Dear neighbors,

I'm reposting my work under a new name to avoid confusion. Rather than including the entire document, I've only included the section on Girl Education here. This is a (short) first draft, more to come later...

Marianne

Girl Education webpage.doc

Dear Jessica, dear Marianne,

thank you for your documents - I have not read your comments yet but hope to do so soon and update our working document accordingly.

Take care,
Eleftheria

Hi Marianne,

Thanks alot for working on the document could you kindly review the paragraph below and try to seperate national data from local. the %ages for the enrolment rate are national not specific to kyarumba.
----------------------------------------------------

Although the launch of the Ugandan government’s Universal Primary Education (UPE) program in 1997 increased enrollments in primary education dramatically (from 2.7 million in 1996 to 7.2 million in 2002), the dropout rate among adolescent girls is unacceptably high. Out of a population of 25,000 people, there are only eleven female university graduates. Currently only two Kyarumba women are enrolled in university studies

Thanks
Jessica

Hallo Marianne, hallo Jessica,

I have incorporated your comments to the document - to be found udner Resources.

Marianne the text which you wrote is very good. Dennis had written once that we should pay attention at writing the text in first and not in third person but I do know if this can be applied on this section - on the information of the education situation in Uganda.

Thanks for the work done so far!
Eleftheria

Hi Jessica,

How about this:

Although the launch of the Ugandan government’s Universal Primary Education (UPE) program in 1997 increased enrollments in primary education across the nation dramatically (from 2.7 million in 1996 to 7.2 million in 2002), the dropout rate among adolescent girls nationally and locally is still unacceptably high. For example, out of a population of 25,000 people in Kyarumba village there are only eleven female university graduates. Currently only two Kyarumba women are enrolled in university studies.

Let me know if this sounds good, and I'll add it to the existing doc. Or if you would like it to be reworded, please let me know and I'll make the necessary changes. (I assume that dropout rates for girls are still high nationally, and that it is not specific to Kyarumba).

Thanks,
M.

One of the things not covered in the text is the situation with regard to secondary education.

We have the situation in Uganda as in much of Africa that one of the demands of the World Bank in the 1980s was that everyone pay for education, that it be feepaying. The Uganda Government's 'UPE' policy is a partial roll-back of that international financial demand. Readers around the world may be puzzled by the need for secondary scholarships, may think it is something fancy being sought. It would be good to be a little more open about the situation. The reality is that the international financial institutions (the Wise West) stuffed up African education and African families with those policies. We may not want to say quite that but would it be accurate, Jessica, to say something like this:

[draft]
Under economic reform policies imposed by the World Bank on Uganda among many African countries in the 1980s, all education became fee-paying - free public education was abolished. The Uganda Government has since reversed this policy as it applies to primary education. The International Financial Institutions have also reversed their policy in this area. But unfortunately it remains the case in Uganda that secondary education is not free... [add in other previous text]

[end draft]

Yes indeed, when describing policy issues such as these, third person or passive voice is right.

The notion of using first person is for the site's mood overall --- to AVOID a site that says "There are these people out there in Africa" and INSTEAD be sure it says: "Hello, this is us!"

I think a lot will become more clear, more easy to adjust, when there are pages and links to see. I am not wanting to push Clare, but to encourage her to build pages and adapt text and image to see what works when it is there. Be assured that text devised in the abstract elsewhere will have to change on the real page.

best wishes

Dennis

Hallo Dennis,

This is a very important point you made in your posting about the need to mention that secondary education in Uganda is fee-obligatory. I will include your text somewhere in the page of the School System in Uganda.

Also the usage of first person in the web-site is something we all agree on and is one of the reasons we are updating the document for the web.

Regarding seeing the information in the pages and then commenting, this was my initial impression, that we would work this way but you and Clare said that we firstly need to work on the document, as it made no sense to copy paste it to the web...

Take care,
Eleftheria

Hi Eleftheria and neighbors,

I think what Dennis means is that even if the majority of content is worked on offline, once the text is placed on the webpage it always requires some tweaking, rearranging, and restructuring. It never looks the same when transferred to the webpage! At least that 's what it appears to me that he is referring to (Dennis, please correct me if I'm wrong!), and what I had assumed all along. Once we move the content to the website there will still be a bit of work left for us to do, but it should be minimal.

I will wait with incorporating the Uganda school system info on the Girl Education page I'm working on, until there is some text written about secondary education in the main document. We should probably also wait until Jessica gives her approval, though I think the text Dennis wrote sounds great as is.

Are there any other neighbors who would like to volunteer to work on the content of the other webpages? So far, we have Clare covering the BWC webpage and I'm doing the Girl Education page.

Cheers,
Marianne

H Marianne,

thanks for your input, I also think that the text will never be ready before we see it in the web and as you wrote we are in the process of doing most of the work off-line,so we put the final touches, when we see the text in the various pages.

Dennis, did you also mean this or that it would be helpful to see the text already on-line? :-)

Marianne maybe you can copy / paste the text of Dennis in your part and once Jessica sees it, she will review and comment it.

I have been waiting for Geofrey to show up again and to work on part of a document if he wanted. Clare V. is busy with her studies. I have meanwhile e-mailed a Neighbour who had posted a message once, if he wants to contribute on this....

Thanks!
Eleftheria

OK, I'll include Dennis's paragraph for now and if there's more info needed, or 'research' to be done on this topic, we can add it later once Jessica has looked it over...

I will see if I can round up another neighbor or two from my circle of friends/colleagues/acquaintances!

Bye for now,
M.

Eleftheria,

did you get the chance to look over the text I drafted so far? Is that what you're looking for, or does it need more flare, detail or first person voice?

M.

Dear Marianne,

below you can see my comments on the text which you wrote (posting from yesterday) :-) :

"Marianne the text which you wrote is very good. Dennis had written once that we should pay attention at writing the text in first and not in third person but I do know if this can be applied on this section - on the information of the education situation in Uganda".

I am not so sure how one could present this data in the first person - personally I am very happy with your text, I do not know if someone would want so suggest changes?

It would be great if one or two persons from your circle joined us.... I had also contacted friends but they said they may join at another point of time...

Have a nice day!
Eleftheria

Eleftheria,

Oops, somehow I overlooked that response from yesterday! Yes, I agree, this section is difficult to do in 1st person. The Intro and BWC page might be the best places for that sort of voice.

I've tried getting friends involved in Nabuur.com (specifically Kyarumba) before, with a couple of people who showed serious interest, but everyone is so busy with their own lives, causes, work, etc.

I will try to 'spread the word' again, as we really could use the help right now!

Cheers,
M.

Secondary education: very important to have Jessica's comment, adjustment and approval of that text too. These are politically sensitive issues in Uganda I am sure. We need local readers onside. One internal inclination of mine is that we all drop what we are doing here and throw stones at the World Bank, but that might not work either... :-)

.doc doc v web doc.
simple analogy. I plan to make lasagne today before wife comes home from hard day of mental health crisis work. I have the recipe book [the .doc doc] and I have made this before, but I know also that getting it together is much different from reading cook book (Marcella Hazan 'Classic Italian Cooking') and also that good bolognese (lasagne ingredient) requires all day to cook so I need to run and light the wood stove and get that going. also then the bechamel, then assembly. and we all know it's what is on the plate/web page that counts. you have to make that up in real bits and taste as you go.

In assembling over last three weeks
www.aplaceof.info/kiliba
www.aplaceof.info/fochi
www.aplaceof.info/acoke
-- much still to be done
I have found it most useful to throw as much as possible on to the web as early as possible. This is consistent, Elefteria, with my view all along that the web designer needs lots of freedom, and why in fact I do not think it possible to 'finalise' in a .doc file. We need to give Clare elbow room to adjust/alter/refine both text and links within the site. The overall balance will only be clear with test driving (putting finger into sauce and tasting the real thing)

The other thing that happens as you turn on the lights on the web page is that (in those villages, with Flory and Fred) they see new possibilities, new ideas, as it all unfolds! There must be room for that.

best wishes

Dennis

Dear Dennis,

I think we are somewhere between reading the cook book and getting the plates ready … As we all agreed a couple of weeks ago, we are in the final stage of preparing off-line the text to be presented in the web. Then I find it as important as you do, that we see how everything looks on the web – work on the links, improve text, structure, pictures, so we get the best “taste” possible.

Best wishes,
Eleftheria