By Molly Slothower
5 June 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The first class of Ugandan women to graduate from the African Rural University (ARU) in a year from now will have no trouble translating their college curricula into real-world skills.
These women have already completed three years of rigorous, field-oriented training in empowering rural communities to make development meet their needs. Their fourth year will be spent in an advanced practicum in their home communities, creating change and developing livelihoods with their families with regular support from ARU’s faculty.
When a woman in Africa receives an education, the positive impact on her community and her family is much higher than when a man is educated. Women are the backbone of agriculture in Africa, including in Uganda, but they usually do not go into higher education. The primary education that many girls do receive does not prepare them to think creatively about the needs of their communities and families.
But ARU recognizes the transformative value of rural women with a vision and organizing skills. All from rural communities in Uganda, students at ARU get their first challenge before they are even accepted to the school.
They have to prove their resourcefulness to get into the school by raising $150 dollars from donors besides themselves, and they continue to be constantly challenged throughout their four years.
“The first class of students were amazing,” Patricia Seybold, an ARU Board member, told MediaGlobal. “They have mastered a wide variety of skills and most importantly, they have learned how to teach others how to create the lives they never were able to imagine they could have!”
By the time they receive their Bachelor of Science degree in Technologies for Rural Transformation in the Spring of 2010, the women in the first class will have a solid foundation in “visionary leadership.”
And indeed, by facilitating people to come together and create visions of what they would like their communities to be and then figure out how to get there, students have already inspired innovation in agriculture, construction, health, and daily life necessities.
For most of these women, innovative businesses and community projects are already waiting for them in their home villages. They have built these businesses themselves over school breaks, using their powers to envision goals and follow through. The students have also spent time in communities besides their own practicing their skills.
ARU’s parent NGO, the Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme (URDT), is a vibrant, community development-oriented campus in the town of Kagadi in Western Uganda. With 500 people on its grounds at any given time, it is a hotbed of rural innovation, bringing together villagers from various fields to solve the problems they face.
The university setting of ARU is an integral part of the larger URDT vision. It is meant to bridge a gap that divides the needs and wisdom of rural people from the large universities that are so often looked to for new trends in development.
“Years ago when I asked [URDT and ARU co-founder] Mwalimu Musheshe why ARU must be a university, his reply was that URDT is devoted to bringing new thinking to development,” Martha Dolben, Chair of the African Food and Peace Foundation, a partner of ARU, told MediaGlobal.
“The university system internationally disseminates thinking, mental models, et cetera. Founding a university is a means to put URDT’s model for integrated rural development into practice more broadly. ARU’s thinking, participatory action research, and community action planning are fed by the wisdom, experience, challenges, and aspirations of the local people,” said Dolben, quoting Mushese.
Every morning, the students of ARU participate in an hour-long seminar on systems thinking. The women sit down with all of the adults on URDT’s campus and together they analyze an issue that someone brings up that day from as many angles as possible. After three years of focusing holistically on new issues every day, it has become second nature to the students.
“The group [in each seminar] considers the historical background and local context, identifies the forces at play and analyzes their systemic interplay,” wrote Seybold in a report. “How do different issues (beliefs, cultural norms, current practices, health, nutrition, gender, local resources) interact with one another? What are the causes and effects, what unintended consequences did we foresee or miss?”
This way of thinking shapes the students at ARU, and provides them with the tools they need to live by the famous mantra of being the change they wish to see in the world.