Pre-departure training
on My VSO Ethiopian Adventures (Ethiopia), 24/Aug/2010 10:27, 34 days ago
VSO take a very thorough and professional approach to ensuring their volunteers have the right skills and knowledge for working in development before they leave for their placement.In 2010 I was expected, (its mandatory) to participate in 2 on-line training courses and to attend 3 courses at their training centre in Birmingham.The training‘season’ started with the on-line introduction, Volunteering Starts Here. If I recall this was more about learning to work on line and how to communicate as a team using the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment technology. For my Bournemouth University colleagues this will bring a smile to theirfaces when considering the years spent working with BU students, learning to engage with the VLE! As well as being on the other side of the fence with technology, did you know I have had a Placement Advisor!!All the exercises are very practical and participative and the use of case studies, videos and images are widely used. As well as exploring what we, and VSO mean by development, on-line we were introduced to some concepts around culture and all those who have done it may remember, in particular, the iceberg diagram with the seagulls flying overhead representing the volunteers who fly in and are able to fly out again and interact with the place while they are landed a bit like a bird, picking up what they want in a potentially selective and superficial(?) way. However, like birds we have the choice of the extent to which we wish to make the land our home.The fish swimming around below the iceberg are native to the waters, immersed in the culture and with a perspective that is submerged.The key animal in this metaphor is the penguin, who has the ability to dive into the waters, or local territory and who are very familiar, comfortable with the environment and culture, and who can also move around on the land and relate to the birds who come in to land. The key message is to find your penguin to help good cultural assimilation! Someone who has local knowledge but who also is able to assist and relate to the birds, or VSO volunteers.The first residential course was entitled Preparing to Volunteer, and having discovered that VSO is big on acronyms, its more usually described as P2V.This course introduces us to issues around development, including the historical context of aid and trade including the background to institutions such as the World Bank, WTO and IMF. Through some very hard hitting exercises (eg The Trading Game) we learnt about the debt crisis and Structural Adjustment Programmes and the cycle of disadvantage, and how it feels to live in Tanzania, as opposed to America for example, from the point of view of trade advantage.Then we moved to consider ourselves as volunteers in this context, the role that VSO plays, its strategy and focus and aspects of the work it does and how this changes to reflect the changing environment. VSO currently has 6 main areas of contribution: education, HIV and AIDS, disability, health and well being, secure livelihoods and participation and governance. I will be working in the education area.I recall a particularly powerful practical exercise that reinforced how it might feel to be culturally incompetent and learnt the importance of mirroring the behaviour and language of the person you are interacting with.We spent time reflecting on what we could bring to the work of VSO and the extent to which our values, approach and skills are consistent with that of the organisation we will be representing. The assessment criteria that we were all selected against were used in this context, and it was a sobering thought that we were all still being assessed against them during this early training.The course finished with more personal reflections about how we may cope and how we might organise ourselves and our lives in our new environments to ensure an easy adjustment, - the Me Map.The course was meaningful in helping us to see everyday life through the position of disadvantage and gaining a better idea of the causes of that disadvantage, and then to locate ourselves in that context as a VSO Volunteer.