The organisation I work for is called Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment
and it’s a Ugandan run research think-tank and it mainly deals with public policy
and focuses on making public policies work for people and creating a non-partisan academic environment
based on research and application to try and develop the best public policies for the people of Uganda.
And my job varies from working in the field, so partaking in collecting data
and then I also manage work as a team throughout all of this.
My specific role in it is data collection, research, analysis and data management.
I also support with events organising, so those can be national events or they can be regional events
and personally what I find so fascinating is being involved in the research process.
So you find out all the issues that are raised by local governments and by people themselves,
so in these remote workshops, in Moyo, which won’t mean anything to you but it’s very far north,
and you have the unique issues that are raised by members of different districts and local governments.
And then one of my roles is to work with the team to code lots of this data and manage it centrally
and identify all the different themes and trends in local governments.
So once we’ve taken the minutes and taken all this information,
we can then really pinpoint what the issues are with, for example, female counsellors
or if the late release of funds really holds back a local government from performing its duties.
The first time I made a trip to that part of the world it really flipped my perspective on a lot of things.
Coming from a small village on the east coast of Scotland
and then going to Rwanda, which I think is roughly the same size as Wales,
and learning about the history of Rwanda my eyes were just, you know, sort of like ripped open.
I was just very shocked by everything.
And following, that initial trip I took a year out after school and actually returned to Rwanda to the project site.
I was the only member of the original team to go back
and I realised very quickly the limitations of charity work, of teaching English abroad and construction projects.
So for me I realised that if I was actually going to be relatively useful in the long run, I needed to broaden, deepen my knowledge.
I had to get smarter and had to develop my skills base beyond giving money, teaching English or building a school.
So that was the key thing for me, was finding a course that gave you the support to learn and gave you the freedom to question.
I think one thing that really attracted me to Peace Studies was the intellectual freedom
and actually you can ask the difficult questions
and,
at the very least you’ll be referenced the right book to find the answer.
This past year has been a Phenomenal learning experience.
Personally since the age of sixteen I have had some pretty key learning experiences.
One particular one from Bradford was learning that poverty is not an accident.
I think that was a pretty astounding lesson to learn, and understanding the broader picture,
you know, economics, politics and all these sort of broader variables that are at play.
And then now, having worked in the international development world for a year, especially in Uganda,
Uganda’s quite a unique place in terms of donor funding and NGOs and operations
and relations, relationships with the government.
And so now, after a year, it’s brought a lot of things in question
but I think I would definitely be interested in further study and Bradford is definitely a place to consider,
mainly because of the academic freedom, the resources, there’s a peace library if I remember correctly
and there are five or six really fantastic members of staff that I still remember throughout my undergrad
and that I would be very keen to work with, you know, on the next level.