Work Imbalance
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 19/Apr/2010 10:19, 34 days ago
(Written 16/04/2010 23:30, My House, Janjanbureh)(WARNING: This is a bit of a long one, containing some deep(ish) thoughts. But it’s still interesting, IMNSHO. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I... they’re my thoughts!)The title of this post probably doesn’t make much sense, so I’ll explain. What I’m referring to is something which struck me while I was staying in Brikama: how some of the volunteers who came in my batch have gone to their placement and had nothing to do, while others have found themselves swamped. I’ve been trying to work outwhat makes the difference.In one corner, we have Rachel in Brikama. She works at The Gambia’s only teacher-training college, Gambia College. In the week that I was staying with her, she was scheduled to be teaching six hours of lectures every day Monday-Friday, taking part in a workshop to review the ECD curriculum at the college, and marking several hundred of her students’ assignments.In the other corner, we have... well, quite a few people actually, but I’ll use Pete and Liz here in JJB as my example, because I know their situation better than anyone else’s. When the two of them arrived here, the office hadn’t arranged anything for them to do to get introduced to people or to help them ease into the job, and there was little information available about what their predecessor had been doing. They couldn’t go out on their motorbikes to visit schools because they didn’t have their licences. All of which added up to an extremely frustrating time for them, stuck in the office scratching round for any kind of work which would be even vaguely useful. To be fair, I think they did a pretty good job of finding it, but that’s the point: they had to find it for themselves.Before I try to talk about why there are such extremes, I should point out that there is an element of coincidence: Rachel only lectures during the school holidays, when the teachers come to the college for training, and she happened to arrive just before the Easter holidays started. And the licences issue was an admin problem; these things happen. But, beyond that, I think there are some important lessons to be learned from comparing these two examples. Every day that a volunteer spends floundering about for work is a waste of VSO’s money, and by extension that of the British taxpayers who provide most of that money, so surely helping volunteers to get into their roles quicklyshouldbe a priority. So... what did Rachel’s placement have that Pete and Liz’s didn’t?Preparation by the employer.Rachel’s boss at the college had work lined up for her to do before she arrived. I understand that he arranged the workshop because he knew that he had an ECD volunteer arriving, who could provide specialist input into a the curriculum review. OK so he arranged it at a really bad time, but at least he was thinking about her. Pete and Liz, on the other hand, arrived on Wednesday, asked if there was anything they could do... and were answered by a chorus of silence.A more focussed job description.Rachel is based in a single place, providing input on a single subject. She’s also there to teach, when the students are in college. Pete and Liz? They’re supposed to be providing training to teachers throughout the region. No subject is specified, and they could work with any or all of the schools in the region (all 110 or so of them). Basically, the description is sovague that it would probably take about 15 VSOs to even vaguely fulfil it. They have to narrow it down themselves to something that they can actually manage, and no-one’s offering to help them do it. It’s all “oh, whatever you think best!”Continuity.One thing which could have helped Pete and Liz with the job description problem would have been if there had been comprehensive handover notes from their predecessor, detailing what she’d done, why, when and with whom she’d done it with, and what her recommendations were for her successors in order that her legacy could be supported. But, when they arrived, Pete and Liz had none of this. We since found out that such handover notes were prepared and given to VSO to hold in trust for Pete and Liz... but someone at VSO lost the memory stick they were stored on.There’s a lot more that I could say about continuity between volunteers; it seems to be a huge problem, at least in the education sector. But in the interests of brevity, I’ll have to defer it til another time, except to say that I don’t think you can point the finger at any one party as always being at fault for a lack of continuity. In this case it was VSO’s fault, but in others problems can also be caused by the employer, the outgoing volunteer, or a combination of all three.Anyway, that’s my ten cents on the subject. I think if, between them, VSO Gambia and the employers could make some progress on these three issues, then it would mean volunteers could have a much more productive start to their placements.