The Value of a Volunteer
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 17/Apr/2011 12:13, 34 days ago
Between the ages of 15 and 18, I used to mow the lawn every week during the grass-growing season for Eileen Marjoram, an elderly lady who loved gardening but needed help with the more physical tasks. She gave me£5 for each hour that I worked - usually two hours.At the beginning of the school holidays when I was 16, just after my GCSE exams, my grandmother went through the phone book and contacted a number of painters and decorators until eventually she found a bloke who could use an extra pair of hands. For£20 a day, I worked in various places painting walls, carrying wallpaper paste and making tea.Before going to university, I worked for six months in a garden centre for£4 per hour. This was shortly before the legal minimum wage was introduced which would have upped my salary to £5.15 per hour.Compared with most young Ghanaians, my childhood working life was a picnic. TangaCulture have been teaching music to street children and orphans every Friday and they lead lives of genuinely backbreaking work - mostly carrying incredibly heavy loads on their tiny undernourished heads.Despite this awareness of how lucky I was, money did not come freely to me. Many of my classmates who attended my privileged private school were dressed in smart and fashionable trainers and designer clothes despite never having worked in their lives. They went on expensive holidays and had the latest games consoles. Despite being remarkably privileged compared with Ghanaian children, I grew up with less stuff than my immediate schoolmates. Being unable to even vaguely keep up, let alone compete, I ended up taking a certain pride in my£10 hi-tech trainers, my mum’s second hand hockey stick and my casio watch.Because I mowed lawns and painted walls for money, I valued what I earned. I considered purchases carefully, assessed how best to spend my cash and consequently looked after what I had bought. Later, when I was training to be a teacher and needed a car, I was a careful driver - I knew how much I had had to work for my vehicle. Several of my school colleagues had cars bought for them by their parents while they were still at school - many of whom then drove recklessly and crashed, oblivious to the value of what they had.One of the most successful initiatives in international development in recent years has been the introduction of micro-loans. First pioneered in rural India, the idea is that you’re not giving anything for free. In fact, micro-loan organisations make money. They lend small groups of people relatively small quantities of money.These groups, perhaps small farmers needing a grinding machine or basket weavers needing a bicycle, do not necessarily have access to banks. Besides, regular financial services tend to be about as ethical as Hitler - especially in their dealings with Africa. Micro-loan groups choose where they invest carefully and charge affordable interest rates. The point is that the beneficiaries are ultimately paying for what they receive. If they need a car, they are not being given it for free, as so many of my classmates were.When I first arrived here, my good friend Culture did not have a mobile phone. I‘dashed’ him an old one that I had been donated. Some months later, he had lost his phone. The second phone I gave him, Culture’s son, Gaddafi, dropped it into a bucket of water. I have now given Culture three mobile phones. Does he value what I have given him? Despite what he says, his actions seem to suggest not.When I first arrived, the science teachers at Boltech School had no teaching materials and begged me to help. When I was in a position to be able to get some equipment for them, they said how grateful they are and they promised to use the donated equipment regularly. Going back over the following months, I can see that they are not using this equipment. Firstly, I thought they didn’t know how so I gave them individual training and even conducted demonstration lessons to show how to use the equipment effectively. Now I have come to the conclusion that they do not value what they have been given because it has been given for free.In the UK, when looking at education in particular and other public services in general, there is pressure to deliver value for money because, ultimately, the tax payer is providing the funds. Politicians know that efficiency savings are a vote winner. They know that people don’t want their taxes wasted. What’s more, the workers within the public sector are tax payers themselves.In Ghana, the public services are bank-rolled by the government but the Ghanaian government does not earn the majority of its revenue through income tax. Most government services are underwritten by foreign governments or foreign NGOs. Ghanaian citizens are getting something from their government for nothing and, like my classmates, do not understand the value of the donation. If regular Ghanaians were paying for their schools and hospitals through their taxes, I am sure they wouldn’t stand for such high levels of corruption and inefficiency.Ghana borrowed recklessly for years and so was designated a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) that ultimately qualified for millennium debt relief. Having had that debt written off, Ghana is currently busy running up another big debt. I had contemporaries at university who ran up huge credit card bills and then had them paid off by their over-generous (and over-rich) parents. A lucky few even had portions of their debt written off by the banks themselves. They didn’t know the value of money. Does Ghana know the value of money?Mar was a negotiator for oil and mining companies before becoming a VSO volunteer for a media NGO in Tamale. The NGO produced a newspaper (or at least they did whilst she was working there) and occasionally edited TV documentaries on development issues. The deals she use to negotiate were worth millions of dollars. $100,000 would be considered small change, she once told me, unworthy of even entering a calculation. I have no idea what her salary as a negotiator was but I imagine it to be... well... more than a teacher.Working for the media NGO in Tamale was occasionally frustrating for Mar. Having a wealth of experience and expertise in a range of industries, Mar would offer her considered advise and, all too often, it was ignored.“I spent a whole day working with them and every suggestion has been ignored,” Mar once grumbled to me after a particularly challenging day. “If only they knew how much I charged per hour before coming here.”Michelle is the principal of a large secondary school in Milton Keynes. She volunteered to take three months away from her school and work as a headteacher support officer in Talensi Nabdam district. The British government paid her normal salary (probably approaching£100,000pa) and some compensation to her school as well as all the costs covering her time volunteering (probably £20,000). When she arrived, there was no provision for transport to the district education office, no work plan and the office weren’t even aware that she was coming. They originallyasked her to help with the filing!VSO no longer send school leavers - they send highly skilled professionals that have the ability to transform the organisation within which they work. They also send them for free. The organisations pay nothing and, therefore, the organisations do not value the skills that are being offered.The metaphorical horse can be led to water but, if that water is free and the horse isn’t thirsty, the water will be grossly undervalued resource.