Work Part I (Laurie in Ghor)

Currently I’m working on a six-week contract with a watershed restoration program in Ghor. The focus of the program is improving water access and security to villages for rangeland, agriculture, and domestic use. We work with rural villages on soil conservation, irrigation, water supply, and water related health/hygiene. My role is to work with the program on collecting baseline data and establishing a monitoring and evaluation system for the program. The data and monitoring should then allow the program to measure its impacts and refine/adjust the specific activities and strategies to be most appropriate and effective. Right now the health/hygiene baseline team (6 women) is on a 7-day trip completing household surveys and focus group discussions with women. They’ve just been trained in the data collection and have hit the ground running doing a great job. Especially given that for a woman to go into the field, she has to bring her moharam (escort-husband, brother, or child) and any kid she can’t leave behind. It turns out that getting 6 female staff, 6 moharams, 4 kids, and a field supervisor into remote Afghanistan is no small task. In addition to all the normal logistics (transportation, where to stay the night, how to feed everyone, organizing our data collection tools and equipment, etc), there are frequent security checks and subsequent adjustments to the field plan. All in all it’s quite a production. And it’s really wonderful to see these women out doing research. They are very positive and in a country where women’s movements are often limited, I’m impressed with their willingness to take off into the province to learn about the experiences of women and water. The agriculture team is also out now, holding focus group discussions (FGDs in the org lingo) with farmers who have participated in soil/water conservation activities to understand how rangeland production has changed. Back at the office for now and with a break from the logistics, I’m putting the pieces in place to continue to monitor the program activities and progress. This means designing “tools,” surveys, FGDs, and reporting formats, that will be used by the teams to continue to measure and understand the on-the-ground changes resulting from program’s activities. I work with a great group of people, see a few photos in the slideshow. In a few more weeks I’ll finish up and hope to be in Bamiyan before the elections.