Strategize This

"This role will be a bit different from what you are used to in regular Peace Corps. This stint is for only 9 months so you don't have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for things to develop like you would if you have 2 years of regular Peace Corps service. So try and focus on the role you are brought in to do. You are brought in as an advisor, and as an advisor it's not necessarily your role to carry out the projects. Once again very different from what you are probably used to, but you are brought in as a HIV/AIDS Technical Adviser, so advise, assemble your team, analyze the issues in the district you are placed, see which programs work and why, and make the appropriate recommendations to the members of the district council and other relevant stakeholders. With such a limited time frame, it's really all you can do."
-A former Peace Corps Response Volunteer giving me his thoughts on how to maximize my effectiveness during my time short time in Malawi.

And damn he was right. I'm barely a month in and I'm already feeling the time pinch. Holy crap! It's already been a month.... Well like the quote above says I don't have time to sit around and wait for things to develop especially when I have tasked myself with identifying all programs, impact areas, and target zones of all 27 Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), all 104 Community Based Organizations (CBOs), and all 19 Health Centers (1 government hospital, 12 government clinics, 3 health posts, and 3 private clinics). But before then an analysis of the main health problems of Balaka district is in order such as the analysis of HIV, Malaria, TB, Diarrheal disease of each Sub-Traditional Authority. I will need to then match up the health statistics to programs that are currently running in the district and see which programs need to be increased, strengthened, diversified, etc. All the while using GPS units and GIS software to map out the location of every single NGO, CBO, and health facility in the district. This will allow my team and I to build a map that has the exact location of each stakeholder, see which areas they have programs, and label attributes to each stakeholder to see how they can be most effective. Man.... someone tell room service to bring the cofee AND the Cognac because it's gonna be a long couple of months ahead.

Sawali, Kachenga, Kalembo, Nsamala, Chanthunya, Amidu, Nkaya.... The 7 different regions of Balaka district. These regions are more commonly known as Sub-Traditional Authorities. Seems I forgot to mention what a Sub-Traditional Authority in the previous paragraph. The main Traditional Authorities being Kalembo (has Sawali, Kachenga, and Kalembo Sub-Traditional Authorities) and Nsamala (has Chanthunya, Amidu, Nkaya, and Nsamala Sub-Traditional Authorities). I hope that made sense to you all because if it didn't, then well clearly I'm not doing a very good job of explaining.

So in a nutshell my team and I will map out the locations of each stakeholder in the district, build a map using stuff like Quantum GIS and google earth, discover which programs are impacting what areas, trying to achieve what goals, and cross reference each stakeholder's programs with the available health statistics and data. At the end of all of this I am hoping to help the District and all stakeholders increase cooperation amongst each other thus eliminating duplication of programs, maximizing the strengths of each stakeholder, and thus being in a position to build a stronger and more comprehensive HIV/AIDS and health strategy. This may seem like an impossible goal and no matter how hard I try this will never come to fruition. But then again, I'm too stupid to know when it's over. So here we go...