Stories of participants

Introduction

The Southern Youth Zone policy was introduced by PSO in March 2008, to stimulate PSO members to involve more young professionals in the South to work on capacity development in the South.

Before that time South to South placements (S-2-S) already took place within the Youth Zone programme of PSO, but just occasionally. Innocent Misiko is an example of an ‘old school' S-2-S placement. PSO visited him during his placement, to see and hear about his experiences in Uganda.

Meet Innocent Misiko

Innocent Misiko (32 years young) comes from Kenya. Since September 2007 he is working as a Young Professional at the VSO Uganda office. Why did he apply for this placement? Innocent: 'I felt my academic background in international development and the experience in organization capacity assessment fitted in well with the requirements of a VSO (STAP) volunteer programme, that had just been advertised in the local dailies in Kenya.'

He applied, followed the recruitment and preparation programme and got a placement at the VSO Uganda office, as an Organisational Processes Facilitator at the VSO Uganda office.

Placements

VSO International and VSO Uganda in particular, faced many dropouts among their volunteers. Initially, VSOU volunteer interventions were initiated through requests from (potential) partner organisations. But at times their perceived needs were not appropriate for the stage of development of the partner organisation.

For example, the partner organisation would view their pressing need as fundraising, whereas when the volunteer specialist with fund raising skills arrived it became clear that before fund raising could begin they needed to ensure that the organisation had a strategy, structure, systems (including financial control systems) and viable project proposals (operational planning). Otherwise, no potential funder will contemplate supporting them.

This placed the volunteer in the position of having to work outside their own skill-set, which was bad for both performance and volunteer motivation. The same would be true if a volunteer is requested with programmatic skills (e.g. a disability expert), but on arrival the volunteer finds that they need to fundraise before they can start any programme work.

VSOU

The fundamental problem is that neither the partner organisation nor VSOU Programme Managers have broad organisational development/NGO management consultancy skills. Programme Managers are by definition programme area experts (and they will have varying levels of organisational/management ability).

That is why a vacancy for an Organisational Processes Facilitator was formulated by VSOU and Innocent was recruited for this job.

The Organisational Processes Facilitator

In his day-to-day work, Innocent is responsible for organisational capacity assessments among potential and current partners of VSO Uganda. VSOU focuses on three development areas: Disability, Participation & Governance and Health & Social wellbeing. Their partners are to be found within these fields. Innocent explains the course of the process: 'Normally, either party approaches another and VSOU initiates the first meeting with either the director or board of the (potential) partner.'

This initial meeting is used to carry out a quick organisation assessment and to familiarize each other on what each one does and how they do it and whether this is in line with the three areas that VSOU is involved in. Innocent: 'At this stage, we look at issues like organizational ownership (mission, vision and values), organisational management and structure, the governance structure, resource mobilization strategies, financial systems, external and internal reporting systems and planning among others.'

Workshop

If there is a possibility of a partnership, then a second meeting (workshop setting) is agreed upon and held between the two, involving several stakeholders like staff and board from either party so as to hammer out details. Once they are clear on areas of partnership, a partnership log frame is formulated to guide in the interventions and this has to be agreed upon before implementation.

Log Frame

During the field trip of PSO, Innocent facilitated such a workshop, with a potential partner called WADUP (Wakiso District Union of People with Disabilities).

On the agenda for the meeting were: Exchanging of expectations, presentations of both organisations, a mapping of the institutional environment &the internal organisation and a SWOT analysis. Innocent: ‘We didn't get around to developing a problem- and objectives tree. This will be the start of the next session. Than we come to know where VSO could fit in and what kind of placement is needed. Consequently, a work plan and a logical framework for the intervention is drafted.'

Innocent often shares what he is doing with the VSOU programme managers in an assessment. Sometimes these managers join him during his work.

Results of the placement

When asking Innocent about the achieved results until so far, he gives us an example of a partner receiving three volunteers, all doing one and the same thing: Fund raising. At this particular organisation Innocent did the capacity assessment workshop. While drafting the log frame they found out that the main problem was the internal system.

The organisation did not have proper internal systems, e.g. report writing skills, transparency and accountability. Now a specialist on organisational development is in place and is doing very well. From the start of his placement up until now, Innocent has assessed more than 20 potential partner organisations and has placed multiple successful volunteers at the right places.

Furthermore, through Innocent's work, the programme managers of VSOU are more aware of and capacitated in doing organisational needs assessments prior to the placement of volunteers.

Cultural adaptation

Innocent is very pleased with how his placement is going. The fact that Kenya and Uganda are neighbouring countries helped him to adapt to the cultural context quickly and allowed him to seriously start working and contribute right away. Through regular discussions with the country director about the log frame development and about the method of appreciative inquiry, Innocent was stimulated to use these techniques in his day-to-day work.

S-2-S placements: The way forward?

While discussing the new PSO Southern Youth Zone programme with Innocent, he argues this new programme has a clear advantage: 'Right now I'm not so sure about my future. I don't have a ‘sending organisation to whom I will return at the end of this placement. So I clearly see an added value in having a sending and a receiving organisation within the programme. This way you can make sure that the placement is really sustainable and all the acquired skills and knowledge do not disappear and resources will not go to waste at the end of the placement.'