Erimelinda - Programme Manager at Islands of Peace Tanzania

One of the major challenges I experienced while implementing the project was the delayed rainfall. So all the farming activities rely on the rain, and at this point, the rainfall was delayed. So what I did as a program manager was to quickly organize for a meeting that brought together stakeholders, the government, the partners, and the implementation team, and we quickly identified solutions. One of the solutions we did was identify the drought-resistant crops, and we started promoting this. Together with that, we also identified simple water harvesting mechanisms in the communities, whether from the streams, the rivers around, and be able to gather water to continue with the rain with the farming as we wait for the rain. So quickly, we had to promote drought-resistant crops and ensure we have mechanisms that would help water harvesting in the farms or around the communities that we are supporting.

Good morning, my name is Ermelinda Tema and I would like to share my experience in one of the projects I managed in my current job. The project is called Kilimoendele and Arusha Plus and this project was looking at intervening on the food security issues but also creating resilience among the farming communities. At the initial stages of the project, we ensured to do the needs assessment within the communities, what are their priorities, but also aligning the needs of the communities, district or government and priorities and the donor expectations. So having identified and aligned the priorities and needs, we came at the designing space where now we designed a project which responded to the needs and expectations of each size. This also included defining the partner's roles and responsibilities as which partner comes in in intervening and implementation of the projects. At the planning phase, we ensured to have all the necessary documentation, including the work plans, implementation schedules, monitoring systems, and all the necessary procurement manuals and everything that we needed to ensure we will execute the project very well. We went to the implementation stage where now we went to the ground to do the actual work. The work began from the mobilization of the communities, development or establishment of community groups, development of demo plots to ensure we now have a starting point of the work.

Actually, in implementation of the GEMA development project, a couple of other teams were involved. We had finance team, we had communication team, we had monitoring and evaluation team. So there are two key areas that helped me work with them and ensure we succeed. Number one is understanding the role of each team in the project. So it was very easy to know in what time I'm reaching what team and in what areas am I reaching with one team. So having clear roles defined for each team was really important for me to do that. But also having communication in place. Communication as to one to one, you know the team, you know who to communicate and continually communicate in regard to the project needs, but also having each team present in the meetings. So during the monitoring meetings, these team members were also part of the meetings and we were all able together to understand the responsibilities and roles and how each of us is coming to the project. That way it really helped me work together and succeed with the team.

At planning level, we ensured to have the necessary documentations, the work plans, the mechanisms of implementations, and everything that we really needed at this point. This work was done with staff or implementing partners that we had already identified at the initial stage. So we had all the plans together, planned for the work plans, the indicators, the mechanisms all together, and agreed on a way to go about it. And the next stage was now the actual implementation on the ground. We did implement the project in 10 villages initially, and the implementation began with formation of groups, development of demo plots, and actual implementation of the approaches on the ground. So as a program manager, I was sure to be on the ground to see the actual starting of the work and to see the groups and the target communities are now becoming the part of the process, from starting of the process, development of groups, development of demo plots, and all of that. So in implementation, we ensured all the planned activities goes as the proposed timelines, responsible staff, anyone that was there. That included also to ensure the budgets are aligned with the activities on the ground.

Linda Temba, a Linda Temba, currently applying for this opportunity, and I'm responding to a question on a specific example of a project that I managed from initiation to the closure, outcomes, and the metrics achieved. I would give an example of the latest project that I worked on called Kilimo in the Lebu Arusha Plus. This was an agriculture project that looked at handling or tackling the problem of food security using the agriculture principles. It's a project that was implemented in Arusha, covering two districts with a target of direct 600 farmers and indirect 1,500 farmers. The project was worth 650,000 euro. And on the start of the project, the initial stage, we started with the identification of needs, the community needs, what are the priorities, what are the expectations really, and what are the areas they would love to strengthen. Thereafter, we tried to align those ones with the district and government priorities in the place because one of the challenges you're likely to expect is if you come with a project in an area and it's not a priority in that area, normally it brings a challenge. So we aligned the priorities of communities, the priorities of the districts, and then we now start for a design. We designed a project that really responded to the needs of the communities. So the designing of the project, the strategies, the approaches were all defined.