Spend five minutes with...

Hazel Ettridge, who travelled to Nepal as a Management and Training Adviser for Nepal Association of Physically Disabled.

What were you doing before you applied to be a VSO volunteer?

I spent 30 years in Arts Management, Further Education, Prison Education Management, Local Government and BEING A MUM!

What motivated you to apply to be a volunteer?

It's something I wanted to do in my late teens - but boys and rock n roll got the better of me. So I got caught up in husbands, children, career, mortgage etc etc and when my youngest finished university (2004) and told me she was going to spend 2 years travelling, I felt I was free to go back to my earlier ambition.

What does your partner organisation/employer do?

It's a network organisation promoting participatory approaches to development workers, the government and civil society in general. We have a core programme of monthly sharings, a magazine, weekly radio programmes. We offer training courses in PLA, Advocacy, Rights Based Approach, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation etc. and produce training manuals, offer advice and consultancy on participation. 

We work directly with NGOs, CBOs and the government - but hopefully, our eventual beneficiaries are the vulnerable communities of Nepal. 

It is very difficult to sustain a network organisation. There is a core of members who work very hard, and a large number of members who are very difficult to mobilise. It is also very difficult to find funding for our core programme. 

To support the Secretariat and the Executive Committee members (capacity building). We have gone through an Organisational Development process, which included an assessment and the development of a five-year OD plan and a one-year action plan. 

No such thing!

We meet every morning to review yesterday's work and to discuss our work plans for today. We focus on the OD work plan, and review actions from the minutes of various meetings. We plan and deliver training events. We find speakers for our monthly sharing programme. We find interviewees for the weekly radio programme. We look at articles that have been submitted to our magazine and go through the process of editing and publishing. We manage the resource centre. We write proposals for projects and funding. We have meetings with government officers. We greet and make tea for members who arrive to use our resource centre. We attend meetings of the Publications Committee, the Programme Committee, the Admin and Finance Committee, the Executive Committee. My role is sometimes a coaching or hand holding one, sometimes I do small training sessions and often its all hands on deck and I find myself participating fully in the work load. 

Listening a lot and asking the right questions. Coaching, planning, monitoring and evaluating. 

I can now say that I've edited a magazine, taken an organisation through the entire OD process, led a Strategic Planning workshop and followed through with implementation, monitoring and evaluation. My listening skills were good before I came - but they have been truly enhanced. 

My colleagues joke that what they will remember (when I've gone) is that any problem can be faced with the help of a nice cup of tea. When I started in my placement, there was a lot of sitting around and reading the paper going on. People here are used to working in a hierarchy and don’t do anything until they are told, by the boss directly, to do a task. I instigated the morning meeting as a forum where we could all put forward ideas and take some initiative in how we carry out our work - this has helped enormously, not only with planning, but by increasing staff self esteem. They can see each day just how much they have achieved. They are now much more motivated to accomplish tasks and to do it on time. It has increased our efficiency enormously.

I hate my walk to work everyday. It's hot and dusty. Heavy traffic belches out fumes and everyone honks their horn as loudly and as frequently as possible. The holy Bagmati river stinks. Street children and elderly people wrapped in polythene sacks lie on the pavements. Dogs with mange hobble around on three legs (most dogs here seem to have encounters with cars, buses and motorcycles on a regular basis) looking for scraps to eat. Cows pick their way through roadside rubbish piles, chewing on black plastic bags that leave them with horribly distended stomachs..... the litany goes on.... On the other hand, the climate is wonderful for most of the year, the people are gentle, from September to April there are views of the Himalaya most days, and there is an exciting buzz, especially since the return of democracy this year, and I feel part of something really positive. 

That Kathmandu is not just a city with modern pretensions. It is still ruled by the temple and the shrine. An ancient way of life still exists here for most people. 

Much more than.... I have grown enormously as a person, I have learned new skills, I have developed new attitudes and I have been given so many more opportunities for new experiences than I could ever hope for at home.

I have a wonderful apartment. It's quite small, but has great views across the valley. I love spending time there - reading, meditating, watching DVDs, stretching my culinary skills on my two ring gas burner. I meet up with other volunteers regularly for a beer, a cheap meal, Footie on the telly in a bar somewhere, or a nice long walk out across the hills. I visit a local home for children with disabilities and have accompanied them to the cinema, swimming and to arts and crafts workshops. I also have some contact with Kathmandu Animal Treatment centre - they have programme for spaying street dogs. There are many festivals to attend - best just as an observer, but sometimes I get involved (and usually covered in tikka or coloured powder or water, depending on the festival).