Empower East African Refugee Youth in Uganda

International migration reached unprecedented new levels in 2016, and this year shows few signs of slowing down with 65.6 million people displaced throughout the globe. While the treacherous Mediterranean Sea crossing route, and the countless tragedies associated with it, get the majority of the headlines, there is another, lesser known border that is seeing even more activity. I am speaking of Uganda’s borders. Uganda neighbors two major refugee producing conflicts: the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the crisis in South Sudan. Throw in other regional conflicts in Burundi, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, coupled with Uganda’s extremely welcoming refugee policies, and you have a diverse and strained refugee population within Uganda as well as a strained support system. According to the latest UNHCR Uganda Fact Sheet, there are more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda as of May 2017. Of these displaced people, 74% are South Sudanese and 17% hail from the DRC. Despite the huge number of people crossing into Uganda, funding to help support the refugee settlements in Uganda has drastically dropped. As a result, many families and individuals have decided to leave the refugee settlements, foregoing the limited aid that is provided within, and try to make it on their own in Kampala.

This is where Soccer Without Borders is stepping in. There are very few organizations focusing on the growing number of urban refugees in Uganda’s largest city. Many of these families struggle to put a roof over their heads and sufficient food in their stomachs. Attending formal schools is not a viable option for most. In fact, according to a new report issued by UNHCR, refugee children are FIVE times more likely to be out of school than non-refugee children. And it is even worse for girls. Take it from one of our most consistent and hardest working participants, Rita: “All of my brothers have had the chance to go to school since we moved [to Kampala]. I have not, because I have other responsibilities at home...I really want to go to school, but going to [Soccer Without Borders] is the next best thing. I can now understand English good and I get to play football with the other girls.” 

As we prepare to begin our next term of English classes and football training in July, SWB is focusing on strengthening its core programming to better serve the out-of-school youth it serves. Through a combination of improved facilities, new and engaging English language-integrated football drills and an evolving English literacy classroom curriculum, we are working to prepare our youth for success after SWB, be that in a formal school, in the Ugandan community at large, in a resettlement country, or in their home country should the opportunity to safely return arise.  We are excited to begin the new term and make it the best and most fun one yet!

Links:

• About SWB's program in Kampla
• Follow SWB Kampala on Facebook
• SWB's most recent newsletter: How can soccer support refugees?

As Soccer Without Borders continues to evolve, we are constantly asking ourselves two major questions: How much of an impact are we making? And how can we improve our program? This is where Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) comes into the picture, and why I got to spend four months in Uganda alongside the incredibly dedicated program staff working to make a difference in the lives of refugees in Kampala.

By keeping track of who our program participants are- which country they are from, what language they speak, how old they are, etc.- and how often they attend the program (monitoring) we can see details of who we are impacting, how often, and how participation changes over time. By inviting feedback on the program from our participants, parents, and staff members we can create avenues for program improvement. Together, these lead us to a place where we can analyze these data together against our goals and comparison groups, and evaluate our impact. On the surface, this may not sound as fun as the direct-service element (coaching, teaching) of working with youth, but for nerds like me, or for organizations like SWB who really want to refine our program and make it the best we possibly can for our participating youth, this type of work is incredibly valuable!

During my M&E fellowship in Uganda, we focused on three specific M&E goals:

1. Improved monitoring systems: We were able to register over 300 participants in our English and life skills classes as well as our soccer teams, into a new database called SportUp. SportUp allows us to track basic demographics (name, photo, home country, language spoken, age, etc.) as well as program attendance, all via a convenient web program and phone/tablet application instead of Excel sheets and notebooks.
2. Feedback through youth survey: We conducted interactive surveys with over 100 youth participants in the classroom and on the soccer field to assess the program, inviting input about their school work, English skills, soccer skills, goal setting, connectedness to the program, trust in the SWB staff, and more.
3. Self-assessment by program staff: We have two main tools to provide a structured way for the local staff to assess their implementation of the SWB program model: the new coach self-assessment called the FAMILY Framework and program rubric. We were able to train the local staff on the new self-assessment and check our progress against our 2016-2017 rubric goals while having a staff pizza party provided by the SWB main office because of our successful SportUp implementation.

All of this data provides a feedback loop for program improvement. If we know participation and feedback trends, staff can adjust their plans and work to better support our participants. Only by doing M&E work can an organization measure its impact and enhance it. As they say, what gets measured gets results! We are looking forward to fully implementing the new FAMILY Framework coach self-assessment and observation tool to continue to improve our coach quality, and incorporating ways to better track results of our English language programming through SportUp, and overcoming some technical and internet limitations with the online system.

On a personal note, it was an incredible opportunity to get to work alongside the local staff in Kampala. They are a group of bright and passionate people from the U.S., Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are doing all that they can to better the lives for refugee children and youth in the surrounding communities. I am happy to have been able to help even a tiny amount in enhancing what they do there!