It has been 8 weeks since I started my work with the USAID-ASSIST project here in Uganda. When I entered the gates of this good-looking building with a pool that we never use, I didn’t know what to expect despite all the information I had read about the project. To be honest, 60% of the information I read about the project never made sense to me. After finishing my Global Health Training at Yale, I knew I was ready to take on the task ahead. I remember telling my American friend on the plane back to Uganda that “I am now ready to solve all their problems” and she replied, “I am sure you are!!’
The USAID-ASSIST project mainly focuses on building the capacity of ministries (Ministry of Health and Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development) and other USAID Implementing partners to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, client-centeredness, safety, accessibility, and equity of the services they provide. In a nutshell, it’s a quality improvement project.
This is the project I was going to be part of. I didn’t have any quality improvement experience, nor did I have any experience working with nonprofits. This was a whole new experience for me. My previous workplace was a software company where all I did was sit in front of a computer the whole day and write computer programs. I was only equipped to solving business problems by creating software solutions for them. Now here I was, faced with finding ways to make human-based systems more effective and efficient.
Everything was new to me. I remember sitting in the first monthly meeting just a couple of days after I had arrived and all I could hear were acronyms that I didn’t understand. I had to get a notebook and write down all the acronyms that I came across every day, and at the end of the week, I had 6 pages of them. Huh! That was a lot of acronyms to cram. I had to cram them if I was to have a working conversation with my workmates without disturbing them about what they meant.
It wasn’t until I went for my first coaching session that everything started to make sense. I started getting the idea of what I was hired to do. I sat, listened carefully and slowly started learning. That is when I got the answer to the question that had spent almost two weeks in my mind. Why did USAID fund this project? I have since then moved across the country in other USAID funded projects to find ways to make them more productive. It is a big task but I am now ready for the challenge. Global Health Corps has given me an opportunity to do what I always wanted to do – make an impact.