About work: A lot to do and more!
Door: Baukje
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Baukje
18 November 2011 | Kameroen, Yaoundé
So what am I actually doing here… This question has been asked a few times, so here I go. I am working as an organisational development advisor for 2 organisations, BanCCUL and BIDO.
BanCCUL is a Credit Union, established in 2008 growing in size now, but still fairly small. When I came, only 2 staff where in the office (from Dec. 1st there will be 3 staff members and me!) and as written in my job description, the following assets: 2 tables, 2 chairs, 10 files, 1 book shelf and 1 safe. Modest as they were, they forgot to mention the waiting bench, another chair, one bucket, a lot of unorganized paperwork, a computer and a printer, but no electricity and a broken generator (so those 2 modern items were not of any use at the time...) This is to show you how small and poorly developed the organisation yet is. My job is to strengthen or when non-existent develop the processes of the organisation, to assist the manager on smoothening the services and to build capacity in the 2 staff members. What does that mean? It can be small things. An example, the manager was complaining that when she pays out money to customers, sometimes a customer who is short on cash comes back after a week, accusing her of not giving him/her the right amount of money (it is difficult when you really have nothing!). Of course they always tell her she gave too little. I asked her how she thinks we can prevent this from happening, but she didn’t know a solution. I asked her to think how they deal with these things in a regular bank. Now we have a notice hanging in the office saying: “Dear customer, please count your money and check your receipts at all times before leaving the office. BanCCUL is not responsible for any loss after leaving the office.” It can be that easy!
Human Resource Management is very poorly done so far, e.g. my colleagues work without ever having signed a contract, there has never been an agreement on holidays (and so they never took/got them...) and there are no policies in place, no proper induction is done with new staff, etc. etc. So a lot of work to do on that, which I just started by finding out the rights of the employee from a law firm (e.g. a minimum of 18 holidays per year) and by writing up an induction policy together with my newest colleague.
One of the most important issues is the disbursement and repayment of loans. There are some members with bad loans, who do not pay back their loans in time and are sometimes even over a year delinquent! The existing policies do little to minimize the risks. Also there is not really a well thought out plan of action how to get these bad loans repaid, before losing the money. And the way the field work is done is very comprehensive, giving my colleagues lot of work to do. So I am discussing with my colleagues on how to set clear policies, make specific people responsible for actions (SMART = new for them) and to organise a lot of the work differently and hence more efficient and effective and (also very important in a bank) less prone to mistakes! The challenge for me is not to set up the policy with them, but to actually get the change in behaviour. Especially the manager is resistant, probably because she set up the programme beginning of this year all by herself and sees a lot of changes coming now!
There is actually a lot more to do, I could probably bore you with a lot more details and tasks and also stay for 10 years at this place, but this gives you a bit of an idea on what I am doing at daytime!
The other organization BIDO (Bangolan Integrated Development Organisation) is actually only a Board of Directors with a lot of ideas, but no staff nor budget yet. BanCCUL is founded by BIDO and their first and only running project so far, which cost them a lot of time. This was not assessed by VSO and became only clear when I started asking question about the organisation. And even though I can do a lot to start up this organisation, it is hard to share skills (this is what VSO believes in) when there is no counterpart or staff to work with. So to compensate for the lack of staff, I am looking into projects I can do with volunteers, so I can train them and sent them back into the field to educate their neighbours. And I am trying to combine the work of BIDO and BanCCUL, to get the staff from the Credit Union to get involved in educating the population and assist on the projects. The vision written up in BIDO’s constitution tells me they want to eliminate poverty in rural communities, engaging in development activities in the following sectors: economic development, agriculture, health, education, women empowerment, water & sanitation and environment . This is merely a problem in the whole of Cameroon, where they find it difficult to pick, so a lot of NGOs try to do everything. I do believe that development won’t come from developing one aspect and should be an integrated programme, but to do it all within one organisation, not specializing, is a bit much! The nice thing about this is that I get to pick topics, which I feel are urgent combined with topics to my own taste. The second day after I arrived I was assigned to be the supervisor of a mosquito net distribution project, funded by the Global Fund, Plan International, UNICEF and the Government. It was a project carried out by the 3 clinics in my village and all NGO’s together and when they saw a “Whiteman”, they thought it would be best to make her supervisor. They kindda forgot that I had no idea yet of where to go in the village (nope, there are no signs, nor street names!) that I don’t speak Pidgin nor the Bangolan dialect and the locals very often no English and that I was still new to “how to work in Cameroon.” Luckily the people I worked with were patient and willing to explain me a lot, so I could do some supervision and coaching, whilst at the same time get to know the neighbourhoods in the village, seeing the living standards of the people, getting to know the other volunteers and health workers and to see a how work is done here. It actually helped me a lot, while they were very happy with my contribution. So indeed this was sharing skills, learning on both sides!
Since I am working for the HIV/AIDS programme of VSO and have some experience in that field from Namibia, I started with organizing a 2 day free HIV testing and counselling around World AIDS day, December 1st, which I am busy with at the moment. This week I went in the field with a colleague to collect the loan repayments from the centres (BanCCUL work). Part of these meetings is spent on education and I came along with 2 interactive exercises on HIV to do with the groups, after which I informed them on the free testing and counselling days. During those 2 days, we will start with a group of local volunteers performing a play on HIV followed by an information session on HIV by one of the counsellors. After this session the testing will start. I know from the Mosquito net project that a lot of villagers will show up even before the start time, to make sure they get the free service, meaning that there will probably be a huge crowd waiting, which gives us time to educate the people some more. So I invited 3 more health workers to do some education talks, on cervical and breast cancer and on the possibility to get screening, on family planning and a British doctor Jill (also VSO) will inform the waiting crowd on PMTCT (Prevention Mother to Child Transmission)
I hope it will be a success. Will tell you some more after the 2nd of December. And I have already planned some other activities, about which I will tell you in another blog. Big hugs for now! Bauke
BanCCUL is a Credit Union, established in 2008 growing in size now, but still fairly small. When I came, only 2 staff where in the office (from Dec. 1st there will be 3 staff members and me!) and as written in my job description, the following assets: 2 tables, 2 chairs, 10 files, 1 book shelf and 1 safe. Modest as they were, they forgot to mention the waiting bench, another chair, one bucket, a lot of unorganized paperwork, a computer and a printer, but no electricity and a broken generator (so those 2 modern items were not of any use at the time...) This is to show you how small and poorly developed the organisation yet is. My job is to strengthen or when non-existent develop the processes of the organisation, to assist the manager on smoothening the services and to build capacity in the 2 staff members. What does that mean? It can be small things. An example, the manager was complaining that when she pays out money to customers, sometimes a customer who is short on cash comes back after a week, accusing her of not giving him/her the right amount of money (it is difficult when you really have nothing!). Of course they always tell her she gave too little. I asked her how she thinks we can prevent this from happening, but she didn’t know a solution. I asked her to think how they deal with these things in a regular bank. Now we have a notice hanging in the office saying: “Dear customer, please count your money and check your receipts at all times before leaving the office. BanCCUL is not responsible for any loss after leaving the office.” It can be that easy!
Human Resource Management is very poorly done so far, e.g. my colleagues work without ever having signed a contract, there has never been an agreement on holidays (and so they never took/got them...) and there are no policies in place, no proper induction is done with new staff, etc. etc. So a lot of work to do on that, which I just started by finding out the rights of the employee from a law firm (e.g. a minimum of 18 holidays per year) and by writing up an induction policy together with my newest colleague.
One of the most important issues is the disbursement and repayment of loans. There are some members with bad loans, who do not pay back their loans in time and are sometimes even over a year delinquent! The existing policies do little to minimize the risks. Also there is not really a well thought out plan of action how to get these bad loans repaid, before losing the money. And the way the field work is done is very comprehensive, giving my colleagues lot of work to do. So I am discussing with my colleagues on how to set clear policies, make specific people responsible for actions (SMART = new for them) and to organise a lot of the work differently and hence more efficient and effective and (also very important in a bank) less prone to mistakes! The challenge for me is not to set up the policy with them, but to actually get the change in behaviour. Especially the manager is resistant, probably because she set up the programme beginning of this year all by herself and sees a lot of changes coming now!
There is actually a lot more to do, I could probably bore you with a lot more details and tasks and also stay for 10 years at this place, but this gives you a bit of an idea on what I am doing at daytime!
The other organization BIDO (Bangolan Integrated Development Organisation) is actually only a Board of Directors with a lot of ideas, but no staff nor budget yet. BanCCUL is founded by BIDO and their first and only running project so far, which cost them a lot of time. This was not assessed by VSO and became only clear when I started asking question about the organisation. And even though I can do a lot to start up this organisation, it is hard to share skills (this is what VSO believes in) when there is no counterpart or staff to work with. So to compensate for the lack of staff, I am looking into projects I can do with volunteers, so I can train them and sent them back into the field to educate their neighbours. And I am trying to combine the work of BIDO and BanCCUL, to get the staff from the Credit Union to get involved in educating the population and assist on the projects. The vision written up in BIDO’s constitution tells me they want to eliminate poverty in rural communities, engaging in development activities in the following sectors: economic development, agriculture, health, education, women empowerment, water & sanitation and environment . This is merely a problem in the whole of Cameroon, where they find it difficult to pick, so a lot of NGOs try to do everything. I do believe that development won’t come from developing one aspect and should be an integrated programme, but to do it all within one organisation, not specializing, is a bit much! The nice thing about this is that I get to pick topics, which I feel are urgent combined with topics to my own taste. The second day after I arrived I was assigned to be the supervisor of a mosquito net distribution project, funded by the Global Fund, Plan International, UNICEF and the Government. It was a project carried out by the 3 clinics in my village and all NGO’s together and when they saw a “Whiteman”, they thought it would be best to make her supervisor. They kindda forgot that I had no idea yet of where to go in the village (nope, there are no signs, nor street names!) that I don’t speak Pidgin nor the Bangolan dialect and the locals very often no English and that I was still new to “how to work in Cameroon.” Luckily the people I worked with were patient and willing to explain me a lot, so I could do some supervision and coaching, whilst at the same time get to know the neighbourhoods in the village, seeing the living standards of the people, getting to know the other volunteers and health workers and to see a how work is done here. It actually helped me a lot, while they were very happy with my contribution. So indeed this was sharing skills, learning on both sides!
Since I am working for the HIV/AIDS programme of VSO and have some experience in that field from Namibia, I started with organizing a 2 day free HIV testing and counselling around World AIDS day, December 1st, which I am busy with at the moment. This week I went in the field with a colleague to collect the loan repayments from the centres (BanCCUL work). Part of these meetings is spent on education and I came along with 2 interactive exercises on HIV to do with the groups, after which I informed them on the free testing and counselling days. During those 2 days, we will start with a group of local volunteers performing a play on HIV followed by an information session on HIV by one of the counsellors. After this session the testing will start. I know from the Mosquito net project that a lot of villagers will show up even before the start time, to make sure they get the free service, meaning that there will probably be a huge crowd waiting, which gives us time to educate the people some more. So I invited 3 more health workers to do some education talks, on cervical and breast cancer and on the possibility to get screening, on family planning and a British doctor Jill (also VSO) will inform the waiting crowd on PMTCT (Prevention Mother to Child Transmission)
I hope it will be a success. Will tell you some more after the 2nd of December. And I have already planned some other activities, about which I will tell you in another blog. Big hugs for now! Bauke
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
