Education

Proffesional Development Grants

Brian Mulenga, Malawi

The Board unanimously voted to fund Brian Mulenga’s GIS training to enable him to integrate GIS into the work he is doing in Malawi to provide clean water and sanitation for the people.

Brian Mulenga works for Water for People Malawi and is responsible for the Sanitation component of the Country Program. His professional background is in Environmental Health (Public Health). His job entails providing technical support and guidance to partner non-governmental organizations that they work with on sanitation and to ensure that numbers of latrines/bathrooms reported correspond to what is physically in our impact areas (Low income areas of Blantyre).

Brian requested funding to learn GIS, after his supervisors extended his responsibilities to Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of the program.

Why I am interested in GIS Training

1. While several people or organizations in Malawi have relatively easily used GIS techniques in water programmes, using GIS techniques in Sanitation monitoring to an extent of developing maps on the coverage of sanitation services at different stages of the projects (Baseline, Midline and End evaluation) has proved to be a challenge. With continuous training in GIS, I will take up this challenge to help my organization – Water for People with evidence based, GIS monitoring in this area.
2. With my responsibilities extending into monitoring and evaluation component of Malawi programme, GIS training will build my skills and capacity in analysis of water and sanitation data using GIS techniques and enable me provide evidence based reports.
3. The tremendous support provided to our Country programme by Rob Page with the World Water Corps volunteers ignited my long awaited passion for GIS training.

My desire is acquire as much knowledge as possible in GIS field and apply techniques in all spheres of our Country Program.

Helenmary Hotz, University Massachusetts Boston

The Board awarded a Travel Grant to Helenmary Hotz, GIS Instructor and Lab Manager at UMass Boston, to support and enable her effort to teach GIS at an agricultural college, Zanmi Agricol, in Corporant, Haiti. The director of the program at the college, Reginald Cean, wanted to add GIS to the curriculum to assist his students in planning their agricultural fields. By having an instructor teach the students as a trial course – a pilot program – he was able to have GIS added as a core course. The goal of the students after graduation is to return to their hometowns and use their knowledge to implement best practices and use of their fields, thus improving the standard of living for all.