Tag: GDPU

Well, we’ve been back to Gulu again, taking two of the new trustees from ETC of PWD this time. We were bringing together the strands of the project so far and thinking about where this accumulated knowledge should take everyone involved.

There were:

1. Visits to the field with Musema Faruk the project officer from Gulu Disabled Persons Union to see business groups from both phases of the project.
2. Meetings with local councillors from the new district of Omorro to discuss their approach to disability and whether our project might fit into it.
3. And a very productive meeting with GDPU members themselves, to discuss the project so far and where it might lead in the future.

Many thanks to Faruk for organising the visits, for his hard work with the groups and for supporting the evident improvements that we saw.

Two key issues arose from our field trips:

1. What makes a successful group and how best to support business groups to achieve that success, and what does success look like anyway
2. What are the best vocational skills for students to learn and how specialised should they be?

And at our subsequent meeting at GDPU we all spent a long time thinking about their plans to make a training hub for future students with disability, what should be taught?

But each of these three questions could be reduced down to one word: sustainability. How can the hard work of the members of the business enterprises and of the members of GDPU be kept going? How can they make sure that what they are doing will earn enough to keep them and their families alive and better than alive; thriving.

Our last post mentioned success by two groups. This time perhaps, by concentrating on the work of two others we can tease out some of the implications for sustainability in their success.

Akera Roberts in Gulu and Lubanga Lakica in Koch Li

Akera Robert  

Is based in the centre of Gulu town and doing extremely well, has plans and enough money saved to move from his table on a veranda into new premises within 3 months. Has just sent his son to one of the top primary schools in Gulu, paid for by his own work. A real difference in aspirations this year compared to last, Akera Robert has become far more confident and has a vision of his own future far larger than we saw last year. Important to note that he focuses on electrical and solar appliances not mobile phones. He puts his success down to

• Diversity of equipment repaired, unlike for example the Gulu PWDs enterprise who solely mend feature phones and therefore have a diminishing market, Akera’s range will only grow.
• He has a very good reputation, particularly among people from the villages who bring their items on the bus for him to repair when they come into town
• He is always there from 8 in the morning till dark, even when he has no work he will be at his desk, so customers know they can always find him

Lubanga Lakica:

Based in Koch Li, a very small place on a mud road road between Koch Goma and Bobi. Koch Li is about 5 miles from the main road that passes through Koch Goma, a small town about 20 miles outside Gulu. There is not much at Koch Li, but isolation can bring benefits as well as challenges;

Benefits: in particular a lack of competition. Koch Goma is full of people mending motorcycles, but as the members of Lubanga Lakica have realised there is great market for them if they can learn how to work on the many different possible machines to repair in their area: slashing machines/ generators/ small agricultural machines etc. They have some of the skills needed, but need more. Some of the members already know how to carry out small welding repairs although they lack the machinery to do so.

Challenges: security is a real problem in isolated areas, tools and anything portable or of any value will be stolen. Which means keeping spares for example, is a difficult. These mechanics have a tie up with a spares dealer in Koch Goma, but to run a proper service they need a secure container, which costs money. As is often the way, the group are reluctant to invest their own money in paying for a container, although they have negotiated a good price for one made by Mr Labongo from the disabled welders group in Gulu. As Faruk says, “They fear risk”.

The implications from discussions with these two businesses were twofold

1. Trainees need different skills set to succeed in town and in out in the village, in essence urban trainees will need specific skills in greater depth and country trainees will need a very wide range of basic skills. Our Post-Training Support programmes have certainly been location specific and responded to the wishes of the beneficiaries. But, in future training institutions will have to establish where the future trainees intend to work before planning their skills training programme. It seems obvious doesn’t it, but I have never found a training programme that does this
2. To build on their success members will need to understand the role of investment and have access to it; either their own money or from grants.

These field trips and Faruk’s great depth of understanding and knowledge of the enterprises he supports, built up over the last few years, gave us all much to think about and take forward to our meeting at Gulu Disabled Persons Union. Where should the ETC project go next? See the next post to find out!

What does progress look like in this type of (very) small scale development context?

Where does long lasting improvement come from and how can you recognise it?

We are now coming to the end of Phase Two of our project, ETC@GDPU (Enhancing the Capacity of Persons with Disability) it provides skills training and business support for young people with disabilities in Gulu and surrounding region. Faruk the project officer from Gulu Disabled Persons Union (GDPU) has been out and about assessing the development of each group in Phase Two and of course checking on the progress of the pilot groups.

Recent Activities:

Financial training/ Marketing training:

• GDPU hired Mr Okumu Moris, a lecturer in entrepreneurship and commerce, to train youth in marketing skills; a gap identified among the enterprises.
• The other support offered by the ETC project for the past 8 months also included: Life skills; Financial literacy and record keeping; Business management skills, Group dynamic training and training in specific vocational skills, eg knitting and joining of sweaters using a sewing machine, or electronics or repairing different types of motorbike.
• Follow ups to the training given and Reflection Meetings were also held.

A look at a couple of the ETC @ GDPU Phase Two Groups might show the effects of this support and training:

Gulu Disabled Persons Knitting Workshop:

Along with the general training, members of GDPKW have attended Skills Training for two months, training in open sweater weaving, joining sweaters, and using the sewing machine. As Faruk, the project officer has said: “their capacity was successfully built and they are all able to do work without any problems.”

Training outcomes:

• • After the marketing training the enterprise was advised to look for contracts, not only from schools which are the usual outlets for sweater weavers, but also from the community in order to increase their sales. The group should also try to display their products so that others will know them.

• There is sign of increase in their income, for example, the enterprise was able to get contracts of 206000 Ugandan shillings (about £45.00) for one month, awarded to the enterprise as a result of increased skills and knowledge of marketing and sourcing of contracts from the community.

• The group has an updated record book which is a very good sign of financial literacy and good practise within the enterprise.

• The enterprise members have managed to work very hard to improve on the performance of their enterprise.

Good signs for the future

Members of GDPKW have started making individual sweaters of different designs, rather than just school uniforms, and are now getting small individual contracts. GDPU have linked the enterprise to friends who wanted sweaters, and they already been awarded the contract to knit two sweaters at a total cost of 60,000 Ugandan Shillings (about £13.00).

Also, they now sew dresses from small pieces of cloth, recycling different pieces of cheap cloth and offcuts to make one beautiful one. These are particularly suitable for children’s clothing and are therefore very saleable.

Small Steps?

Both of these outcomes might seem very small steps but in fact they mark significant progress. Previously, members have felt bound by the forms and types that they had been taught and appeared fearful of anything new, of investing their own time, money or resources in risk. School uniform sweater contracts are seasonal, only available in January/ February at the start of the school year as a bulk order, one-off contract with a low rate of financial return. If you miss the order, through a broken machine or illness perhaps, then you make nothing for the rest of the year. These new ventures not only show people with enough self-confidence to ‘own’ their own business, but also a means for individual makers of new clothes to make a serious future income that is sustainable throughout the year; there is considerable potential for developing ‘upcycling’ and new designs in the local markets.

Other routes to boosting confidence and self esteem:

Sport: Participation in: one of the GDPKW members of the group (Aciro Brenda, a physically disabled girl) participated in the disability Paralympics, winning gold medals in 100m, 200m and Javelin.

Nyeko Rach

A pilot phase hairdressing group based in Acet, a small isolated town some 25 miles out of Gulu on a very poor road.

Description of activities carried out by the group this period:

targeting your market and plaiting of hair: the enterprise performed very well recently, especially during the period of Uganda independence and market days. The enterprise had a lot of customers, all members were engaged and able to earn good money.

Increase in commercial confidence and business planning after training: the isolation of Acet, which has no retail shop for salon products, makes using the right materials difficult. The enterprise has realised that if they plan properly, they are able to source and buy the salon products requested by their customers, in Gulu and transport them out to Acet by bus; as Faruk says: “This is a good sign for customer relations and ownership of the enterprise. The enterprise has shown a lot of progress compared to other enterprises as they do buy their materials on a weekly basis.”

Again, small steps but important ones for future sustainability, this is what progress in small scale development looks like.

Coming in the next update:

news about the recent ETC of PWD trustee visit to Gulu and news about the next steps for this project.