Action Agenda
Sustainability School
However, many of them are increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by corporate and government officials eager to exploit Uganda’s natural resources in misguided “economic development” projects that can do more harm than good. More disturbing is the lack of regard for environmental sustainability – the key to the long-term viability and prosperity of Uganda.
In response to that need, NAPE in 2009 created the Sustainability School, a “school without walls” to train communities to protect their rights and enhance their quality of life, resilience and prosperity.
Educating Vulnerable Communities
Too often, communities and poor families have been forcibly removed from their traditional lands with no proper resettlement and compensation – in some instances rendered landless, unable to subsist, and destitute.
Legal protections meant to cushion such impacts are rendered meaningless when government officials fail to enforce them – because of corruption or callousness – believing that these communities are too docile, fearful or unaware to challenge them and hold them accountable. They also refuse to disclose publicly even the most basic information about these projects, citing specious “confidentiality clauses” or national security interests.
When such projects deplete or degrade the natural resources these communities depend on, many suffer loss of livelihood, health and property as a result. For example, powerful companies and officials have illegally acquired land in the Albertine oil region to sell or lease to oil companies, depriving communities of their traditional rights. In one instance, Gen. David Tinyefuza, one of the government’s most senior officials, personal oversaw the eviction of Balaalo herdsmen from their pastoral land to make way for oil exploration.
Communities like these are especially vulnerable because their geographic, social and political isolation keeps them from understanding their legal rights and how to carry their grievances to government officials and the larger public. Moreover, women in these communities too often are consigned to passive roles by traditional customs, further depriving communities of the vast potential of women to contribute their knowledge and energies to such vital struggles.
NAPE Actions
The Sustainability School
Responding to this need, in 2009 NAPE created a programme called the Sustainability School. According to its founding document, its objective is to “create a critical mass composed of communities, community leaders, growing civil society organizations (CSOs), able to hold the government, and global institutions accountable for the impacts of their actions on people’s livelihoods and national development.”
NAPE then carried out a community survey in different parts of Uganda to identify the sustainability issues to be addressed by the programme. Implementation began in early 2010, with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and, later, the Open Society Initiative of East Africa (OSIEA) and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS).
Trained by NAPE, volunteer Community Sustainability Educators now conduct educational and training sessions in selected villages to familiarize residents with sustainability issues that affect them, the impact of government proposals and decisions affecting their communities, their political and legal rights in such areas as access to official information and environmental self-governance, and how they can mobilize their communities to assert these rights and hold governmental officials accountable.
The School is not a physical school with classroom buildings or a fulltime staff working in structured learning periods. Rather, it is a “school without walls,” recognizing that learning can take place in any physical setting, as long as both trainers and trainees gather in the spirit of learning our sustainability curriculum.
The underlying concept of sustainability is simple – meeting our current needs without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. This requires an awareness of these elements of genuine sustainability:
The capacity to endure during hardships
Remaining productive for the long term
Continuously improving quality of life
Respect for the environment, culture, human rights and justice
Equitable distribution of benefits, burdens, resources and opportunities across groups, gender and generations
Hence, the sustainability school aspires to promote functional and coherent organizations where decision-making is participatory, to forge linkages across and within classes, to gain power to challenge and hold the leaders accountable to the people they serve
Since February 2010, the Sustainability School programme, has brought on board a team of facilitators and community-based activists as volunteer educators. Many of these are drawn from NAPE’s partner community-based organizations.
The School currently focuses on these thematic areas:
Good governance, accountability and human rights
Oil governance
Large dams and energy
Water and sanitation
Climate change
Forests and large plantations
Land use and food security
Mining in protected areas
The School also emphasizes organizational skills to enable affected people to gain community empowerment by working together effectively toward achievable goals. Some of these skills are:
Identifying the real problems and crafting solutions
The importance of active participation and involvement
Social and personal transformation, getting ready to learn and unlearn
Interacting with each other and sharing experiences
Giving and receiving positive criticism
Opening and maintaining dialogues
Transparency and accountability
Morality and patriotism
By 2011, the programme is in eight districts of Uganda: Kampala, Mukono, Buikwe, Kalangala, Buliisa, Hoima, Kiryandongo and Kamwenge. It operates 12 sustainability villages in these districts, conducted by 24 trained community educators. The sustainability school emphasizes gender mainstreaming in all its work, ensuring that out of the two educators picked from each village, one is a woman.
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