Work has had more than its fair share of ups and downs. Some days I am completely inspired, determined to get tasks done, come up with tons of ideas, and think the work I'm doing is making a difference for the organization. Other days I think everything is hopeless, nothing is moving forward, I am not being helpful, and my work is meaningless.
Welcome to the world of a small NGO in a developing country.
Trying to be as objective as possible, I will share both the positives and negatives of my work environment.
The positives:
Welcome to the world of a small NGO in a developing country.
Trying to be as objective as possible, I will share both the positives and negatives of my work environment.
The positives:
- My mandate sounds challenging.
- The projects have good visions, and seem like they will be beneficial or make some difference as they set out to do.
- People seem receptive to my ideas, seem grateful for suggestions on ways to help them, and value an outside perspective.
- People are willing to answer questions.
- When I write out all the things I have done in my time here it sounds like a fair number of concrete tasks.
- My supervisors have given very positive feedback on the work I have done so far.
- I have already seen elements of multiple courses and concepts I have studied in the past 3 years in reading through documents on my two projects, in discussing my mandate, and in working on various tasks - marketing, social entrepreneurship, field ecology, statistics, accounting, event planning, problem solving, and environmental assessment.
- Some tasks written in my mandate do not seem to have materialized or do not exist anymore.
- When asking for more work to do, the answer is often that they don't have anything for us to do right now.
- Asking questions gives me answers that don't inform me of anything new, and I am left with even more questions than I started with.
- I don't know how effective the tasks I have done are in the grand scheme of things, or if they are making any significant contributions to the organisation or their work.
- I often feel like I am left out of the loop of things going on within the organisation that I should be involved in or know about as a contributing or valued member of the organisation.
- Sometimes it seems like the work I am doing is completely aside from or over and above any work they are doing, and would not get done if I wasn't here.
- It is challenging to be motivated to do tasks that I don't always see the benefits from or that do not inspire me.
- Other recurring frustrations include the lack of funding for projects, insufficient communication within the organisation, and poor or non-transparent organisational processes.
"You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light."
Despite being taught that development practitioners shouldn't come in and tell people what to do or assume they have all the answers, and that development is a two-way learning process, in the context of being here it is harder than it sounds to live this out. I did what I didn't want to do.
I realized long ago that the pace of work and priorities are different here, so while things are often frustrating, I need to remind myself to take a step back. Maybe I am expecting too much from the work setting and trying to solve every issue my organisation is facing, when I should be looking within the realm of what is possible. For example, at the beginning of our placement, after making some initial observations and finding out things about some of their processes and operational procedures, Bailey and I sat down and did a ton of brainstorming, looking at all of the issues we saw and coming up with ways to improve them. This led to the creation of a master action plan for the future of the Crafts Centre which we were going to propose to our project supervisor.
However, after the initial excitement about all the things we could help implement and how much of a difference this would make, we soon after realized a few key details. One, half of the things we were writing about we realized we didn't have all the information we needed and didn't actually know how processes happen now. Two, who were we to say that our ideas for improvements would actually make a difference or were the things they wanted our help with. Three, why should they even listen to the things we were proposing, as it was all based in our own observations, knowledge, and opinions about what needed to be done and based on our own "expertise". Four, we had no idea how feasible any of these things would be.
So, after a few days of intense brainstorming and an excited flurry of turning ideas into an action plan, we abandoned our then 17-page, 6000 word document and went back to the drawing board.
What did the drawing board look like?
Finding out more information before jumping right in.
Not making assumptions about what needed changing or what was the right way of doing things or what would be beneficial.
Asking more specific questions, though this still also meant often being left with more questions than answers.
Asking what they wanted us to do or needed us to do before taking matters into our own hands and before contributing our own ideas and perspectives.
Taking tasks more or less one at a time to suit their capacities.
Adjusting our long list of possible activities, within the scope of both our and their time and money resources.
Realizing that to them, us being contributing members didn't necessarily mean coming up with a ton of new ideas for them. They seem to be content with most things right now, and whether we are here or not, things would continue functioning. So, I should be content in any task I can do that is something outside of the realm of what they may have been able to do right now based on their timeline and resources.
At this point, my general outlook is positive. From their perspective, I am contributing. While it is frustrating that not more is getting done from my perspective, knowing that they value the work I do and that sometimes seemingly insignificant tasks mean something to them should be sufficient for me. In observing the first staff meeting of my organisation since I arrived, I had almost lost all faith in anything ever getting done, but we recently had another meeting and I actually had things to contribute to the agenda and the discussions were relevant to the work I am doing, which to me indicates that I am involved in tasks that are important to TOCaDI and I am helping them move forward. So for now, I am trying to play to my strengths and interests to keep me motivated, while still fitting in with the objectives and perceived needs of my organisation.
I realized long ago that the pace of work and priorities are different here, so while things are often frustrating, I need to remind myself to take a step back. Maybe I am expecting too much from the work setting and trying to solve every issue my organisation is facing, when I should be looking within the realm of what is possible. For example, at the beginning of our placement, after making some initial observations and finding out things about some of their processes and operational procedures, Bailey and I sat down and did a ton of brainstorming, looking at all of the issues we saw and coming up with ways to improve them. This led to the creation of a master action plan for the future of the Crafts Centre which we were going to propose to our project supervisor.
However, after the initial excitement about all the things we could help implement and how much of a difference this would make, we soon after realized a few key details. One, half of the things we were writing about we realized we didn't have all the information we needed and didn't actually know how processes happen now. Two, who were we to say that our ideas for improvements would actually make a difference or were the things they wanted our help with. Three, why should they even listen to the things we were proposing, as it was all based in our own observations, knowledge, and opinions about what needed to be done and based on our own "expertise". Four, we had no idea how feasible any of these things would be.
So, after a few days of intense brainstorming and an excited flurry of turning ideas into an action plan, we abandoned our then 17-page, 6000 word document and went back to the drawing board.
What did the drawing board look like?
Finding out more information before jumping right in.
Not making assumptions about what needed changing or what was the right way of doing things or what would be beneficial.
Asking more specific questions, though this still also meant often being left with more questions than answers.
Asking what they wanted us to do or needed us to do before taking matters into our own hands and before contributing our own ideas and perspectives.
Taking tasks more or less one at a time to suit their capacities.
Adjusting our long list of possible activities, within the scope of both our and their time and money resources.
Realizing that to them, us being contributing members didn't necessarily mean coming up with a ton of new ideas for them. They seem to be content with most things right now, and whether we are here or not, things would continue functioning. So, I should be content in any task I can do that is something outside of the realm of what they may have been able to do right now based on their timeline and resources.
At this point, my general outlook is positive. From their perspective, I am contributing. While it is frustrating that not more is getting done from my perspective, knowing that they value the work I do and that sometimes seemingly insignificant tasks mean something to them should be sufficient for me. In observing the first staff meeting of my organisation since I arrived, I had almost lost all faith in anything ever getting done, but we recently had another meeting and I actually had things to contribute to the agenda and the discussions were relevant to the work I am doing, which to me indicates that I am involved in tasks that are important to TOCaDI and I am helping them move forward. So for now, I am trying to play to my strengths and interests to keep me motivated, while still fitting in with the objectives and perceived needs of my organisation.