new year, new faces

After enjoying a holiday week with their families, the One Mango Tree tailors were back at the workshop - with some new faces in the crowd.

The new year kicked off a new training program, inviting ten women to learn how to make One Mango Tree products. These women are part of our partnership with International Organization for Migration (IOM). In late 2009, we won an in-kind grant that enabled us to purchase equipment in exchange for providing training and jobs for ten of IOM's most vulnerable referrals - mostly women who are ex-combatants.

Aside from learning a useful skill and earning a sustainable income, the job training we provide has a huge indirect benefit - building community. In a survey of our tailors last fall, we asked their favorite part of the job: "singing, laughing and working with the other ladies." The tailors form a tight-knit community, helping each other through hard times and providing much-needed emotional support. For our new ladies from IOM, this support is exactly what they need - and exactly what is needed to stitch Northern Uganda back together.

Stay tuned for updates on this initial training, which is led by Auma Lucy (aka Mama Lucy) and lasts three months. Check out the photo, above right, of Mama Lucy with our new trainees, going over the basics of caring for the machines.

art and identity in uganda

Do the crafts produced by artisans represent their cultural traditions and community values, or have the crafts changed to reflect those of the western market? Do western market demands influence the value system of the culture? Do these organizations build sustainable self sufficiency for artisans?

During the summer of 2008, a George Washington University student named Shaina Shealy was in Gulu asking these questions. She spent time with the One Mango Tree tailors in Lucy's market stall and visited our training programs in the IDP camps, always questioning and gathering information to answer these questions. Check out the result of Shaina's work in this beautiful slideshow of her photography, which is being featured at GWU's Smith Hall of Art (exhibit pictured at left), and the YWCA in Birmingham, Alabama. One Mango Tree is featured at the two-minute mark on the video.



Here are some excerpts from Shaina's (below, right, with Lucy and trainees at Bobi IDP Camp) research:

"As I conceived of this project, I saw national identity and globalization as two separate and opposing themes. I saw the unique artistic qualities of Ugandan artists as targets threatened by globalization. Yet, I found that globalization had not weakened the cultural expression, but rather it redefined it. National identity as expressed through art is in constant re-formation. It is built through experiences, impressions and perceptions which are fluid. Each artist featured in this study had been exposed to globalization, yet each artist maintained a strong national identity in her work."

"During this project I saw, first hand, the economic and psychological benefits the artists reaped as a consequence of the art they produced. They found their voices in their art. But the ultimate gift of self-sufficiency was obtained as a result of being a part of a supporting organization that offered life skills trainings, support groups, and/or basic security for its participants in addition to a forum for the produciton of art. Economic independence is crucial for women in developing countries."

beautiful one mango tree video

Our friends at International Organization for Migration (IOM), with whom we partner on community reintegration, put together this gorgeous video of our tailors working in our new workshop. Check it out and pass it around!

creating opportunities

women at One Mango Tree training at Bobi IDP camp in 2008, left

This past week, International Organization for Migration (IOM) released their Labor Market Analysis for four districts in Northern Uganda. The Analysis illustrates the many challenges facing the region as it tries to rebuild after more than twenty years of conflict. A primary impetus for the report was to address the poverty trap that so often occurs for ex-combatants upon return to civilian life.

One Mango Tree's work is at the very heart of this analysis. The report features a case study on One Mango Tree as an example for turning frustration into opportunity. Northern Uganda is rife with vocational training programs, but IOM's Analysis (and earlier reports) found that there was a serious disconnect between the training and actual employment. Many young men and women would receive months of training in a particular trade, but then no capital or opportunity to translate that skill into a steady and reliable income.

One Mango Tree stepped in to fill that gap, creating jobs and continuous on-the-job training for women in Northern Uganda, many of whom benefited from vocational trainings but were simply lacking work.

We recently received an in-kind grant from IOM as a part of their USAID funding, to take on ten referrals for training and employment. That training will begin later this month, and we plan to partner with IOM as we continue to grow.

IOM's Labor Market Analysis was funded by USAID and UNDP. To learn more, download the full report here.

Welcoming our new tailors from Bobi and Unyama

What a great way to usher in the holiday season --

This week Lucy and Prisca held celebrations in Bobi and Unyama IDP camps to welcome our new tailors. After three months of training, they brought their products with pride - so that Lucy could review their work. These women can now look forward to earn an income making products for One Mango Tree - they'll start out with headbands, table mats and aprons. Check out the photos below, taken by Julie Carney - during the celebrations.

Training begins

by Julie Carney
Photos by Glenna Gordon
Our progress so far has been tangible, in the form of sewing machines and liner fabric, thread and hand needles. But the less measurable progress has been more meaningful, and that is the training.

I’ll attempt to explain this progress. It is arriving at our training space at Bobi camp, Prisca reading over the lesson plans she wrote up at home the night before. This is her first time teaching but she is a natural—a quiet, and patient instructor. It is the group of women, many of them coming to the training from miles away, sitting patiently at the door to the training center and scolding us for being a few minutes late. It is one young woman, quiet and focused as she peers at her stitches while Lucy watches closely, providing gentle feedback. It is the occasional laughter that erupts, as the women show each other their mistakes. It is the way they call Lucy and Prisca “teacher”. And it is Lucy and Prisca collecting all the women’s work at the end of the day so they can take it home and grade it.

During the trainings, I sit on the side, just watching and documenting; this is entirely Lucy, Prisca, and the women’s initiative. Being useless has never felt so good.

Selecting the trainees proved more difficult than we’d imagined, as many of the women who were initially selected by GWED-G were too old to learn tailoring, a trying profession that makes severe demands on your back, your wrists and your eyes. But all the initial women were desperate to participate, even if they weren’t strong enough physically. But we had to favor “business” over pity; if they were not going to succeed at the trainings, then it would be a waste of everyone’s time. The wrangling for a seat at the training demonstrated both the desperation of life in the camps and how NGOs can sometimes unintentionally create conflict by privileging some over others in their programs. This is why we asked them to bring their daughters or a female relative with whom they “share a pot.” Everything is usually shared among families, so they would presumably be benefiting if they bring their daughters or daughters-in-law. With some time, and speeches from Lucy, they’ve done so, some more reluctantly than others. Now—at both camps—we have two groups of young, eager and committed women.

While there is a certain divide between Lucy, Prisca—as women from town—and the women in the camps, many of the women have been opening up to Lucy gradually, and over time, she says she looks forward to building their trust. Some of them are now approaching her and discussing their family situations, their children, and in some cases, their HIV-positive status. She explained to me that they tell her they are happy to be participating in the training because it is not as back-breaking as ‘digging’ in their own gardens at home. I am happy that the women are opening up to Lucy, and that Lucy is beginning to counsel them in her own way. Perhaps because Lucy has suffered so much herself, her empathy is genuine.

Lucy has not read the books I have on ‘gender-based development’ or ‘empowering women’. She’s lived these theories. And she makes me believe in the power of good leadership and charisma. I had a very old professor, with decades of experience in development, who ended seminar one day with the comment that so much of development is based on charisma. I think we initially dismissed him as senile, but I think I understand his comment a little bit better in the context of seeing Lucy in action.

Giving a hand-up, where the expectation is a hand-out

by Julie Carney
Photo by Glenna GordonA few years ago, the head of UN Humanitarian Affairs declared the protracted conflict in northern Uganda one of the world’s most neglected humanitarian crises. There’s tenuous peace today, but two decades of displacement and insecurity have left instability, poverty, psychological turmoil, and destroyed infrastructure in their wake. Admittedly, much has changed in the region over the past few years because of greater global attention and advocacy efforts: in Gulu the sheer number of signs for NGOs and groups of well-intentioned ‘muzungus’ (or ‘munos’ in Acholi)—researchers, humanitarian workers, missionaries—suggest anything but neglect. White SUVS smattered with the logos of NGOs or UN Agencies roar through the streets, and women selling roasted corn wear t-shirts that shout “I am poverty alleviation” or “Stop the conflict” (t-shirts which probably outlast the programs and projects they advertise.) If only NGOs could bring as many sustainable developments as boxes of t-shirts.

With more security, most families in the 120 IDP camps are going back to their land, but many are staying, are still relying on food-aid handouts, are still sans reliable incomes. The increasing international presence has perhaps exacerbated this dependency syndrome—on food aid, on paid school fees. Begging in Gulu town is institutionalized, a Ugandan friend told me, explaining that, on Tuesdays and Fridays, beggars take to the streets. “There is no begging in the history of the Acholi people, but the war made us beggars. And the NGOs help us continue to be beggars.”

Everyone whom I meet in town and in my homestay community - a congested group of Acholi huts just outside town, inhabited by a curious mix of displaced families and young Ugandan NGO workers - asked me what charity I am working for. They are surprised when I reply: a business. No foreigners, besides some Indian ex-pats, come to Gulu to do business. To do business, you go to Kampala. Profit in Gulu is to be found in “humanitarian non-profits”: the most highly sought jobs for locals are international NGO jobs, and the most popular course of study in Gulu University is “Development Studies.”

But there is arguably nothing more “humanitarian” than bringing business to northern Uganda. The women in Bobi and Unyama camps don’t need another NGO to bring them second-hand clothes and they don’t want another NGO to come and speak to them about ending domestic violence: they need jobs and their own income for meaningful change. Some organizations have already brought training in tailoring to IDP camps. Indeed, the idea of tailoring training is nothing new, and there are vocational programs already established in the area. But many graduates leave such training unable to survive as tailors, without sewing machines, without fabric, and without a market connection. The market connection is where One Mango Tree comes in.