Northern Standard, January 2007

Monaghan man, Stephen McEneaney has been Programme Manager of GOAL'S building programme in Masaka in Uganda since November. After 18 months working with GOAL in Sri Lanka post tsunami, he is the right man for the job. The job done by the Sri Lankan team was the largest in GOAL'S history and was universally praised.

Although Stephen was a big part of that project, he did not sit back and rest on his laurels. Stephen packed his bags for Uganda almost immediately. He now finds himself in charge of an ambitious housing project in one of the most under-developed countries in the world – a challenge he relishes.

At the moment GOAL is building 500 new houses in Masaka with 500 hundred houses being repaired. "Because of the state of the original houses, repair is often not possible, as when you start working on them they can often fall apart," Stephen explained. But these repaired houses are just as good as the new ones according to Stephen. But he would say that, he s extremely proud of the progress his team have made.

As well as managing the 28 staff involved in the programme, there is a big training element to Stephen's job. "We run vocational training in construction skills for youths who have dropped out of school," Stephen explained. "They learn brick making and laying, roofing, plastering and other construction skills. We also run a parallel programme in traditional construction techniques like wattle and dub and thatching.

"We started with the modern construction techniques as everyone said no one wanted to do the traditional ones, but we have recently started looking at them and we have our first groups almost ready to graduate. At first we had difficulty finding someone to teach it as traditional skills are being lost, not letting these traditional skills die is important as they are often more sustainable. People can use the materials available locally and it's cheaper.

"There is a move towards the modern type of house because people want something that involves less maintenance. With a thatched roof people have to go back to it every few years, whereas with an iron sheeting roof you don't have to go back for 10 years. If a particular family is very vulnerable they can't keep up the maintenance, and sometimes the skills haven't been passed on because of generations being decimated by Aids.

"The traditional skills construction group have already been approached by three people in the community who want them to build traditional houses for them so it has been a success already. It is our goal to train the volunteers to a level that they can start working for themselves, then our job is done."

An important part of GOAL's work is giving people the training to help life themselves out of poverty. To this end, Stephen has been training local people in the skills necessary to maintain their own houses and those of their neighbours. "In November we had 16 graduates employed in GOAL'S housing programme.' There is also a hygiene and household training element to the programme. It is not enough to just give the beneficiaries a new home – you have to teach them how to look after it, to understand the basics of hygiene and malaria control."

GOAL also provides people with the amenities necessary to live in a safe and sanitary way. "We distribute some household goods such as mattresses, mosquito nets and jerry cans to store water", Stephen said. "When we put on a roof for somebody we usually take it a step further, putting on a gutter roof that connects to a tank to store clean rain water during rainy season, often the rain water will be of a better quality than the ground water which is available."

While it is important that GOAL provides these homes, what's more important is that the homes do not fall into disrepair. "We try and teach construction maintenance as well, in an effort to extend the life span of the house. We like to think we are building the capacity of the local contractors when they work with us. They are gaining experience in how we operate and manage programmes. In the villages we try and use people from that village to do the repairs, we locate a local builder or skilled person and employ them as foreman on the site. We supply all the materials and use local labour. It boosts local incomes and capacity."

This, is Stephen's second contract with GOAL. After the Indian Ocean tsunami he went to Sri Lanka as a construction engineer and has fond memories of his time there.

"In Sri Lanka we mostly worked on construction of schools, fisheries buildings and vocational training centres,' said Stephen. 'There was a team of 12 technical staff and 70 construction sites. The technical staff spent all day visiting sites checking the quality of the work. My role was to supervise and support them, if there was something they were unsure of then I was there to assist them. If there was a problem on a particular site I would go there, generally I would try and visit each site at least once a fortnight. Our area of operations spanned about one and a half hour drive from one end to the other."

The scale of the disaster in Sri Lanka was unlike anything GOAL had encountered in its 30 year history. Over 35,000 people had been killed and those who were lucky enough to survive were left with just the sodden clothes on their backs. Sea water had gotten into the drinking wells and the agricultural land had been salinated, rendering both useless. As if that wasn't enough, many of the roads were either blocked by debris or had been washed away making getting to those in need extremely difficult. But the Sri Lankan team's response tackled all of these problems.

"After about the first six months I became involved in Water and Sanitation section. In charge of the water source development and storage at schools, sinking tube wells and shallow wells and deepening and repairing existing wells, building storage capacity, overhead tanks, drinking points and basic infrastructure," Stephen said. "GOAL also worked with the national water supply and drainage board, in one town, Kalmuani, we increased the water supply available from 6 hours per day to 24, by adding booster pumps. "When the sea came in it flooded the wells, damaging them," he continued. "The linings were cracked and the walls that come out of the ground in many cases were torn off. We built and repaired 150 house wells. I was responsible for managing the contracts that were already in place to completion and providing technical supervision to the three technical officers.

"I was given the overall civil and environmental services programme coordinator role eight months into it. Most of the contracts were in place and it was a management exercise after that. The 35 kilometre of road was half done; the 11 kilometre of black top had been started and the 4 kilometres of drainage and four bridges were about ready to start. In phase three we built back what was there, except better, with a bit of planning that wasn't there before. Eventually I was made team leader with overall responsibility for all operations in the Ampara District."

Stephen's experiences in Sri Lanka are now going towards helping some of the worlds poorest people in Uganda. While the challenges are very different, the aim is the same – to make life a little bit easier for those less fortunate than ourselves.

If you would like to know more about GOAL'S programmes across the developing world or would like to know how you could volunteer for GOAL then please visit www.goal.ie or phone the Dublin office on (01) 2809779.