End of AfID placement - my thoughts

While the experience is still fresh in my mind, I'm noting down my thoughts on the experience of doing a project with AfID.

What do I think of doing an AfID project:

From the perspective of the volunteer - absolutely amazing
In terms of the benefits to the community/organisation - really good

What's good about AfID from a volunteer's perspective

• This is my sixth time doing a volunteering project abroad, but my first time with AfID. Never before have I felt so satisfied and happy about the contribution I've made to the community I've been living with.
• Living and working alongside local people gave me a perspective on local life and culture that would have been impossible as a tourist
• Lots of flexibility about where to go and what to do
• The local people seem to really appreciate that you've travelled so far to help
• I found this the best imaginable education in how development really works. For me it drew out the issues of psychology and politics that might be the real drivers behind the success and failure of a project.
• Good value for money (Compare - AfID £695 (or less for concessions), gvi £695-£1490 depending on length, i-to-i roughly $1000 - $2000)

What's good about AfID from the perspective of the host organisation

• The short-term nature of the placement worked well for me. It's great for reinforcing the fact that the placement should build capacity among local people; this is a much more sustainable form of development than if I were doing work for the school. (However I wonder whether it could be a double-edged sword - see below)
• AfID's strategy of sending people with established skills and experience is, in my view, excellent. It meant that I could be really useful.
• The choice of skill to focus on (namely financial management) was, in my view, a good one. For example, in my placement, if no budgeting had happened, the organisation would probably have spent more money than it had and hence gone into bankruptcy. So while other areas of management would also have been useful, this one helped save the school.
• By helping to up-skill, and not providing capital, AfID was contributing to real development. Helping local people to become better at running organisations themselves is much more valuable than any handout.

What could be improved about AfID from the perspective of the host organisation

• The short-term nature of the placement is only OK if someone in the partner organisation has the skills and willingness to absorb the knowledge being imparted. For my placement, the person keeping the continuity of knowledge was the Teach A Man To Fish rep Jamie, but she will probably be gone in 6 months. I don't know how carefully AfID checks that this aspect of things will work. (In fairness they might be checking this - I don't know)
• In my view, organisations could benefit from support in many areas of management. Isolating just one area (financial management) could be inadequate. My experience in my placement suggested that some HR issues need to be sorted before financial management can really work effectively in that school. I recognise that AfID is a young organisation; trying to branch out into several disciplines at once might be a touch too adventurous at this stage. However I would recommend it for the future. I think that following backgrounds may be relevant:- charity trustees, school governors, HR professionals.
• I think it's important to ensure careful matching of volunteers to placements. For my placement, I was actually (in my view) fairly well matched. I'm not sure whether AfID is doing enough about this at the moment (maybe they are). But I worry that a volunteer with a small amount of experience in only one or a few areas might end up trying to support a partner on things that they don't have experience in.

This blog post has ended with a number of (possibly) negative-sounding things. I'd like to reiterate that my view of AfID's model is extremely positive, and I will be definitely be doing this again.