So, I should tell you a bit about what I am doing here. I am working at the Aga Khan Foundation based in the capital, Maputo. You only have look at the Aga Khan website to see all the good things they do around the world. The Mozambique office is currently running two programs. One is called the Coastal Rural Support Program (CRSP, or what some, including me, like to call "crispy") and the other Bridges to the Future or B2F. CRSP is an integrated rural development program with components in market development, health, education and community capacity building. For those who arent in development, what this means is that the program tries to increase people's access to health and education services, tries to create ways for people to sell things, and tries to help community organizations become more organized and able, all in very poor rural northern Mozambique, in the province of Cabo Delgado. B2F is a human resources development program that offers scholarships to gifted students, educational opportunities for lifelong learning, and helps organizations build capacity to continue this type of human resource development. As part of my job, I will be working with the CRSP program, helping the market development component. We are hoping to offshoot this component into a separate program of its own to build on what its doing already and to complement whats being done now. So I will be travelling up north to the project area to see what we are working with and hopefully can come up with some good ideas. Everyone says it's quite beautiful up there. It is near a resort and a game park, two markets the country is trying to develop. Of course, my work wont be on the resort but in the villages.
I will also be helping with a couple of studies that the office is doing. One study is a civil society indexing study trying to get a sense of how able and organized non-profit organizations are in the country. The other study is focused on pluralism and will look at the demography of Cabo Delgado province and more specifically the cultures, languages, traditions, and history of the people there. Both of these studies are being done so that programs can be better designed and implemented with this information in mind.
Other than these things, I am responsible for writing program performance reports. These are the reports that go to the donors to show that their money is being used well. My boss Kevin is the only other native English speaker and is already doing the job of 2-3 people and up until my arrival he was doing all these reports. He has happily offloaded all this work to me. I will also be writing some internal policies for the office. Top secret stuff, can't talk about it. :-)
And of course there are always the urgent, has to be done yesterday type things that always come up, like the neverending translation of Portuguese reports to English I have been doing so far. But I am not complaining. (Ok, well maybe a little) It is certain that I will be extremely busy during my time here. So sorry if I dont respond to your emails right away!
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