Mary's introduction and start of training

I was primarily trained in clinical medicine, had a diploma and worked at the capacity of clinical officer with government for about 10 years. Later in 2000-2001, trained on another diploma of Gender Issues in Development. After I graduated my gender course, I shifted from working with government and joined an NGO. The first organization I worked with was the Tanzania Red Cross Society – as Reproductive Health Manager, coordinating various reproductive health activities in both refugee and non-refugee communities in Tanzania.

Two years later, I joined a national family planning NGO called UMATI, and continued with the same nature of work for more than two years. Later, I joined Concern Worldwide in Tanzania where am still working, now I have been with Concern for about seven years.

My areas of specialisation include Reproductive Health (as a master programme); Adolescents Sexual Reproductive Health, STIs & HIV/AIDS (as an independent programme) as well as gender/HIV/AIDS as a mainstreaming strategy in various livelihood development programmes.

I am also currently doing BA (Social Work) through distance learning offered by Open University of Tanzania; I'm currently in year four- my last year! I am expecting to write and present a research paper in my last year of BA social work; of which I am sure this CDPC research course wills sharpen my knowledge on writing that research paper.

My areas of interest with CDPC research training include:

• Deductive approach and inductive approach thinking during social science research design
• Formulation of questions/questionnaire relevant to the designed research methods (qualitative Vs quantitative strategic questions)
• Data analysis and basis statistic in social science research
• More orientation on computer programmes in data analysis: SPSS, Epi info and Open code

I have started my private studies with CDPC on 17^th (about three weeks ego) July with massive tutorial support from Dr Thomas Strong. Currently am doing literature review mainly focusing on rights-based approaches; as one of major task I have assigned to do with my organisation soon after this training is to conduct a survey analysis on gender proofing in Right based Livelihood Program of Concern Tanzania.

I am also doing practices on designing and using questionnaire suitable for both quantitative and qualitative data collection.

I am also looking forward to attending Trinity College in late in September for some lectures on statistics and research methods.

A few pictures from my stay so far:

Ducks near the train station in MaynoothEnjoying the Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures in AugustDun Laoghaire harbourDun LaoghaireTraditional dancing in Dun Laoghaire