By Lei Zhong and Shruti Kedia​​





When Ffion Thomas was sitting in Terminal 5 of the airport waiting for her delayed flight to Entebbe, Uganda, she felt extremely excited albeit nervous about her eight-week visit to the African city.

This was not a holiday; Ms Thomas was going there to work on waste management strategies in the regional referral hospital of Mbale, Uganda. She is undertaking this work as part of the International Learning Opportunities (ILO) programme run by the Welsh Government, aiming to deliver part of the Welsh commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goals to halve global poverty by 2015.

As a regulatory officer from the Environment Agency of Wales, Ms Thomas's professional skills and expertise have been matched to the role in Uganda.

The regional clinic is in huge demand in Mbale, and families of the patients would come to the hospital from the wider region, thus resulting in serious waste issues in the grounds because of an encampment developing. After she read a blog saying that the maternity ward expects to deliver 30 babies a day, she feared the infrastructure and regulation would be worlds apart from what she would be faced with.

Like other participants from Wales, Ms Thomas knew it would be a great experience. Since 2007 the ILO programme has successfully delivered more than 100 assignments in sub-Saharan Africa, allowing participants from across Wales to develop their leadership skills.

The programme offers a win-win.

A spokesperson from ILO said: “The people who come back, come back enriched, enthused, and with challenges and a renewed energy for making a difference and improvements for the people of Wales and you couldn’t buy that sort of enthusiasm from any other type of programme.”

Moses Okotel, director of Child of Hope, a NGO in Uganda and also a registered charity in the UK that participates in the programme, said: “We have had a very great time with Cliona (a Welsh participant) and she has far surpassed our expectations. Although the first week was rough for her because of the surroundings, she settled in very well.  She has trained the welfare team, developed the policies which were not in place and organised the staff into good routines. 

"The workers have very much appreciated her help and we are extremely happy with her input. So thank you for getting the right people to us - I really value this partnership and I've seen it impacting our organisation.”

Steve Davies, a participant from the Welsh Government, said: "It was a fantastic experience and one that I would strongly recommend. The programme offers a great opportunity to test your resilience and develop your leadership skills.

"But in the end, what you put into the programme is dwarfed by what you take out. You meet amazing people doing extraordinary things in barely credible circumstances. There's no other training programme that I know of that offers that kind of exposure, or rewards your participation so richly."

The programme – ILO is only part of the broader Wales for Africa Programme - reflects Wales’s sense of duty as a global citizen and the Welsh Government’s legal duty to promote sustainable development in the exercise of all its functions.

Launched in 2006, The Wales for Africa programme is proving highly successful, with the achievements of a selection of supported projects in various areas:

• The Wales–Africa Community Links initiative has now supported 100 community links with more than 200 development projects, tackling poverty in Africa and providing benefits to Wales, since 2007– and has been endorsed by the UN as leading the world by example.
• Wales has a fifth of all UK hospital-to-hospital links with sub-Saharan Africa.
• More than 100 Welsh managers or leaders from the public and voluntary sector have completed eight-week placements in sub-Saharan Africa, supporting the delivery of the UN Millennium Development Goals while developing their own skills.
• 15 more placements will take place this year.
• The Wales/Mbale Million tree project was chosen by the UN as one of 10 ‘Lighthouse’ projects at the high-profile launch of its Momentum for Change project at COP 17 in Durban.

An example of a project that provides mutual benefit is the Wales Africa Community Links project, which supports mutual community development activities.

The Welsh communities involved report benefits in a variety of areas. Participants reflected an increased awareness and understanding about international issues and global poverty. Volunteers said they had exciting volunteering opportunities and experiences in very different environments and cultures. People experienced the building of social cohesion and relationships within their communities in Wales.

Similarly, in the Welsh health and hospital links that are being supported with Africa, a research exercise has highlighted that Welsh health practitioners feel that they have personally gained from their involvement with a link (97 per cent of respondents) and that their professional skills and knowledge has increased (88 per cent); more than 75 per cent say they have particularly improved their skills in leadership/management, problem solving and education and training; about 86 per cent feel their home organisation have also benefitted.

The purpose of the Wales for Africa Programme has been to assist and support more people and communities across Wales to make a greater and more effective contribution to international development.