any information that would help them find their families. They initially established relationships with the communities where they originally came from and having brought back the data to us we compiled and we went back and traced their biological parents through negotiations which involved the administrations in the woredas, kebeles and farmers’ associations the reunification was successfully carried out. It was a very difficult task but we learnt a lot from the process culminating in the reunification of most of the children who were in our care.
Meanwhile through this process we started establishing relations with the communities as we had designed a package to include some grants for the families. As we observed the small money imbursements could make big differences in the livelihoods of the families and having that relationship created we started developing an outreach program . The first place we started as a pilot project was in Bahir Dar [563 kilometers from Addis Ababa] in 1996-97 where we learnt a lot and later on scaled up to five more additional places.
We also did an impact assessment study of the reintegration program and the findings pointed the success which was very encouraging for our future works and we became a very good example in Africa. The emotional charged atmosphere of children reuniting with their parents and communities after more than ten years is memorable. We had unified 175 children and most of them were integrated. Initially the children were not really happy to go back to the community they had to adapt but later on they really liked it.

SSI: Could you give us a run down on the activities that you are currently engaged in?
Mr. Mulugeta: Our programs are community based child care within this program we have a health component mostly involved in preventions like the environment health we are encouraging communities to clean their areas, to have safe drinking water and adopt a healthy nutritional diet.
We also have adult education we are involved in HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support, family planning education and there is a lot of education campaigns in child care. We are also providing toilets, water points, housing for the poorest of the poor.
In education we are building libraries, school capacity building , providing school materials for the needy, we are also working in providing tutorial programs in our after school program. We also provide non-formal education for children who do not have access to schools. On top of that we provide adult education all these projects come from the demand of the communities. We do not impose anything on the communities
The other component is household income generating or livelihood promotion activities there are different approaches we are using the self help approach. Individuals organize themselves into groups and enter saving schemes. Initially people were not really motivated but when they saw their saving increase over time they start getting excited and became very much interested in adopting a savings culture. After having some knowledge about savings and entrepreneurship we injected some capital into these associations so that they would have access to capital.
We are also supporting orphans within the community for their education. A small amount of money is provided to subsidize the family and allow them to save some as well
We are also working on community organizing and we are organizing the community to solve its own problems and we are also building. We believe that if a community is empowered it can then solve its own problems

SSI: Where would you say most of your beneficiaries are based?
Mr. Mulugeta: We are very much urban oriented we do not do anything in rural areas because we do not have the capacity. Our approach is that we are child focused, community based and integrated organization. It could be horizontal in terms of activity in terms of also institutions because we work with different levels of government structures so sometimes we use government bodies because it is their obligation to serve the people so we use them very properly
Among our urban components which is really exciting for us our urban agriculture or backyard farming approach which we stared five years ago. It is a good opportunity fro communities to make use of these existing resources where communities are encouraged to plant vegetables and crops that could allow them to generate incomes and also use the organic waste from the produce to be used as fertilizer to grow these vegetables. In addition we also allow opportunities for small scale livestock breeding be it chicken farming or sheep rearing. We have seen trends in which families that have started small through time generate enough income to buy cows. In this process the communities learn about organic products and agribusiness
We also have grants and partnership program where we sub-grant to some NGOs from funds given to us by Swedish SIDA and the firelight foundation from the US which is specially used for child focus program we are actually acting as intermediaries between donors and the recipients and monitoring the use of the money. Here we have institutional capacity building in order to enhance service delivery among the institutions and also help in professionalizing

SSI: What would you say as challenges to your works?
Mr. Mulugeta: There are a lot of challenges prominent among them is the poverty level among communities which is also interwoven. If you see the number of children who are losing their parents in urban areas it is very challenging. Secondly comes the approach of NGOs itself you know there are NGOs who are encouraging free handouts. There are NGO that are development oriented and there are NGOs who want to implement everything by itself rather giving the chance to the communities. The latter approach is really a challenge

SSI: How do you go about launching your programs?
Before we launch any program we do environmental studies in all our operational activities we do not want to intervene anywhere where there are other NGOs unless our work complements the activities of that NGO. In terms of beneficiaries there is very clearly designated activity where we do not actually recruit beneficiaries it is the community who recruit beneficiaries. We do not do these things because we do not know. The community knows better than us that is why I told you that one of our programs in the community is capacity building meaning community empowerment. We take input from the community on which segments of the society need help, which types of institutions are existing there. So we work closely with kebeles, woredas at different levels. After finding out these things we map the area. In regards to duplication of efforts by NGOs we do not appreciate this phenomenon because there is a huge number of people who need support in this country. So why do we compete rather than complementing others and learning from each other?

SSI: How did tony Blair come to visit one of your sites during his last visit to Ethiopia in 2005?
Mr. Mulugeta: Actually we were selected by some of our partners and the British government to be visited. They have their own criteria we were not told about the details. But we are happy to have been visited by him and show him what is happening on the ground so it was a very good opportunity for us to be visited by this world figure and show him what we are doing. I’d like to think it is because of the work that we are doing that our partners in the north selected us
The statement that Tony Blair has given was very encouraging he said that he had seen how small money makes a difference on the ground when effectively used. And if communities are involved in any activity and given a chance things can change and this is what we have realized within our activities because we had consultations with different groups within the society on how to change their lives

SSI: Do you have any closing remarks?
Mr. Mulugeta: I think the media has to look towards covering development processes in this country. I do not see much reporting on development. Especially in the area of bringing up the right approach to change the situation in the country. The media should partner with the people on the ground and add to the learning process for other communities. I think the media has a great role in the learning process. I really encourage the media to come up and move forwards in terms of showcasing the works of NGOs and civil society groups this is very important in creating dialogue among these partners.

August 11, 2007