A few more thoughts...

This week has flown by again despite a couple of quiet days – though they were good for catching up with some paper work and spending some time with the staff. I also had my placement review this week which went fine. Everyone knew the plan for the next 6 months as we had already redone this recently due to all our delays etc so I think VSO were reasonably impressed.

An interesting comment went as follows (roughly translated from Khmer) “Going out to the villages with James is really good as we always get a really good attendance at the meetings – everyone wants to see the white man with the beard” . So even if we don’t achieve anything during my time hear my poor excuse for a ‘beard’ pulls in a crowd.

(me)

Anyway so here are a few things that have been on my mind:

Partnership

VSO works by placing volunteers in organisations that it partners with – it is a needs based organisation and volunteers are found for placements and not the other way around. I have noticed since my time in Cambodia that there are very different ways that organisations ‘partner’. I certainly know that we have worked with people that CDA staff refer to as ‘the donor’ whereas having read ‘the donors’ literature they describe CDA as partners!
Whilst the VSO model cannot possibly be for every organisation I think that “partnerships” with local NGO’s can certainly be strengthened, well that is my experience with CDA. Oxfam seem to have recently realised this and have spent some more time working with my organisation but there appears to have been so much more opportunity for shared learning between the partners of this EC project (including VSO) and that is a great shame that this hasn’t happened more.
Another thing that any good development project also does is make sure that any results are sustainable when the implementing agency has gone – so unfortunately the CFs are not quite there yet. CDA will also evolve too and we are looking for that next pot of money to continue the work but it is tough and any proposal needs to be tailored.

(some PRA)

Finances

One of the problems with being small is that you are constantly looking at where the next pot of money is going to come from (not just small NGO’s of course, but larger ones have departments for this and well you and me have job-sites!). This is something that CDA are having to come to terms with, given that there long term benefactors OXFAM GB look like they wont have the funds to fund them post 2010.


Inevitably a lot of the time of the director and subsequently myself is looking in to new potential funders, projects etc. I have found that I really like helping write proposals. I like the problem analysis aspects and the geek in me quite likes the test of “passing the exam and hitting the right buttons”.


I obviously only hear it from one side but getting money from Oxfam appears to be like getting blood from a stone – even our supposed regular payments are often late (apparently once 3 months late) which for an international NGO is plain ludicrous. The recent suggestion from them that we use our field budget for a signing ceremony was also strange- CDAs response that they could go and sleep for three months if we did, that was quite good I thought.


Of course there are always reasons for these problems but when we have to seriously limit our activities and everything is taking so long – I have serious doubts whether we will complete our fancy new plan as there always seems to be something. Khmers seem to always want to please you too and quite often I get the impression that they are telling me what I want to hear – even when I repeatedly quiz them on this. A good example of this was Khmer New Year – I was told one thing about the time people would be taking off and then when we were talking about it informally I found out a lot of the staff will be gone for nearly a month!!


But we will try and at least CDA are taking livelihood components of their contract seriously and trying to do them well.

(a community forester takes a drink from one of the streams in a CF area)

6 months in


So I have been in Cambodia for over 6 months now and it seems like a good time to have a bit of an evaluation of achievements and try and make some realistic plans for the rest of my contract with CDA . We did this as a team but I also need to spend a bit of time thinking about what I can realistically achieve. I have been busy recently but the imminent Khmer New Year and my parents coming over for a holiday will be a good time to reflect.


I am disappointed over my Khmer ability and despite being able to get by I do want to work harder on this as some of my most rewarding moments have been whilst speaking the lingo.
I guess it’s also time to start thinking about what to do next – I have no idea and have so many conflicting emotions that I am really not sure what I will do – this will not surprise anyone who knows me well.