TICAD in Action

To support TICAD priorities, United Nations Volunteers were first mobilized in sectors such as agriculture and commerce. Increasingly UN Volunteers are now being assigned to newer fields like good governance and Information and Communications Technology (ICT). UN Volunteers supporting the TICAD initiative have helped boost small businesses in Kenya and promoted a clean, renewable energy benefitting 400 farmers in Tanzania .

Banking on Kenya’s future

A little seed money goes a long way in helping small businesses grow in Kenya. It can also change the lives of many new entrepreneurs.

Through the work of United Nations Volunteer Nurul Huda Chowdhury, more than 3,000 Kenyans have started income generating activities.

In the coastal city of Mombasa, for example, two women received a grant to start their own produce stand where they sell fresh fruit and vegetables. On a field visit to monitor the women’s activities, Nurul was quite impressed with what he saw.

“Prior to this project, women worked as sex workers. Now they support themselves in dignity and haven’t looked back to their previous life,” he says.

With 24 years of work experience in his native Bangladesh, Nurul moved to Nairobi in 2001 where he started working as a UN Volunteer microfinance specialist through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) initiative.

Nurul was instrumental in establishing this programme as a Kenyan branch of Trickle-Up, a U.S.-based initiative that provides US$100 grants to poor people to start their own businesses. One of Nurul's first actions was to design a manual for implementing the microcredit scheme. The 120-page document contains all the tools needed to successfully launch a business. In addition, he visited the businesses to monitor their progress and offer advice.

The UN Volunteer also works extensively with Kenya’s 57 village banks located in the remotest areas of the country. To improve the operation of the banks, he designed a harmonized and simplified evaluation process for monitoring, inspecting and auditing the financial activities of the facilities. He says the village banks are important structures in rural communities as they provide credit services to people who normally would not have access.

In addition, Nurul trains credit officers and bank branch managers on evaluating, monitoring and auditing techniques. So far, 100 officers and other staff members have benefited from his knowledge.

A further initiative in Kenya involving Nurul was with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/ UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) initiative known as MicroStart. Under this pilot project, five microfinance institutions (MFIs) -- two women’s organizations, one specializing in gender issues and two dealing with entrepreneurship and business management -- received funds to improve their operations and their ability to offer credit to people living in rural areas.

With MicroStart Nurul monitored, followed-up and supervised the activities of the MFIs and ensured the funds granted to the institutions were used accordingly. Given the success of the MicroStart pilot project, plans are under way to expand it throughout Kenya starting in 2004.

“I’m proud of being involved with the task of providing technical and advisory services to the poor segment of Kenya’s population,” Nurul says. “Even though I had a good job in Bangladesh, I wanted to share my experience and contribute to the development process in the developing countries. I could help the most by being a volunteer and this spirit motivated me to join as a TICAD UN Volunteer.”

Tanzanian farmers harness the wind to go green

Tanzanian farmers on the southern shores of Lake Victoria are gearing up to capture clean wind and solar energy to drive the pumps necessary for watering their crops.

With the help of Nepalese UN Volunteer Prashanna Shrestha, farmers in the region are turning to mother nature to pump the water they need to irrigate their land. Instead of using diesel-powered water pumps, Prashanna designed eight solar and windmill energy generating irrigation projects in four districts. The irrigation pumps take water from Lake Victoria and pipe it to a central tank, then onwards to several storage tanks where it will flow by gravity through canals to farmers’ fields.

“The pumps will enable the farmers to grow better quality crops and in some project areas farmers will be able to grow totally new crops,” says Prashanna. “Fields that were once partially cultivated will now have enough water to be fully cultivated.”

He estimates that 400 farmers will benefit from the project. A pilot wind-powered pump is already pumping water to the storage tank. Workers have started to build new water distribution canals to finish the job.

Prashanna began his work in Tanzania through the TICAD United Nations Volunteers programme in July 2001. Prior to coming to Africa, he worked in Nepal as an irrigation specialist with the national Department of Irrigation, and before that he was stationed in Cambodia as a UN Volunteer working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International Labour Organization (ILO) on a joint irrigation project. Currently he is responsible for monitoring, supervising and assisting in the construction of the solar and windmill energy generating irrigation projects.

In addition to providing the farmers with an energy source that is clean and renewable, the project trains farmers so they can take an active part in maintaining the pumps long after Prashanna and the other specialists have left. He and four district coordinators are working with a number of community-based organizations to teach them about the system and what is required to keep it running. So far, he says, the training programme is going quite smoothly and the farmers are becoming more and more comfortable with the technology.

“Prashanna's great contribution has been reflected in two ways,” said Nehemiah Murusuri, the UN Volunteer’s supervisor under the UNDP project. “First, he has helped farmers to design irrigation systems that are low cost. Most irrigation projects are high cost and therefore unaffordable to the poor. Second, he carries out capacity building initiatives for farmers and irrigation technicians. Farmers are very happy with the irrigation systems that use renewable energy technologies. They like this technology because it has almost zero operational and maintenance costs. It is also environmentally benign.”

These efforts also support provision of water for domestic purposes, contributing to progress towards Millennium Development Goal 7 that aims at halving by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

Based in Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is the volunteer arm of the UN system supporting peace, relief and development initiatives in nearly 150 countries. Created by the UN General Assembly in 1970 and administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNV works through UNDP country offices to mobilize volunteers—two-thirds of them from developing countries—and promote the ideals of volunteerism around the world.