Chapter 73...The letter!

VSO...you have brought me the most turbulent 'working year' of my life, which I didn't think was possible after my time at GEO. In the UK you assessed and accepted me to volunteer overseas, you sent me on two long weekends of pre-departure training and you found me a placement that on paper suited my skill set ideally. To put it bluntly, you set me up for what was to be the most incredible, life-changing (mine and others) experience of my life, one that I would look back on for eternity with fondness. In some ways you and I set my expectations high, which excited and motivated me to step foot on that plane knowing what I would lose as a result! And to be fair, in so many ways you have given me experiences to look back on with an unbelievable amount of happiness, I just wish that was enough, and I question why it is not...It would appear that seven weeks of holiday, finding a man to fall in love with and who loves me back, as well as making some wonderful friends isn't enough! Evidently I need more in my life to feel fulfilled, that more is work. Something to not snooze my alarm for in the morning, something to feel great about when clambering into bed at night. Something to talk endlessly to others about. Something to feel proud of. VSO you have not succeeded in giving me any of these things!

You have however, brought me a better understanding of organisational structuring and development, something I was passionate about before ever meeting you. The way you work VSO, it's not for me, it doesn't work with my brains programming. I'm not chilled out and relaxed enough, for you are the most laid back organisation I have ever met. And now the time has come for me to tell you, honestly, all the things that frustrate me about you, and be prepared for there are many...

1. There is no substance behind you. You are an international development charity working all over the World, but what do you even mean. Your recruitment countries appear to have no consistency in their assessment process, their messages, their communication with volunteers. Your placement countries appear to have no idea what VSO stands for, what it means to be a volunteer and what the overall strategy of the organisation is. Do you even know this VSO? Do you even know what you are trying to achieve anymore and how best to do that?
2. The way you partner. This is my biggest gripe because it is so unbelievably obvious little or no work is done on this prior to flying volunteers out to placement. Do you actually try to figure out what an organisations needs are with an international volunteer? Do you ask the right questions to ascertain if they know how best to use a volunteer and their skills? Do you ask them what they want from a volunteer? Do you know what the organisations strategic plans are and how the volunteer and their placement fits into that? Do you know how motivated the staff are to work with a volunteer? I don't think you do!
3. Capacity building, well isn't this just a load of fluff if the partnering isn't done right in the first place. If the organisation are not in a place to have their capacity built, as a whole or on an individual basis, then how is placing a volunteer there going to change anything? Volunteers would be better utilised if placed with people who are keen to create a change in their field, rather than placing volunteers where motivation first has to be built, before any work can then be carried out. Or if this is the case, make that the placement, that is a big enough task on its own surely. There are plenty of people in your placement countries who would make the most of a volunteer, so why do you not partner with these people?
4. Your placement objectives. These just go to show that you are doing everything back-to-front and inside-out, because you have a set of structured, rigid objectives for a number of placements rather than individual placement outlines. If you did some ground work prior to placement then the objectives would be specific to each role, rather than stating that all volunteers in the CASO role should be doing x,y and z. Surely each CASO's objectives are specific to where their GES office is at with that piece of work. And don't even get me started on the MSO role where a volunteer is told to carry out a Guided Self Assessment Process on an organisation. Whose capacity does that build? What happens to that GSAP document after the volunteer has left? Nothing, because no-one in the office has ownership of it, no-one in the office knows what it is and no-one wanted it. If it is a baselining activity then use it as that, rather than just letting it sit doing nothing once complete.
5. The way you run programme offices. Is it not a little ridiculous that you send volunteers out to a country to build capacity of organisations, yet employ locals who have never worked in this field before to run VSO programme offices and programmes. Now don't get me wrong, this is obviously the ideal situation, but you appear to have slipped off the stepping stones to get to this stage. Programme managers who are unable to develop long-term strategies, to communicate with their volunteers, to assess and monitor placements and partnerships, are not ideal. Why has no capacity building with your own office staff taken place? Surely this is a group of motivated and engaged people right there for volunteers to work with?
6. I told you there were plenty, but finally...the cohesion of your volunteers. You have around 60 people in country at any given time, all working independently from one another. You make no effort to draw these people together, to share their working ideas and best practices. You are perfectly happy to leave them floating along with no encouragement, no accountability, no montioring, no strategy, nothing! Do you really care about what work these people are doing? Well I can answer that one, because from first-hand experience I know that the answer is no! Volunteers roam wherever they like, whenever they like and they know that not a soul will care or even know that they have been roaming, or that they have returned!

So VSO that is it and it appears I am not the only one feeling this way... (click here for recent VSO volunteer survey results)! I have learnt so much more from this experience than you have from me, and that saddens me. But you have given me an amazing amount of knowledge on myself and organisations, that I will ensure stays with me for the rest of time. You have brought me closer to myself than I ever thought I could be and that's impressive because I already thought I knew myself pretty well before embarking on this journey. Or maybe you have allowed me to identify with a 'new' me, a different me that has emerged over the past nine months. You have made me question what drives me and why I struggled to be proactive in the environment I found myself in. You have allowed me to meet some Ghanaians that I have not enjoyed the company of, but who have made me look inwards to myself and my own morals. You have introduced me to some of the friendliest, warmest people I have ever met, who always greet me with joy when I return to the office from one of my roaming adventures. You have shown me through a handful of hard-working people what it really means to be human and motivated in one of the most de-motivating environments I have ever experienced. These people keep at it no matter what is going on around them, and I envy those people, because if I had managed that then this chapter may not be ending as quickly as it is.

However I am me, and that means I got weighed down by the six points above and I allowed them to take over. But that happened for a reason, as did immersing myself in the world of other organisations where the contrast in organisational operations couldn't be greater. I believe it happened this way, because at some point in my life I will be deeply involved in the operational systems of an organisation and I can draw on this experience to direct my actions. So VSO I thank you. It has been a totally incredible chapter that I will no doubt keep glancing back at for the rest of life. But now the page is turning as the sun sets on you and wakes in the morning with a whole new adventure ahead...