Initiative Update for module 1

Change maker lab 1: here is how I evaluated the work I have been doing so I can improve on service delivery.

“The beauty of World Pulse is in the fact that it designs programs to suit the empowerment needs of these beautiful women creating impact in all corners of the world. It’s just amazing”

I have always longed to belong to a platform that moves you from one level to a higher one, and when I found world Pulse, I knew it was a dream come true. What a unique platform that follow -up the activities of all its members with the aim of improving service delivery. That is why I am glued to it. I am a testament of how it helps you find solutions to challenges you find in the community in our daily interventions.

Coming from a region plagued with the sociopolitical crisis and working with persons with disabilities who are very vulnerable in the face of the war is so challenging to deal with.  In addition, focusing on women with hearing impairment with their sign language communication needs which is an additional form of vulnerability to their disability is an additional burden to deal with. Further more constant lock downs and gunshots reduces daily working hours and sometimes we may only have two working days a week. Moreover, some of the women with disabilities have been forced to migrate and have become internally displaced in Urban areas. Most of them some whom had been given start -up capital have lost their businesses and source of livelihood. All the above mentioned and many more reasons not mentioned here have made work very challenging.

The changemaker Lab program is very timely in the face of these difficulties. This month I have been going through the modules and relating lessons learnt to my initiative, hoping to put it into practice to make my initiative more impactful.

Just as I learnt in Lesson one of this module on the importance of understanding the problem and framing the issue, this month I have analysed the problem I am trying to solve in my initiative and realized initially my initiative was not focusing on the root cause of the problem but the effects of the problem. Analyzing the problem, I realized the root cause of deaf girls not being empowered is the sign language communication barrier they are facing. Information about empowerment activities do not get to them because they are unable to hear. In addition, most people who are supposed to be involved in service delivery do not understand sign language. I have been thinking of additional strategies to reduce the sign language barriers in addition to using digital tools to communicate.

The visionary session also gave me an opportunity to evaluate myself, the energy am putting in my work to attend my vision. It also tied with lessons 3 on monitoring and evaluation. Since my initiative is not new, I have had time to look at how much I did monitor and evaluate my work before this session. I loved the emphases made on monitoring and evaluation being a continues process.

Above all the lesson seven is a summary of all the lesson learnt. I have been working hard on coming up with a logical framework for my initiative. It’s a little time consuming and a lot of logical thinking to do but it’s worth it.

I have been putting some of the strategies mapped out due to this changemaker lab to reduce communication barriers unknowingly. For the past 14 weeks I have been part of the faculty members working to teach sign language to 16 community members from different works of life under the Disability Inclusive humanitarian action project under the Cameroon Baptist Convention.

Also during our recent meeting with deaf women, I encouraged them to start by teaching members of their family’s basic communication signs. We also discussed at our deaf women meeting, came up with more strategies to monitor and evaluate as this will give us the opportunity to know what has been going on well and improve on what has not gone well.