MUKOSHA ISAAC

• Overall, I am responsible for supervising, planning, developing, implementing, and executing all aspects of Trees for the Future’s (TREES) training program. It is my mandate to ensuring project staff and partners have the technical knowledge and facilitation skills needed to train farmers effectively. Also I support the development and rolling -out of training, technical, and extension resources; ensure that projects are adhering to technically sound practices; support extension activities as needed; and oversee the training/research sites. Additionally, I manage/oversee seed bank activities and seed procurement following TREES’ operating procedures for seed banks. I report to the Country Director, and collaborate closely with the Technical Director based in USA, and East Africa Training Coordinator based in Kenya.

Outline of my duties:

• I ensure communication and smooth coordination between training teams and other programs, administrative, and financial teams.
• Lead the development of country-level training program plans and budgets.
• Contribute to the development and improvement of high-quality technical resources, ensuring timely translation, printing, and dissemination to the proper audiences.
• Plan, organize, and facilitate training (e.g. ToTs, refresher trainings, seed collector training, etc) to staff, partners, farmers, and other stakeholders as required.
• Plan and oversee the implementation of on-site trials and experiments within the country; ensure methodologies are followed and accurately documented.
• Produce data for MEL, reports, presentations, communications, and other informational needs as requested.
• Manage the Training Program budget, submitting financial requests, maintaining accurate records, and submitting receipts as required by the finance policy.
• Observe training events to evaluate technicians’ facilitation skills, technical knowledge, and understanding of the FG Approach; document evaluation feedback, and develop plans as needed to build technician capacity in training and extension.
• Visit project farmers and forest gardens as needed to observe forest garden establishment and practices, learn from farmers and document innovations and good practices, identify common challenges faced by farmers, and identify solutions (e.g. through establishing experiments to test potential solutions, or disseminating known solutions).
• Oversee Seed Bank management, ensuring timely planning and coordination of seed procurement, training of seed collectors, evaluation of collectors’ sources, processing of seeds, and proper inventorying, storage, and distribution of all seed following TREES’ Standard Operating Procedures for seed banks.
• Develop and manage the budget for seed bank materials, equipment, facility, and activity implementation.
• Ensure Seed Banks records are diligently kept following the standard recordkeeping system. Manage planning, budgeting, hiring, and oversight of seed bank support personnel as needed (e.g. volunteers, casual laborers, etc)

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The overall responsibilities were:

• To provide leadership to review, refine and operationalize the seed bank strategy to better serve in country program.
• support establishment and management of in country seed bank operations.
• support coordination of seed sourcing and its procurement.
• provide support to the country training team in facilitating arranged trainings and events at the training site.
• Perform any other duties as may be assigned.

Under this role, the main responsibility was to manage and assist in physical operations of the training and research site. Upon request, I could assist in facilitating trainings, assist in developing season site layout, seeding, management of crops and livestock at the site. in addition i was suppose to assist in developing training materials, manage trials and experiments, collect data, support field projects whenever needed.

lastly, supporting visitors access the site in coordinated manner.

• I was brought on board intentionally to support the development of the training and research site since it was just being started and my key role was to:
• Support country trainer in his daily tasks, reducing workload burden and allowing for increased focus on higher-priority assignments.
• Gained valuable experience working on setting up an agro-ecological farm from scratches within a very hostile environment, applying learned concepts directly into work situations.
• Analyzed problems and worked with teams to develop solutions.
• Contributed to a positive team environment by collaborating with fellow interns on group projects and presentations.

• This was ideally an industrial training which was intended for students to have hands on training and explore the applicability of their knowledge in the real work environment which they expect to be absorbed after completion of their academics. Considering my discipline of study, I was proud to have my industrial training at Uganda Wildlife authority during which I gained a range of skills and knowledge in ecological data collection, analysis and presentation, community conservation and livelihood management approaches, ecological restoration, wildlife human conflicts and importantly team work and target oriented management of performance.
• In addition to general orientation , which was one week activity that involved associating with all departmental heads to get the gist of the overall structure and functioning of the organization ,I specifically worked with four department during my internship: Ecological and research dept, community conservation department, Restoration department, and plantations department.

During my internship at Nature Uganda, I was involved in mainly conservation campaigns and data collection through which I gained experiences in community sensitization planning and management, and data collection. One important project that I got involved in was the crown gray crested campaign and its population density study.