angst & volunteers

Back to The work which causes lots of angst with the volunteers . On Thursday I was invited to the VSO education programme area workshop. This area has the most volunteers and many from the youth programme who are contracted for one year only. They are up in arms in the Far North, because, and this is similar to the other programme areas, placements are not set up properly e.g. they promise the placement one thing which may include service delivery such as direct teaching and then agree some managerial strategic role with the volunteer which dooms the relationship from the start. Secondly, they don’t hand on briefings from previous volunteers in the role so new volunteers keep starting from scratch and finally, there is no monitoring of the volunteer or placement by the office staff. Basically I think the indigenous office staff don’t have those skills.

On Friday all the programme areas had a day of monitoring and evaluation training which is new thinking the new Country director is bringing in. He is Italian and has worked in several VSO countries as director so is pretty experienced. There is hope that changes are afoot.

The other big hot potato is that the French Canadian volunteers who thought they were coming to work in a French speaking country get furious when information is provided in English and as many have English as their first language material is. Even though they had all the overheads in French and English and people acting as interpreters one older woman still walked out in a huff on Friday which is not a good example to set to our younger colleagues!

 

In terms of my placement, over the week-end I also had a break through with Amadou, the secretaire general who rang me to see when I would next be in AND we had a long meeting this morning and he has agreed to meet with me every Tuesday from now on to discuss the programme. Furthermore I have 3 applications for my national volunteer (paid) who will act as my interpreter for Fulfulde and who I teach about my role with a view to the passing on of skills and sustainability.