Hi Mariaz,

Is it possible to organise a discussion forum for Ugandans here to support coordinate and plan for joint events?

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Stanley Okurut

Vijai has addressed the most compelling problem I have had on Nabuur - constantly repeating the same advice from one village to village - there must be a way to solve this - if I need info on building wells, or successful pig raising, I don't want to hear from just 6 people in my village, but from the dozens who have already researched sources for financing clean drinking water, and raising pigs.....not that they are one and the same ;) Vijai's hit the problem right on the head-

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Ginger :)

Vijais plan sounds like a good setup to me.

I would like to add that, besides this lack of sharing sollutions between villages with the same issues, I found "talking about ideas on what to do in a village" themselves does not lead to results in villages themselves. I think if you'd add a "Project management" approach to the discussions in groups, you'd be able to be more productive. Having ideas and not getting results on this platform might be partly educational (local representatives which have no education or experience in the role of managing a project), but my experience is that the platform/website itself does not lend itself very well to managing a project from "the first idea" to "an actual result".

In my eyes: Nabuur provides a wonderfull platform to discuss ideas and getting to know each other. But discussing ideas and meeting each other does not automatically get actual results. There is a transition stage between "getting people together and having an idea" and "a result". Going through this stage is in my view "running a project", or: project management. I think project management is lacking in villages.

So, a few months ago I decided to compair Nabuur to a commercial project environment to see what is missing in order to get results. I made this comparison, because I in my oppinion on one hand the villages achieving actual results a very low and on the other and on the Nabuur platform has little to no focus on which things in project management lead to enhancing the chances of succesfully reaching a goal. You can read about this in the added document.

Nabuur is not commercial neither are her villages. But I thought "if you would compair the two, it might give an interesting result in what is lacking on the Nabuur platform which can enhance the chances for villages to succesfully get from having an idea to reaching a goal they set". Projectmanagement does focus on this. So if you compair the two, something usefull might happen.

The comparision ended up with a result I did not expect myself when I started. In my eyes there is lack of focus of the platform in achieving results. I think this happens because nobody/no role in the Nabuur organisation is responsible for the overall actual results achieved. You could say: "Nabuur cannot garanty success in villages, so we do not focus on it. Therefore no role is needed to be responsible for this.". But the downside of this is "no role beeing responisble" has in my eyes, some drastic sideeffects to the platform as a whole, which are overlooked sofar. So bare with me for a second and let me elaborate on this point of view.

The consequence of "no role beeing responsible for overall results in villages" is that nobody in the Nabuur organisation is focussing on this or taking action to enhance the chances of successfully reaching a goal in villages. Which leads to this happening on the Nabuur platform:
- little or no education or assistance is provided in project management to local representatives, because which role in the Nabuur organisation is there to tell to do so?
- the stucture of the platform/forums is not set up to run projects because which role in the Nabuur organisation is there to tell the designers of the site to do so?

I think that if, as a Nabuur organisation, you want more villages to achieve villages achieve actual results, you will have to add this role to the Nabuur organisation itself. I think that if you add this role (somebody who is responsible for enhancing the chances of successfully reaching goals in groups or villages) to the organisation of Nabuur, changes will be made, as the people/organisation who run the platform will focus more on providing a platform which enhances the chances of success. I see the downside: can you ask someone to be responsible for other peoples actions and situations? But on the other hand: if no takes up this responsiblity, no one will focuss on it. If no one focusses on it, nothing will happen in this area, just like it has been since the start of the Nabuur platform.

I think that having a role like this in the overall organisation is part of a sollution. And I think focussing on projectmanagement on the Nabuur platform, the way you channel forum discussions. Both could be part of the parachute cord which Vijai reffered to in earlier posts.

A note though: This comparison made does not focus on Stanley's "Window to the world" view (which is also important). The document only focusses on how one could enhance the chances of successfully reaching a goal in a project, from a project management point of view, blended in the Nabuur situation (working together on a voluntary basis in a multicultural enviroment). I think if you blend the two ("Window to the world" and "project management") together in a new website, villages can be set up to be more succesfull in achieving goals. I do not know how to do this, but I'd like to think along with this discussion. Groups would work: Groups could be part of the project management part; the profile of the villages could be the "window to the world".

Kind regards,
Lieuwe

Comparing Nabuur to project management.doc

I agree with you Stanley, i believe meeting once in a while is ok but the transport money can usually be spent on accessing the internet to a forum where various ideas have been discussed so that we can implement them.
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Yours in Service
JIS Birungi

Hi Stanley and Joanne

It would be possible to set up a Ugandan group on Nabuur where you could discuss online and also as a way to organise local meetups.

Before doing this, find out if a few others in Uganda are interested in using it, and think about what you would use it for.

There are already similar groups e.g. the Kenya meetup group which anyone can join (although its not very active) and ones for a couple of other countries (Nepal and Cameroon I think) which can only be joined by invitation as they are places where LRs in those countries share information.

Groups can be public, as this one is, which means they are listed on the Groups page and anyone can join. Or they can be more restricted, meaning that members must be added or approved by the group's owner. Romina or Pelle can explain more on this, I can see the various options when I edit a group but do not know the practical details of how they are used.

If you decide you do want one, you will need to ask Romina or Pelle to set it up as only Nabuur staff can do this. It would also be a good idea for one of you to volunteer to be group Owner, and also to set up some relevant tasks.

Then you would need to invite others to join - it should be possible to email all the Ugandan LRs (and possibly Ugandan neighbours etc too) if staff can provide you with a mailing list.

Mary

Vijai, the problem group approach i believe works when we are dealing with problems that need information and technical guidance. How could problems that relate with construction or equipping: so to say that need physical or fiscal resources be organised and handled? More thinking is needed on how to handle these kind of tasks.

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Stanley Okurut

Vijai, the problem group approach i believe works when we are dealing with problems that need information and technical guidance. How could problems that relate with construction or equipping: so to say that need physical or fiscal resources be organised and handled? More thinking is needed on how to handle these kind of tasks.

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Stanley Okurut

Hello Stanley,

Good to hear from you after such a long time !

To answer your query:

Fiscal resources? - look around among the 232 villages on nabuur. Over 95% of these villages are looking for fiscal resources. They should all be on the 'Fundraising' group on nabuur for this purpose. The solutions provided by neighbours seem to be common to all villages.

Construction? - over 60% of villages on nabuur are trying to construct a school. They all need on get on a common platform which could be titled 'Construction' under 'Groups'.

And so on ...

Stanley, these are only my suggestions. I only advise at a macro-level from the other end of the internet without any commitment of my availability or my time. The acceptance or implementation of any suggestion is entirely at the discretion of the villages. If the villages feel it suits their interests better to keep the issues alive, then there is very little advice that can work in such situations. My last post above to which you have probably referred was only copied by me from a thread on nabuur where I had posted it about 6 months back. It is not my intention to enforce implementation of any kind. I have merely copied it again since the issue of website development is being actively discussed on nabuur at present, otherwise I had forgotten all about it.

The villages also have the freedom to reject any advice !!

Best wishes

Vijai

Dear friends,
I have also noticed one thing from people joining nabuur.
All only look at those villages that have been successful and what they do is to start up semiler projects.
What lam advising is that people should sit down,talk to erea people and decide of what better project required for the people ,in a given area.
There are very many types of projects that can be talked for a purpose of developing a given area.
As l write now,l can also note that over 60 % of nabuur village projects are those of education.
Please,other people how do you look at this !
Christopher

Hi Mary,
This post slipped my attention. In the meantime the questions about the partnerships/Uganda have been answered by Pelle. The costs for free lancers for the new site will be ca Eur 40K. It is indeed crucial to make sure that the new site will meet te needs of local reps, current and new neighbours and facilitators. In a few weeks the new site should be able to register and deal with those wishes much more easily. This will also be an important input for the NABUUR camp. You will probably have checked the website development group for more specific information. Don't hesitate to ask Frans and Pelle.

Siegfried

Not a bad idea at all Mary, thank you. Stanley, am hoping you gladly accepting this responsibility.

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Yours in Service
JIS Birungi

reayaly i am very feel.
what can i do you
thankes
vaithee.

Hi Siegfried

Thanks for the answers.

Yes I have seen the info in the website group which gives a very basic overview of the new design. I still have no clear idea what this means in reality or which neighbours and local reps had meaningful input into the latest design.

Sorry, I know I may sound a little cynical, but I have been through several of these 'new improved' websites and they have been the opposite.... guess we will just have to wait and see, hopefully this time things really will be better.

As only a small number people will be able to attend the Nabuur Camp i.e. those in/near the place where it is happening, there needs to be a way for others to feed in their ideas. I don't know how that will happen, but hopefully others will have some suggestions once we have more info.

Mary

Hi,

I agree, it would be good to determine quite soon where and when to held the Nabuur camp to allow as many people as possible to come, and to begin organizing it. What is the current Nabuur team´s thinking on this?
As for the possibility to feed in different ideas, I proposed some comments below how to divide up the discussion. I think the most effective way would be to form groups around certain issues (fundraising, training etc) and to discuss them. We started this some time ago on training for local representatives (in the ressource group); I still belive that this discussion should be followed up, to take an example.
Pelle, Romina, could you set up such discussion spaces, (and also a space for the Ugandan local reps under the local representative group, since we cannot access this group)?

Thanks,
Maria

Hi staff

It has been posted that there would be weekly or fortnightly Nabuur community calls where anyone could dial in to discuss the changes etc. I know the first set were not well attended so don't know whether there will be more.

If there will be, it would be very helpful for us to have details of times and what is to be discussed, and for this information to be given several days in advance, so that people can work out whether they wish to, and are able to, attend. I don't know whether I will call in or not at the moment, but others may do if given sufficient notice.

If there will not be, please let us know that too, so that we know what is happening.

Mary