About Work
on The Ghana Experience (Ghana), 13/Aug/2010 11:16, 34 days ago
10 August 2010Many of the friends are interested to know what kind of work I aminvolved in here. I had not written anything about it because I hadnot started to do anything concrete. After coming to Bongo, I foundthat lot of the things on which I am supposed to work were not veryclear. My last four weeks had been spent in concretising of work plan,getting to know the people and detailed planning for the visits (thatmeans calling and meeting people, explaining them what I want to doand how it will help their departments and fixing some dates for fieldvisits.) I did my first field visit yesterday and thought that it isnow proper to write about it.Since it is volunteering and not a proper job one should not expectany crystal clear job description. There was this placementdescription after reading which I had applied for this placement andwas selected as well for the same by my employer i.e. Bongo DistrictAssembly. But it does not mean that my skill sets match exactly withtheir requirements and my interests match the kind of job which I amdoing. But they are some where near to each other. As it is verydifficult to find the correct match in these cases because one issupposed to work in remote areas where professionals are not willingto go and live their for longer period and people who want the helpare not clear about what they exactly want. What I have found that ifone is looking at the whole stint as a some job with an intention toenhance his career then one is likely to get into problems. One shouldtake the volunteering as an experience and it will certainly help anindividual qualitatively.I am working here in the planning unit of district assembly. Districthere is something which is equivalent to a taluka or block in India.There are many small communities in a district which are divided inarea coucils (equivalent to Group Grampanchayats). Now my job is toassist District Assembly to develope strategies and plans for thepromotion of some livelihood activities which will help the majorityof the population in the district. District Planning Unit co-ordinatesa committee called Local Economic Developement Platform (with whichnow I am closely working) identified two weeks back three majorlivelihood interventions which can take the district ahead. These areGuinea fowl rearing, Shea butter production and Basket weaving. Ishall write something about them later. The focus of my work is goingto be small enterprise development though my education is inAgriculture. My overall work plan involves studying thoseinterventions, gaps in good and locally followed common practices,study of value chains, developing strategies for promoting thoseactivities in the district. Further plan would be work with thedistrict assembly and other agencies in the district to integratethose activities in the existing plans or development new plans forthe same. I am working with a number of development agencies in thedistrict and I am reporting to District Planning Officer. Thoughtthere have been some initial hiccups, I am getting along with most ofthe people finely and have found many good, sincere and dedicatedpersons to work with. But I have to mention here that the case is notsame with all the volunteers and some are facing big problems withtheir placements.