Based on domains for action emerging from community action planning sessions, URDT focus on the following:

  • Education for Social- Economic Transformation;
  • Community Cooperation and Peace;
  • Rural Communication;
  • Heritage & Cultural Diversity (HCD);
  • Partnerships & Networking
  • Organizational Learning.

Below more details.

EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL-ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
Strategic Objectives:

  1. Income, employability and well-being of youth and dependents improved
  2. Improved knowledge, skills and mind sets of local and national education institutions and their agents for creating structures and systems that facilitate truly sustainable and effective strategies and practices for improving the quality of life of the disadvantaged

Focus on:

  1. Systems change in the education sector (primary, secondary and tertiary sectors)
  2. Systemic change at the school and classroom level (a school as a learning community
  3. Employability of youth and access to skills training

This is done through:

  1. Management of innovative education institutions that apply the 2 generation approach and promote the URDT methodology to personal, home and community development: The
    The URDT Girls School, The URDT Institute for Vocational Training and Youth Leadership; African Rural University; the URDT Community Schools.
  2. Consciousness raising;
  3. Training in the principles of community learning and systems thinking;
  4. Youth entrepreneurship training;
  5. Urban youth training;
  6. Visionary leadership training;
  7. Functional Adult Literacy (FAL) training;
  8. Creating learning infrastructures.

COMMUNITY COOPERATION AND PEACE PROGRAMME
The CCPP aims to develop collaborative structures for development and to enhance peace and justice at home, community, district and national level.
The programme started in 2001 in response to tribal clashes during elections and requests from local women who became victims of domestic violence.
Youth, women and children are the primary constituents as well as marginalized men. Read more
HERITAGE AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Strategic objectives:

  1. Rural communities have improved capacity to participate in the conservation and development of their cultural assets and natural endowments;
  2. Rural communities have improved knowledge of their intellectual property rights over endogenous and natural resources.

RURAL COMMUNICATION
Strategic Objectives:

  1. Disadvantaged and marginalized people, including women, youth and the disabled, increasingly advocate for their rights and work collectively to improve their governance system
  2. Enhanced development, unity and solidarity through dialogue, information sharing and debate on development issues among the communities for action.

This is done through:

  1. Enhance digital inclusion of communities so that they participate meaningfully in the development processes with full involvement form informed/enlightened positions;
  2. Create local digital learning networks;
  3. Community journalism;
  4. Out of studio events, audience panels and interaction;
  5. Environmental education;
  6. Consciousness raising;
  7. Governance and civic education;
  8. Mainstreaming gender issues;
  9. Visionary leadership and community development.

PARTNERSHIPS AND NETWORKS
URDT believes in, and works to develop, deep and lasting partnerships for mutual learning and to broaden its impact on the rural community in the Bunyoro region.
Strategic Objectives:

  1. Understanding and synergy amongst actors in district development planning improved;
  2. LG and NSAs have effective strategies to enhance a holistic and intergrated approach to rural development.

This is done through:
Networks for accomplishment and knowledge sharing, peer learning networks, creating learning infrastructure and scaling up for large scale change.
Policy Advocacy and research -Citizens who are aware, pro-active, well-informed and who are working together are best placed to make use of opportunities and overcome challenges.
URDT in collaboration with the African Rural University work towards increased national level policy research and advocacy work, including strong and effective Non-State Actors that have local and community based. Thematically, this work will be linked with both national priorities and with global advocacy campaigns.
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
Strategic Objective:
URDT functions as true learning organization structured and resourced to encourage innovation and creativity in rural transformation. URDT as the vehcile for rural transformation, needs to be in good shape. Therefore URDT continues on improved on their understanding of the theory and practises of the learning organisation[1]. It has the following characteristics: shared values and vision[2], personal mastery[3], mental models[4], team learning[5] and systems thinking[6]. This is done through:

  • Daily Foundation courses
  • Training staff and volunteers in the principles of the creative process
  • Training staff in report writing and local resource mobilisation
  • Monthly Management Meetings
  • Stakeholder Platforms
  • Listener Surveys
  • Action Research with the communities
  • Annual strategic review meetings


[1] See Peter Senge’s publication The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
[2]Stakeholders align their individual vision of what they truly care about in life with that of the organization (align their fundamental, primary and secondary choices).
[3] Learning to expand our personal capacity (skills, knowledge, attitude, including self-understanding, ability to apply the principles of the creative process, authentic leadership) to consistently create the results (vision) of what we most care bout in our lives, in the organization and the people we serve.
[4] Continually reflecting upon, clarifying and improving our understanding of the world; the images, stories, beliefs, assumptions we hold about ourselves, other and the organisation and how they shape our actions and decisions.
[5]Transforming collective knowledge and thinking skills of the team members so that the sum of individual’s intelligence and ability is greater than each individual’s’ intelligence and ability.
[6] System Thinking is a way of thinking about life, work, and the world based on the importance of relationships (understanding the interconnections of the various parts of whole). It is a way of thinking structurally and a language for describing and understanding the forces and relationships that shape behaviour of a system.

Kiiza Nobert