Ken

Ready…!

It is both enjoyable and taxing being a Country Director. Just after my first two months with TFFT, I was lucky to take a break to the beach in the Philippines, to relax and reflect on TFFT’s priorities moving forward. Two things were an experience that kept me excited: i) The Zip-line (I call it “flying on a line some mind-boggling heights above sea level”) and, ii) seeing a small dose of Tanzania in the Philippines. It was exhilarating seeing a dhow called Zanzibar and floating the “union” flag in Aklan, Philippines. I thought, “Did it travel all the way through the Pacific and Indian Ocean and back to participate in the Zanzibar dhow festival or was this just a coincidence?!” Whichever the case, it was a lovely and welcome twist.

dhow

Now that I am back and have conducted a document-based strategic assessment of TFFT, I am encouraged and energized. With the support of the lovely team (well, we have just added the newest member Uswege Mwakapango), we are psyched to set a new and interesting agenda for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in general and TFFT in particular in 2014.

We are finalizing the processes of annual planning through program and strategy; however, we are pleased to share some of the early gains that we have made together:

a) We just successfully completed the first external facing TFFT Annual Program Review of 2013 with a lot of new ideas coming from an array of participants including: scholars, boundary partners, program partners, and strategic partners. See the presentations, and read the press we received.

b) We took a trip with our team and partners to learn from Mkomboz about: alternative discipline; Happy and Sad boxes, safe schools, and community child protection committees. We will share how it was in our blog later this month.

We believe that accountability starts with us, and, therefore, we have the obligation to share what we have done with OVC, provide opportunity for others to critique us, and learn from these ideas and innovate. We also know that change will be an elephant to obtain if ideas—no matter how brilliant—are not put to action. Our focus is on ACTION.

The annual review has added impetus and focus to our annual planning and we have thus prioritized the following as key strategies based on lessons we learned:

  1. Community engagement to begin at community identification of our new 2014 scholars
  2. Program modeling and innovations to fill the gaps we have identified
  3. Partnerships and resource mobilization to support our expansion
  4. Demonstrating impact and change to show the value of our work with OVC
  5. Livelihood models for OVC household strengthening to assure effective re-integration of our scholars into the community
  6. Mentoring and coaching to OVC and young people

As we settle for the year, we believe that our passion for OVC and our focus on improving quality of education in Tanzania will reach new dimensions for the best interests of current and future generations. As I say, “we are the community and the community is us”.

Ken OULU

2014-02-04T22:22:56+00:00