A blank page

Crossing a river with three colleagues after one of our strategic planning meetings

Every story, blog post, novel, documentary, film, plan or song starts with a blank page.

And this blank page is my explanation for why I have written little about my work here. I came here with specific experiences, skills and a good education but putting these into practise in a developing country is extremely difficult. In essence you really do start with a blank page and it takes a long time to figure out where to start.

The other reason is that it's very difficult to explain in detail the work of a VSO volunteer. Though it varies from placement to placement, most of us have responsibilities in the ‘Capacity Building’ sector. Most of us are consultants or to use another bland and for me disturbing term, ‘agents of change’. We bring with us certain skills and we are supposed to share them with our partner organizations. As the VSO motto goes, by doing this we can change lives.

All of this is obviously extremely generic and vague. It doesn’t explain what capacity we are supposed to be building or whose lives we might change.

Me, I’m an ‘advocacy and networking advisor’ and to be honest I really dislike the title. My Advisory role falls under VSO’s Good Governance programme and the work I do should ultimately lead to the improvement of local governance and greater inclusion of the local marginalized people in the deliberative process of that governance.

But what I actually do each day is very far removed from that aim: Going go to the office every morning, sitting in front of my computer; now and again running a workshop or attending some of the hundred activities which the organization runs every month. How this equates to improving governance is at best complicated but at worst negative.

My principal focus at the moment is to lead the process for developing the organization’s new five year strategic plan. Now I know that strategic plans have a bad name. I know that most people think ‘Document which will not be implemented but which has been produced following an expensive and drawn out process.’ But I’m hoping that this time, things will be different. :)

I began by holding individual meetings with most of the staff where they explained to me their understanding of Human Rights and Good Governance, their views of the organization and their reasons for working in the organization. This itself was fascinating. Most of the staffs have a vague and limited understanding of governance or human rights even if these are the principle activities of the organization. The majority are here because they need the cash not because they have this amazing motivation to bring about change in the lives of their fellow citizens. Yet, these are the very people who work from 9am – 8pm six days a week. They value their jobs and therefore are committed to fulfilling their duties. If they could be a little bit more informed about the issues they are dealing with, then their motivation would improve and they could easily multiply the effects of their work.

The next step involved some of those same staff running workshops with the organization’s main stakeholders to find out what they believe are the biggest causes of poverty and injustice in Satkhira Ditrict: 3 focus group discussions with the most marginalized groups, one meeting with local NGOs, one with a group of female adolescents and one with those who are horribly called ‘local elites’. Each meeting threw up something different whether it be that staff generally have very limited facilitation and empowerment skills despite holding close to a thousand meetings every year, or the fact that people felt their greatest troubles are those created by the local environment and weather despite the fact that Bangladesh was in its recent past deemed most corrupt country in the world or that most of the marginalized are basically excluded from mainstream society and its benefits.

The process is coming to an end now and last week I followed up intriguing staff questionnaire responses with a one-day workshop where we grappled with the differences between a programme and a project, with whether climate change should have its own programme or be a cross cutting issue in the other three programmes. We also looked at organizational development and reluctantly discussed issues ranging from increasing salaries to designating a specific toilet for female staff members to developing an Income Generating Activity so that the organization can be sustainable and jobs more secure.

Over the next three weeks, I'll be trying to translate the issues which stakeholders have identified into projects which will form part of holistic programmes which have been commonly identified by all staff. After a few more consultations on the draft strategy, it will be adopted.

But how does this ensure that local governance or participation will improve? Sadly, it doesn’t.

But the theory goes that if the organization is focussing on the right issues as per the views of the most impoverished people, if staff appreciate their role in bringing about change, if the organization moves from project to programme focus then maybe, just maybe, they can work more conherently and effectively and therefore improve governance and participation. (VSO sees these as being major tools in reducing poverty and I agree)

The trouble is that this is all very flimsy. But I hope that by continuing over the next 6months to train staff on things like on facilitation or programme planning using a rights based approach that a real change will eventually come about in their thinking and practise; that once the training centre is built, profits it generates can be used to hold on to and invest in staff whose projects have finsihed instead of hiring new staff for projects determined by say some german missionaries. If the organization's own projects are based on a holistic programmatic and long term approach to reducing poverty and improving the capacity of local governments, then yes, my work will have been beneficial. Unfortunately, it may take three or even five years before this becomes evident.

And, this is the greatest difficulty which VSO faces; how to evaluate its impact. It is also probably the most difficult part of the job – maintaining motivation to carry out day to day activities which may or may not come to fruition....

So this is my job. It is not particularly unique or exciting yet there is a part of it which, for me, is fascinating. It is, however, based on a philosophy which says that the best way of sustainably reducing poverty and injustice is to build the capacity of organization's and people in developing countries so that they can do the rest themselves.

I just hope, that like my writing process over the past couple of hours, it doesn’t result in another blank page.

What do you think, is the VSO way the way to go or are we better off investing directly in building bridges, schools, roads and police forces?