Untitled
on Pak'd Off (Pakistan), 23/Jun/2008 06:37, 34 days ago
Busted! Ok, I admit it, you've caught me slacking off work! Was it the blank expression that gave away the daydreaming or did you look over my shoulder and see that I'm engaged in some light internet surfing?Yes, I'm a naughty girl, I'm here as a volunteer to do my benevolent bit for humanity and instead I am checking out the news online and sending personal emails. I hang my head in shame at the sorry state of my philanthropic endeavours and admit that progress has ground to an absolute halt. I'm certainly not happy about it but it's not easy to work with people who don't want your help and don't actually do anything for me to help with.... Indeed if you look around me you'll see that no one else in the office is doing anything either.The management team are out of the office on various training courses and meetings but this is not unusual and does not support my claims of abandonment. Even when they are here, very little can be done withut the authorisation of the Director. I haven't yet figured out whether this is down to the personal preferences of the Director or a cultural tendency to show unquestioning respect for ones superiors.... Either way, this poses a problem for the organisation. The Director of the NGO is increasingly absent and when she is here, she is busy on the phone or with visitors leaving the staff sitting idle.I have started many peices of work as per my job description and only gotten so far before having to ask questions or get help for the next steps and am still in suspense. In the interim I have started on other things and have now run out of things to make a start on. The Director shows little to no interest in helping me to complete my aims and I'm not the only one. Here we have 4 outreach workers and a psychologist most of whom I have never seen leave the office except at the end of the working day.I concede that the organisation is not completely inert, but this the case for most of the staff. It's not their fault though, the Director seems to be obsessed not only with making all the decisions but also with doing all of the outreach work herself while those hired to do the job sit twiddling their thumbs.As you may have gathered, I'm concerned about the stagnancy of this orgnisation which has the potential to acheive so much, But I'm also concerned about my placement. From the volunteer perspective we are here to help the organisation improve but none of our work can be finished without the cooperation of the organisation in question. The staff seem willling but the Director is not prepared to support it.I have been told that it costs around£10,000 to fund a VSO placement and most of this money comes from the UK's Department for International Development (DfID). From the numerous training courses I attended before VSO shipped me out, I have gathered that mine is quite a common outcome for VSO placements. However, far from making me feel better about things, I'm more inclined to wonder actually, if so many volunteers return home feeling that their work had no impact, then shouldn't VSO be trying to improve this?