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Enhance learning with user-friendly libraries
Thea MATHUES | 19/10/2016
User-friendly libraries are at the center of teaching and learning. That is why we think it is essential to assist the librarians in our supported colleges to continue to grow and deliver a better service to both students and teachers. We want to ensure that everyone on campus has access to knowledge and information through (electronic) books, the internet, a clean and silent studying environment and approachable library staff.
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Increasing access to health care with “performance-based financing”
Thea MATHUES | 08/09/2016
BTC’s Private-Not-For-Profit project assists faith based health facilities in delivering the best possible healthcare services for their patients. To bring Uganda one step closer to universal healthcare coverage, a new system of performance-based financing is introduced. A system that rewards the outputs instead of funding the inputs of the health facilities. Good performing hospitals and health centers will receive financial support to be used with more autonomy. One of the regions where BTC is helping to set up performance-based financing (PBF) is the West Nile region. It lies in the north-west of Uganda bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo and South-Sudan. Many people fleeing conflicts or difficult economic situations in these countries are looking for medical treatment in a region that is yet to fully recover from the violent conflict between Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. In 2006 a truce between both parties was signed. Since then improvement in poverty reduction has been made but according to the Ugandan Poverty Status Report of 2014 the Northern part of Uganda remains the poorest of the country. Here health service providers are trying to deliver quality healthcare to an often very poor population. Our Private-Not-For-Profit project (PNFP) assists through Ugandan ministry of health the private-not-for-profit health facilities with capacity building in quality improvement initiatives, leadership and management. Flipping the old logic Traditionally funding for health has been directed towards inputs like salaries, construction, training and equipment. People thought that improved healthcare would follow but this hasn’t always been the case. The new system of performance-based financing flips the old logic around and focuses on improved performance. Health facilities receive quarterly incentive for initiatives that are taken to implement the quality standards defined by the Ministry of Health. They are also rewarded for quantitative performance targets like “number of child malnutrition correctly treated’, ‘number of fully immunized children’ or ‘number of deliveries well managed’. The quantity and quality of delivered health services will be verified on a quarterly basis. Reducing the patient's bill In the performance contracts signed between the health facilities and the Local Government, the subsidies granted for achieving these quantitative performance targets are linked to reducing the patient’s bill. Currently user fees contribute to 50 to 60% of the total income of the health facilities, this is too high. According to World Health Organization recommendations, not more than 20% of the cost of the health services should be covered by user fees. 13 of the facilities (4 hospitals and 9 health centers) in the West Nile region have been selected to start with performance-based financing. By turning away from centering attention on inputs, RBF aims to improve both health system effectiveness and efficiency. Health providers at a district level are free to use the grants to implement their own work plan. Local decision making power Managers, doctors and nurses can set their own priorities according to the needs on the ground and will receive the spending autonomy to back their choices up. They will gain more decision making power, and become responsible for their own performance. This shift from a centralized budget to more local decision making power is an important reform that BTC, together with the Ugandan government, is helping become a reality. This is just the beginning of a challenging but exciting process. Two other east-African countries, Rwanda and Burundi already introduced a system of performance-based financing with promising results to show for. To give two examples: according to the Africa health forum of 2013 post-natal care visits in Burundi have gone up and the overall quality of care in health facilities using PBF has increased in Rwanda. With the Ugandan government, the ministry of health and the local PNFP partners on board, BTC believes that performance-based financing could be a real game changer for the health sector in Uganda.
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BTC Uganda and the Flemish Employment Service partner up: “We want to assist the Skilling Uganda project in becoming a success”
Thea MATHUES | 08/06/2016
Two employees of the Flemish Employment Service (VDAB) recently visited Uganda to share their expertise on vocational training. The visit is a scoping mission for the Support to the Implementation of the Skilling Uganda Strategy intervention supported by the Belgian government. VDAB will examine how they can best assist BTC in supporting five selected vocational training centres in becoming 'centres of excellence'. The scoping mission is the first in a new partnership between BTC and the Flemish Employment Service (VDAB). “We want to get a better understanding of the BTVET sector in Uganda. We met principals, trainers and students in different vocational training centres to get an idea of the current needs,” says Carlo De Smedt from the Flemish Employment Service. His colleague Bartelijne van den Boogert adds: “We want to see this BTC project become a success and have a positive impact on vocational training in Uganda.” The mission focused on five BTVET-institutions : Kasese Youth Polytechnic in Kasese, St. Josephs Virika Vocational Training Institute in Fort Portal, Millennium Business School in Hoima, St Simon-Peter Vocational Training Institute in Hoima and Kyema Uganda Technical College in Masindi. They are selected as pilot institutions for the intervention in West-Uganda, an area that is preparing for oil exploitation in the coming years. According to Mr. De Smedt one of the biggest challenges the project faces is seeing the bigger picture. “We should not assume that these five institutions share the same problems as every other Ugandan BTVET centre. We have to take regional differences into account.” New ideasVDAB has a lot of experience when it comes to the Flemish labour market, but can their expertise also be of value in a Ugandan context? Ms van den Boogert firmly believes so: “With our background in career guidance and as a service provider for BTVET we can bring a fresh set of eyes to the table. We will share our success stories and lessons learned and most of all show people that they can accomplish a lot, even on a micro level.” “Therefore we are also grateful that the VDAB colleagues participated in a training organized by the International Training Center of the International Labour Organization (ITC-ILO)”, says Eliot Arinaitwe, the coordinator of the SSU intervention. Together with colleagues from Namibia, the Netherlands, etc. the VDAB colleagues shared their first hand experiences in training for employment. “Making BTVET more relevant for the needs of the local labour market is key to the paradigm shift Skilling Uganda wishes to accomplish. The five selected institutions are not always aware of how to get this collaboration with the private sector going. Given their experience in Belgium, we hope that VDAB can share some first-hand ideas on how to broker these partnerships," Mr. Arinaitwe continued. Listen to your peers Ms van den Boogert acknowledges that working with the private sector is important but also stresses that the different training centres can learn a lot from each other: “I think it would be of great value to the selected institutions to go and visit one another. It will provide a good way to give constructive feedback and allow for learning opportunities. It can be very enriching to listen to peers, and most of all it is doesn’t have to be threatening since everyone is in the same boat. Those peer-to-peer moments are currently missing.” Now that this first Ugandan mission has come to an end, VDAB and SSU will have to think about the way forward. “We need to draft a strategic plan with all the partners involved,” says Mr. De Smedt. “Back in Belgium we will inform our colleagues about the details of our mission and work as ambassadors to promote the cooperation between us and BTC from within the VDAB.” In a later stage this could mean that VDAB experts with specific vocational skills will visit the different BTVET-institutions and try to transfer these skills upon the local trainers, where and if relevant. True motivation Asked about what she will definitely remember from this mission Ms. van den Boogert had but one word in mind: “dedication,” she said. “The principals and trainers at the vocational centres could easily be discouraged by the challenging circumstances they are working in. But instead of giving up, they stay committed to the cause of creating high quality vocational training. You have to admire people for that and we will do our best to further cultivate this intrinsic motivation.”
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Technical & Vocational Education should partner up with private sector
Thea MATHUES | 06/06/2016
Unemployment, especially among young people, is very high in Uganda. The Ugandan Bureau of Statistics estimates that 64% of the unemployed are between the age of 18 and 30 years. This is a huge challenge for the Ugandan government especially given the rapid growth of the population. One of the problems is that many youngsters do not have the skills employers are looking for. The Support to the Implementation of the Skilling Uganda Strategy intervention (SSU) tackles this challenge one step at a time. One of its objectives is to improve the quality of the Ugandan Business Technical Vocational Education and Training (BTVET). Knowledge sharing As part of its support to its BTVET partner institutes, SSU organised a training week on 'management of training institutions' in Fort Portal. The training analysed issues that managers of training centres face in a regional East-African context and provided a platform for knowledge sharing amongst participants. Other projects supporting BTVET also partnered up and supported participants, including BTC-TTE, World Bank, Irish Aid, AVSI, JICA and WHH.In total, over 50 managers of 16 different vocational training institutes participated. These 16 institutes are selected by the Ugandan government to serve as pilot centres of their ‘Skilling Uganda’ strategy. It is rare that all the primary stakeholders of so many different partner organisations are brought together in one learning event. Inspiring examples The training course on ‘Management of training institutions’ was organized by the International Training Centre (ITC) of the International Labour Organization (ILO). ITC usually holds its trainings at their global Training Campus in Turin (Italy), but offered to delocalize the training in Uganda to reach a maximum amount of participants. In total 53 people participated in the different sessions, with the overall objective to inspire the management to improve the functioning of vocational training centres. For this reason participants were introduced to different innovative ways of dealing with everyday management challenges as well as global best practises in modern demand-driven skills development such as public-private partnerships, work-based learning schemes, career guidance, etc.The participants worked in groups and tried to come up with strategies to achieve higher effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability for their own centre, aided by inspiring peer-to-peer examples. While a Namibian delegation explained how they created a change in skills development over the past decade by setting up a successful training-levy for the BTVET sector in their country, the Flemish Employment Service (VDAB) introduced best practices from a Flemish labour market context. Different Ugandan organisations also shared their best practises (Q-sourcing, UMI, UMA-HWK, DIT, etc.). Looking for partnerships According to ITC-ILO manager Alexis Hoyaux, trainings like this should reinforce stakeholders in the field: “Too often we tend to focus on the macro-level but real change can only come from the micro-level. We have to empower the people on the ground to take initiative and challenge the status-quo.” Mr. Hoyaux also stressed the importance of public-private-partnerships: “Private initiatives are forced to innovate. If they don’t, they do not survive. Public institutions or too often directed with a very top-down mentality, independent thinking is not stimulated. I think public schools can really benefit from private sector experience and strongly believe in the necessity of public-private-partnerships.” “If there is one thing I would like the participants of the training to take away from this experience it would be: take initiative! They should be active in seeking collaborations with the industry, they shouldn’t be afraid to come up with new ideas and they should inspire their staff and teachers to do the same.”
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Improving the skills of Ugandan workforce
Thea MATHUES | 10/03/2016
Many Ugandan employers complain that the Ugandan workforce faces a dramatic lack of skills. Large segments of the population, including those in the informal sector of the economy, youth and women, do not have the skills they need to work in a productive environment or to generate income. The Ugandan system for Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) needs to be reformed. Many technical and vocational institutions are struggling to deliver quality skills training, training infrastructure is often outdated and the sector faces severe image problems.That is why Belgium decided to support ‘Skilling Uganda’, a national strategy aimed at improving business, technical and vocational education and training, through a five-year program (2015-2020) that is jointly implemented by BTC and the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Sports (MoESTS). The Belgian contribution to the intervention totals 16 million euro, the Ugandan support is estimated at 10% of this amount. FIRST STEP: GETTING ALL STAKEHOLDERS TOGETHER To kick-start the Belgian-Ugandan intervention, a working session was organized early December in Kampala, bringing together different BTVET stakeholders, including private sector partners, government officials and partners from BTVET institutions in Western Uganda. The aim of the meeting was to explain the program’s objectives, collect immediate feedback from the different stakeholders and to introduce the way-forward plan. An important first step, because the ambitious objectives can only be reached if all different stakeholders work together.
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Building in East-Africa: Focus on Sustainable Architecture and Energy
Thea MATHUES | 10/03/2016
How can we create appropriate legislation to encourage sustainable architecture? How to educate our children and communities on this? And what if ‘sustainability’ is no longer enough? A seminar on sustainable architecture organised by the Teacher Training Education project addressed these questions on the 21st of October 2015. All with the purpose of infrastructure developments contributing towards the quality of education. Since 2012, the Teachers Training Education (TTE) project implemented by BTC and the MoESTS supports teacher training colleges, mostly on pedagogy and management, but also on infrastructure development. This last area has a strong focus on sustainable architecture and renewable energy. All infrastructure developments emphasize, during design, execution and operation, the importance of interventions that improve conditions in the colleges and reduce operation costs. Marten Treffers presents some of the approaches included in the project, like orientation of buildings, cross-ventilation, thermal chimneys, but also installations of biogas, solar and thermal heaters. If Ugandan architecture firms strive to acquire the same knowledge, attracting external partners would no longer be a necessity.Key-speaker Musau Kimeu encourages all participants to advocate passionately for change: “We have to push the entire nation to work for sustainable architecture. Why? Because the benefits of sustainable architecture are great not only economically and environmentally, but also socially. For example, people who work in sustainable buildings are less sick.”Vincent Kitio firmly agrees with this idea: “Across African cities with tropical climates, the majority of modern buildings are a replica of building designed in mostly European countries with cold and temperate climates. This results in huge energy waste.” INCLUDING PEOPLE Although legislation and government intervention play an important role, the government is not the sole motor for change. Every citizen, every user of a building, can contribute to a more sustainable architecture. “People have a strong mind-set on how a building should be constructed,” says Nigel Tilling, “there has to be an acceptance of technology and new materials.” Mr. Treffers noticed that convincing partners to innovate is sometimes not an easy task: “Showcasing the use of materials and technologies, as is done during this seminar, hopefully opens many eyes.” In our search for the perfect learning environment we need to keep the Ugandan reality in mind. As budgets are often small, low maintenance and cost efficiency are key concepts in designing schools, even more so in rural areas. That is why working with local materials such as eucalyptus is ideal. Going for innovative techniques is definitely worthwhile in the long run. Several case studies presented show that the initial cost of investment is high but the operation costs are manageable. After a while the investment starts paying itself back. Solar panels, for instance, are long-lasting and only need battery change once a year. When those initial investments can be covered through a project like TTE, colleges can use their budget for pedagogy instead. Schools should be encouraged to audit their use of energy. They could save more than half of their monthly electrical costs if they invest in energy saving lamps and educate staff and students on how to save energy. The colleges supported by the TTE project will reduce their firewood use by 50-70% and the electricity use will go down, on average, by 50%.FROM SUSTAINABLE TO REGENERATIVE DESIGNSAccording to Mark Olweny it has come to the point where ‘sustainability’ is not enough: “Sustainability implies something that endures without degrading, however it does not regenerate itself or create anything new. To be truly sustainable, we need to live within earth’s ecological carrying capacity.” WHAT'S NEXT? Throughout the entire seminar the need for a paradigm shift is expressed. But how can we achieve this? Mr. Olweny seeks the answer in value change: “Values passed on are central to enabling a sustainable and regenerative design approach. And isn’t education about changing values?” The TTE project strongly invests in this. That is why lecturers are being trained to use new teaching methodologies and college management is being supported. The infrastructure component of the project actively chooses for innovative and sustainable building methods. Good local examples are thus being created. But the project cannot stand on its own and will not go on forever. This seminar has shown that there is a lot of local knowhow. One challenge for the future might be to bring this fragmented knowhow together. The discussion on how different actors in the field can increase awareness and then realize more sustainable buildings must continue. Clients, for example the government or projects like TTE, must insist on adopting designs that favour energy efficiency and green architecture, and they must develop standards and guidelines for it. Architects and engineers must be innovative and recommend solutions that contribute to better conditions for the users. Professional bodies and universities must further research those interventions that are relevant for the Ugandan context. And contractors must develop their execution experience with local materials and technologies that allow sustainability. WHO IS WHO? Marten Treffers: Architect from the Netherlands workings as International Sector Infrastructure Expert with the TTE project. Musau Kimeu: Environmental Design Architect and lecturer in Environmental Building Science at the University of Nairobi. Vincent Kitio: Architect working as Head of Urban Energy Unit at UN-HABITAT.Mark Olweny: Architect and Senior Lecturer at the Uganda Martyrs University. Nigel Tilling: Architect and projects director of FBW Written by Marten Treffers and Thea Mathues
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Architecture as a key factor for Quality Education
Thea MATHUES | 29/02/2016
The quality of education is determined by teachers and their professionalism, the students, the lessons and the way lessons are taught. Exactly what the Teacher Training Education project is focusing on.It is also influenced by the physical learning environment. Building schools with a favorable learning environment is the priority of the architecture team in the project. On the picture, two of the construction workers are fine-tuning one of the new classrooms in National Teachers’ College Muni, based in the northern part of Uganda. While construction is going on, the project also tries to incorporate cross cutting issues. In Uganda, women are not always afforded the same employment and economics opportunities as men. The picture portrays the story of two committed, female construction workers, setting the example for a more equitable world. Text and Picture by Shelley Heugen.
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Knowledge-building video of the project
Guido COUCK | 01/12/2015
Leadership and management weaknesses in the health sector were at the basis of the ICB project, aimed at improving health sector performance. The goal was to initiate improved practices in district health services in the Rwenzori and West Nile regions.Extensive technical and financial support was given to the Directorate of Planning and Development in the Ministry of Health, with the development of new policies and strategic papers. Health services in the two regions received medical equipment and transportation means, such as ambulances, utility vehicles and motorcycles. Direct funding to District Health Offices provided support in a performance-based modality. The support to the revitalization of the Health Manpower Development Centre under the project and the introduction of an e-learning system brought important changes to the opportunities for Continuous Professional Development for our health workforce.
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Video of the Teacher Training Project
Guido COUCK | 26/11/2015
Video by the ugandan Ministry of Education.
