My job is to build institutional capacity. To make my partner organization more effective and sustainable, that is the task at hand. Time and time again I get beaten down when my ideas aren't taken seriously, or allowed to come to full fruition. Or someone who once appeared to be excited to work with me starts to lose interest (or goes abroad!). Do I take it personally? Chalk it up to cultural differences? Or just move on and work with someone else? Lately, I've been going with the latter. This is an old photo of Doina (the best 14 year old friend a 23 year old girl could have) and me. Back when I washed my hair three times a week instead of two, maybe I should start that again...
Anyway, on Saturday I spent exactly 90 minutes in my office and built more capacity than I had all week! Doina is responsible for the idea to facilitate youth leadership and volunteerism seminars in the villages, for which we received a grant to carry out from the "Open Society Institute." Monday afternoon we will be holding an open house to tell people in our town about the project and Doina will be giving a short presentation. We decided to create a Powerpoint presentation, a format Doina never had a chance to learn.
For the most productive 90 minutes of my week, Doina and I sat side-by-side, she in front of the center's Russian language-based computer and me in front of my laptop which runs in English and Romanian (when I want too), mimicking each others actions to locate the commands and features in Powerpoint that we needed. Ninety minutes and presto! Presentation complete (check!), skills transfer completed (check!), and lots of laughs in between (check!).
Hip Hip Hooray!
No comments:
Post a Comment