NGO Voices & Past Projects
-
Site: Udaipur, India
Community-based partner: Jatan Sansthan
The GESI team facilitated a project called “Stitching in Solidarity,” a bag-stitching cooperative among villages in Udaipur and Fateh Nagar, India. The project was developed in conjunction with an ongoing income-generating project by Jatan for local and village women. The original Jatan project, funded by a previous grant, aimed to increase female entrepreneurship through a self-help group, handicraft skill development training, and capacity building through microfinance and savings instruction. Over the course of one year, this project expanded from one group to three groups. Stitching in Solidarity helped move the original project forward by conducting communication workshops, a marketing training, and a cooperative structure meeting. The Stitching in Solidarity project successfully helped to unite village women in their aims to start their own collective business by creating spaces for the women to develop their cooperative and to plan for the future of their business endeavors.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Upli Sigri, India
Community-based partner: Foundation for Ecological Security
After much research in the community of Upli Sigri and after working closely with their host NGO, Foundation for Ecological Security, the GESI team decided to focus on the environmental and health issues related to conventional cooking practices in rural communities. The community’s dependence on wood stoves resulted in both health complications (from inhaling smoke) and extreme deforestation. The team funded the construction of ten smokeless stoves and one bio-gas stove. The installation of these stoves would ameliorate the health of community members while simultaneously reducing the community’s dependence and impact on the forest. In order to ensure the long term sustainability of these stoves, the interns created pamphlets and posters to provide comprehensive maintenance advice as well as reinforce the health and environmental benefits of the stoves. The project provides an example for other communities, as well as future interns, to expand upon.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Udaipur, India
Community-based partner: ALERT
ALERT focuses on literacy and environmental renovation and also works on child development at the Bharodi School. The GESI team sought to motivate students to stay in school through enhancing classroom learning materials, creating a peer mentoring program, and providing a vocational skill-set. They held multiple meetings with teachers, parents, and students to gauge interest and ideas for the project. Based on this feedback from stakeholders, they developed peer mentoring curriculum books for the year, a community gathering day to practice using the materials, and a reflection and brainstorming session for the teachers. They also created fun, interactive instructional material for students to learn basic computer skills. The interns learned the importance of time management and utilizing community feedback throughout the implementation of their project.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Jinja, Uganda
Community-based partner: St. Francis Healthcare Services
The GESI team interned with St. Francis, an NGO that works with over 10,000 clients on a range of health concerns. After consulting with community members and St. Francis staff, the GESI team realized that the community’s perception of St. Francis–which centered on the organization’s work on HIV/AIDS–held people back from using the NGOs available services. By developing brochures and a new marketing campaign, the group increased community awareness of the available services and increasing knowledge of personal health practices and behavior. Through their project, the team learned how to communicate in specific cultural contexts, as well as how to use motivation to foster self-reliance in communities.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Jinja, Uganda
Community-based partner: Saint Eliza’s
From speaking with St. Eliza staff, Kagogwa Primary school administration, parents, and teachers, the GESI team found that a lack of food and water was one of the main reasons why many children did not attend primary school. Therefore, the GESI interns–working under St. Eliza’s–partnered with the Kagogwa community to develop a three-part project to alleviate these issues. First, they developed a maize and beans garden with the local community. Secondly, they sold the surplus from the maize/beans garden to generate revenue to maintain the garden and bore hole (which provided water to the school). Lastly, they used revenue generated from the garden to fix the bore hole to provide potable water to the youth. They also developed a guide for proper maintenance of the bore hole, as well as a sanitation guide and list of relevant local government resources.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Mayuge, Uganda
Community-based partner: Bunya Savings and Credit Co-operative
The GESI interns worked at Bunya Savings and Credit Co-operative (Bunya SACCO), a rural bank providing its members with savings and micro-loans services. The team worked to educate the organization’s members and local high-school students on business planning and saving, as well as encourage five new business formations. To do so, the GESI interns created a training session book and business plan template to educate community members on entrepreneurship and savings principles. They also designed a curriculum and teacher’s manual for future trainings planned and led by community members. Their project heightened the awareness of business planning among community members, and their curriculum was even incorporated into other SACCO operations.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua
Community-based partner: Fundacion Fénix
GESI 2011 Nicaragua team interned at Fundacion Fénix, an NGO that works in the prevention of drug use and gangs among youth. The GESI team developed a project aiming to combat drug use by creating a safe community centered around recreation, learning, and openness. For their project, they leveled a soccer field that is open to youth, establish a youth-maintained garden, whose profits provide payment in the form of scholarships, and developed a curriculum for youth to discuss pressing psychological issues.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Clare Village, South Africa
Community-based partners: Women from Clare
The village of Clare has a very little flow of money inside its village, and community members must pay steep taxi fares to access the nearest markets. The GESI interns therefore worked with local women entrepreneurs to create a women’s cooperative–they named Ti Akeni–made up of small business owners. The aim of Ti Akeni is to decrease transportation costs and share skill sets among women business owners. The team helped create a preliminary shop that would train the women in shop management and help them increase income. Working with women of the newly created Ti Akeni, the team also created a timeline for growth, business contacts, and business success tips. Using the ideas proposed by the women in Ti Akeni, the team produced a constitution that allowed the women to think critically about their future business, as well as cater to potential market demand.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Clare Village, South Africa
Community-based partners: Local community members
In speaking with village members, the GESI team realized that people were buying bread to feed their families on a daily basis, but no bread was being produced within the community. Working with local community members, the GESI team created a bread-baking business with local community members. By facilitating conversations, the team was able to unite community partners to develop their own management structure and final recipe for the bread. As part of the new social enterprise’s constitution, any access profits will go toward a scholarship fund for local students. The project taught the GESI team the values of participation and inclusion, as well as human-centered development.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Cochabamba, Bolivia
Community-based partner: WARMI
This GESI team interned at WARMI, a small non-profit community center providing multifaceted social services for a neighborhood on the outskirts of Cochabamba. Its mission is to offer support to working women and their children, as well as promote the sustainability of healthy families and a healthy community. Part of WARMI’s programming includes a soap factory to generate income for women and for the NGO itself. For their project, the GESI team worked on designing a more effective marketing strategy to develop the WARMI brand and increase its visibility. They created a logo and packaging that distinguishes the WARMI soap brand and update marketing materials in order to connect WARMI to the greater community while also helping WARMI strive toward increased financial self-reliance.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Cochabamba, Bolivia
Community-based partner: Instituto para Desarollo Humano (IDH)
Instituto para Desarollo Humano (IDH) is a large Bolivian organization working on HIV/AIDS related issues. The team worked with their NGO to create a new strategy to increase knowledge about risky behaviors as well as to inform Bolivian youth about the dangers of HIV/AIDS. To do so, the interns aided in the development of an interactive tunnel exposition that would educate community members about the gravity of HIV/AIDS and to increase preventative behaviors.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Cochabamba, Bolivia
Community-based partner: Community-based partner: Taller Cultural Tinku
Taller Cultural Tinku works to improve the quality of life for vulnerable women, children and youth. After mapping the assets of the youth center serving the community of La Zona Sur, GESI interns discovered that the center’s social worker and one of its professors had a passion for the game of chess, and that the students themselves were developing an interest in the game. The interns were drawn to the idea of starting a chess club and tournament, with the intention of providing an activity that would improve math skills, problem solving, social intelligence, and self-confidence. Through fun, students would improve their own academic capacity.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Tola, Nicaragua
Community-based partner: Public Health Clinic of Las Salinas
The Nicaragua 2010 team followed the lead of the community and their supervisor at the clinic, who demonstrated a distinct interest in natural medicine developed from local plants. The clinic staff had already begun to cultivate a medicinal garden, so the GESI team created a garden blueprint, cleared the ground, planted 75 new plants, and facilitated the construction of a sturdy fence to protect the garden. In addition to the garden project, the GESI team also initiated an ecology class for local high school students. The GESI team decided to leverage the medicinal garden and the students’ enthusiasm to provide ecological training and garden maintenance. The team arranged for local indigenous leaders to teach the class and worked with these local experts to design an engaging and appropriate curriculum. The team also created a recipe book of natural medicines made from plants grown in the garden. The book has already been sold by the clinic as a fundraising and educational tool.View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Jinja, Uganda
Community-based partner: St. Francis Healthcare Services
Community members at St. Francis expressed frustration with their inability to perform labor-intensive tasks. Delving deeper, the GESI students discovered that these families suffered from poor nutrition and were unable to afford healthy food they did not grow themselves. By empowering community members to grow and eat their own mushrooms, the students facilitated an increased knowledge of proper nutrition and augmented household income per mushroom cycle. The GESI team selected a “Mushroom Jjaja (‘Grandmother’),” who in turn chose five community members (the “Starter Set”) to begin the project. As a result, six families were provided with a suitable space to grow mushrooms. The team also helped construct hanging mushroom gardens for each family, which the community members prepared and packed themselves. In addition, a local mushroom expert hosted a seminar about harvesting and selling mushrooms. In the future, the Jjaja will teach the mushroom-growing process, including husk preparation, garden packing and hanging, and watering and harvesting, to other community members.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Jinja, Uganda
Community-based partner: Organization for Rural Development (ORUDE)
After discovering that one of the ORUDE-run financial cooperatives – the Mafubira Sub-county Savings and Credit Cooperative (MARUSACCO) – needed a new direction, the ORDUE team threw themselves into capacity building at MARUSACCO. They worked with the board to increase financial and technical literacy and improve organization, and also visited eight of the ten village groups that make up MARUSACCO, where they recorded positive and negative practices, compiled records, and used their findings to create a lesson plan for training bank leaders.
One highlight of the project was a “re-launch” event that brought the village groups together to sell their products at the newly established MARUSACCO market. Another highlight was when MARUSACCO obtained an official bank certificate, allowing it to operate as a full-fledged bank. Group member Simon Han describes this moment in his blog.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Jinja, Uganda
Community-based partner: OGLM
One of the biggest assets that the team identified within the community was the potential of its youth. They therefore chose to work on a tailoring training program previously initiated by OGLM, which they utilized to equip young people with skills allowing them to become self-sufficient.
The group enhanced the educational experience for the students by compiling a student manual that contains the tailoring curriculum and other information that will prepare students for business opportunities and/or future schooling after they leave the tailoring program. They also produced a similar teacher manual to help the teacher facilitate the workshop and provide a vision for future opportunities. While working with OGLM, group member Emily Crane valued the “constant discussion with community members and leaders. Our project would not have been successful if we had isolated the community or had decided that our way was the best way.”
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Jinja, Uganda
Community-based partner: Integrated Disabled Women’s Activities (IDIWA)
The project focused on microfinance institutions discrimination against people with disabilities and addressed the community’s desire to learn about microfinance services, build a savings culture, and promote their financial self-sufficiency. The interns revitalized IDIWA’s previous microfinance initiative, Iganga Disabled People’s Savings and Credit Cooperative (IDP SACCO).
The team increased the capacity of the IDP SACCO through professional training and other capacity building activities, created a workplan to outline the future plans of the SACCO, and developed a curriculum for sensitizing Iganga communities on basics of microfinance which they used to train nine parishes in Namungalwe and Bulamagi sub-counties.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Udaipur, India
Community-based partner: FES
The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) focuses on reforestation and other drought-related issues, while prioritizing social equity and civic engagement. The GESI team selected nine farming villages in the area and investigated these villages in order to provide recommendations for their future involvement with FES.
The team designed and conducted Participatory Rural Assessment (PRA) activities in the selected villages, producing an assessment in areas of health, education, agriculture, water, and other issues based on the perspective of the villagers themselves. In the process of conducting PRAs, the GESI team boosted trust of FES in the region which will facilitate the organization’s work there and they created a project recommendation to be implemented after their departure.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Udaipur, India
Community-based partner: Seva Mandir, YRC Livelihoods
After learning of the organization’s interest in furthering education programming at their Youth Resource Centers, half of the Seva Mandir team focused on rural youth livelihood development in a nearby village.
However, after conducting introductory research in Seva’s library and the community, it became clear that the community had few livelihoods options, and that Seva’s approach to livelihoods limited community-self determination. Also, the group began to notice the youth’s demand for more discussion and action on social issues.
With these two shifts in mind, the group developed an “Action Curriculum” containing analytic frameworks for youth to analyze and discuss issues and decisions, facilitation methods for the Sada YRC to create discussion and implement the frameworks, and special skills-training seminars to build youth capacity and cohesion.
View photos from this project here.
-
Site: Udaipur, India
Community-based partner: Sahayata Livelihoods
The GESI team built upon a pre-existing Financial Literacy curriculum to increase the long-term sustainability of Sahayata Livelihoods programming. In order to do so, the team improved upon the existing Financial Literacy Class, created the Supplemental Business Program from scratch, developed metric evaluation material for both the Financial Literacy Class and the Supplemental Business Curriculum, and completed a grant to benefit Sahayata Livelihoods.
Catherine Wu (Wellesley College) emphasizes the team’s involvement in the community throughout their project: “We conducted extensive interviews with community members to understand what they got out of the classes whose curriculum we were working on. We got a lot of input from them about what we should include in the new curriculum and how we should present it. We also used community members to test our curriculum.”
View photos from this project here.
