preparing a new placement

Sometime you are wondering as a volunteer ‘what is my job about?’, ‘What did i come here to do?’ If you look at my first placement description you would think it is all plain and clear. I am here as a teacher trainer to teach national volunteers how to teach. There is not much you can discuss about this job description if your read it like that. Just visit the volunteers, prepare workshops and try to make teachers out of them. But …. Now after one year of trying it seems like things are not working the way it should. My program officer in Nigeria recognized the problems I mentioned and has some other difficulties with the program. So we decided to change my placement. Starting the New Year I will be starting a new placement as national coordinator for the National Graduate Volunteering Program (NGVP). This means I will be responsible for the current national volunteers working in the educational sector and I have to make sure that the program will be in hands of partners within a period of 6 months. This is quite a challenge, but I am not afraid of challenges as long as I experience support.

As I said officially I will start in January, but this morning I am already getting ready to leave for Kano. As we have a ‘new’ partner there who is willing to carry a part of the NGVP. We are now of to provide them with knowledge about assessment and we will help them assess their first national volunteers for this program. I also will provide the selected volunteers with a first workshop about teaching and learning. So in a way I already start my new placement this week.

How I will approach this new placement is still a blur. I hope I will soon get a chance to talk to the current partners and stakeholders. I also need to figure out how to build a proper network and where the educationists meet. Luckely I already met with the secretary of the Nigeria commission of education (NCE) at the annual JJCE meeting that was held in Lafia a week ago. Maybe that will be a start of my federal network.

just a day like that....

Sometimes my mind only can think about one thing and that thing is not …….. Today is a day like that. Nothing comes out of my hands. My mind is making overtime thinking about how I would like things to work here in the NGVP in Nasarawa and the other states. My mind is rambling about transport, guides to help successors, organizational issues, things that should have been done before I came into this country. It is wrong I know because I cannot change a lot. I cannot change the project bust still, I cannot seem to turn my mind of and just do what I came here to do…… teaching volunteers how to teach. There is so much more. Stop thinking about all that….. Stop attracting all the problems volunteers ventilate ……. Stop doing the coordinators job for the whole country…….. When is VSO giving the volunteers (including the internationals) full support? Support like a clear structure, an ear that listens, a person that is not to busy doing other (more) important stuff.  Luckely Habu is here to help me in Nasarawa. He is willing to learn and to do a lot of the administrative work, the only thing with him is he needs official orders from NYSC to do the big things. He also needs me to tell him what he should do, but I don’t even know what I need to do. I want to teach him my part of this programme so that when I’m leaving he can take over. Pffff…… want to do it all today…… impossible.   So I got home, on my way I met a friend and we chatted for a while. We chatted a bit too long for me to be in time at the tennis court. I had an appointment with Ali to play before the others would come, I was just 15 minutes late. Already far too many people were there. What to do? Stay and play a game or go home? I stayed, because Ali encouraged me to. We could make a double. Okay, I ll stay……. But when it was time for us to get into the court and the opponents saw that I was about to play, they walked out saying they didn’t want to play if I was playing. Signs all clear for me….. if a guest is not welcome the guest will leave.

Busy busy busy

Work is getting busy. That’s a nice change in daily activities, to be honest. Ever since I’m back in Nigeria, after my 7 weeks of unfortunate break, I am travelling a lot and busy managing the project in Nassarawa State. The week that I visited the schools for the first time accompanied by Habu, the desk officer of NGVP in Nassarawa, was lots of fun and good contacts. After that we had the first Quarterly meeting in Nassarawa State with all national volunteers on ground. Unfortunately only one principal was there and a representative of a principal. None of the principals managed to send community members. It will be a big challenge to get the SBMC up and running. I hope one or two schools will manage to get the community more involved in the school.

During the meeting we talked about motivation. How to get pupils motivated in your classroom and even to come to school? I answered, as I almost always do, with a question: What do you need to feel motivated? For me teaching is still the simple idea of giving somebody something that you want to give yourself. If you are motivated by getting positive feedback why would a pupil not feel the same? So we wrote down things that motivated ourselves and then translated them back into classroom/school situations. This is quite a different approach than usual in Nigeria, but the National volunteers responded well. Even the senior staff and principal agreed. Now hope they apply it in their schools.

The national volunteers also had to line out their planned activities for this year. Activities that came up were: initiating sensitization on STDs, realizing a library, improving the computer facilities, arranging speed bumps nearby the school, realizing a borehole and of course organizing sports activities in the school. I always get to positive fibes when I hear all these good intentions. And honestly most things will happen, that’s what I learned from my first year in Nigeria. It will maybe no go as planned but things will happen.

After this meeting I had to pack stuff to travel to Abuja for a workshop for all education volunteers. A nice opportunity to see everybody again and to ventilate all issues we see on ground. And there were some issues! It was good to talk and to feel we were listened to. In the end we had to form an interim committee for volunteers. This committee has to prepare a meeting for all volunteers to come together and workout a better way to communicate with the program office. We voted for 4 interim members: Kasia, Bola, Paul and I are now in the committee. We will manage this till February when the permanent committee will be chosen.

On the Saturday after the education meeting a group of us went to Dutse to celebrate Sallah, a beautiful colorful Islamic celebration. Sadly al was spoiled by bombings and shootings in Yobe and Borno State.

The Monday after Sallah I had a meeting in Kaduna at the Demonstration School for Deaf Children (DSDC), this school is just since this year part of the national volunteering scheme. I had to do a monitoring visit and had to figure out what went wrong in communication between VSO, DSDC and the volunteers. In the end it came down to a conflict resolution meeting and making a clear understanding of terms of references for volunteers and school. I think it was a good meeting and hope things will go forward.

Then last week when I was back in Lafia we had the annual JCCE meeting in Nassarawa State. A really big meeting which involved all ministries of education of the whole nation and all other institutions involved with education. About 830 educationist together in Lafia! I wish I had known what I know now than I would have been more active in networking. As I know now that I will be the manager of the exit strategy of NGVP. This only means that I have to find partners that are willing to take over this volunteering scheme as it is too big for VSO to carry. I have 6 months to arrange a new plan and find partners. I hope I’ll manage!