2016: Review and Evaluate

By Kelly Child, Managing Director

During 2016, we held a lot of meetings at the UVP office in Iganga: staff meetings, partnership meetings, planning meetings, and, most importantly, SWOT analysis meetings. We used the 2016 - 2018 Strategic Plan, devised in 2015, as a launching pad to analyze and dissect every aspect of Uganda Village Project (UVP). 

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) is a simple concept where you take a topic -- or program in our case -- and evaluate each category. During these meetings, we would agree on our greatest weaknesses and best opportunities within each program. From there, we made small adjustments in immediate programming and started developing concepts for additional shifts. 

One of the most notable decisions is something that most people will never witness: a small shift in our human resource. We better aligned similar programs under one person, rather than spread between two or even three staff members. Below are some thoughts from each staff member on the current and future direction of each program.

Keneth oversees all of our Village Health Teams (VHTs) and the internship program. The two main aspects he is looking forward to is the increased accountability of our VHTs and continuing to professionalize our internship program. We’re aiming to formalize reporting procedures for our VHTs and continue development of the Global Health Leadership Curriculum to accompany our interns’ experience in the village.

Patrick will be managing all of WASH (Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene) in order to more closely align resources and approach this very important program in a more holistic manner. In additional to a more cohesive approach to WASH, Patrick will be spearheading partnerships. Currently, UVP utilizes partnerships from government and private organizations whenever possible. The fresh approach in 2017 will focus more on collecting partners for our Graduation Fairs and couple that with a farewell sanitation push, also executed by a partner. Patrick muses, “We really want to leave the village with a bang.”

Titus will be taking a closer look at how our HIV and malaria programs interact, specifically with data collection. “Consolidating our health package allow for more efficient data collection and education delivery,” he says. By coordinating our supply requisitions for both programs, we can assist the government health centers to operate more efficiently.

Loy took over reproductive health in early 2016 by adding family planning to her fistula program responsibilities. In addition to adding specific family planning outreaches targeted to men, we are exploring options for expanding our fistula program to serve double the number of women with repair surgeries.

From these SWOT meetings, we are better aware of where we stand and, most importantly, where we want to go. With your help, we can continue to strive to serve our beneficiaries better every year. We greatly appreciate your support thus far and are excited to share with you our future successes in 2017!