Nearing the End...

My time in Jakarta is over; the evidence-gathering part of my project is complete; I’m working on a SWOT Analysis; I am feverishly writing and re-writing my report; I have time booked to present my findings to the entire VSO Indonesia team.  What all this means is that my second VSO assignment, and my time in Indonesia, is nearing its end.

 

Time to reflect back on this adventure, all the way from day one.

 

Cuso International (VSO’s Strategic Partner in Canada; my placement has been facilitated through them) has a wonderful woman with the exotic and beautiful name of Nefertiti in its employ.  Titi plays a dual role for me: one, as the Corporate Partnerships Advisor, engaging with me as the Randstad VSO Ambassador to promote and strengthen our partnership, and two, as my trusted friend and volunteer advisor.  I remember the day she very casually mentioned an upcoming assignment in Indonesia; she was not sure she even wanted to tell me, if it was even something I would consider.  I’ll never forget; she sprung it on me in the elevator on the way down after a meeting at my office in Toronto.  We had maybe 30 more seconds together before she had to be at another meeting.  Sly girl; obviously I took the bait.

 

I trust Titi’s instincts implicitly, so when I was contemplating coming back to Indonesia last summer, and she gently but earnestly told me that “no two placements are the same,” I took it to heart.  My first experience as a volunteer in Indonesia was so positive that I took on the role of VSO Ambassador at Randstad and have done my best to encourage others to embark on overseas volunteer placements to end world poverty (I was the first, and am now the sixth Randstad Canada VSO Volunteer).  I’m generally an optimistic person so I had hypothesized that my second placement and experience would be just as positive.  Different, but positive.

 

I was wrong.  And I was right.

 

VSO Indonesia has changed dramatically.  It’s still in the same office (for now; I learned yesterday that the villa VSO rents as its office is to be demolished and rebuilt; VSO has to be out by July); it still has some of the same staff (5 people that were with the organization in 2009 are still there); it’s still a development organization that believes volunteering and skill-sharing is the most powerful tool to make a meaningful and sustainable impact on development at the community level.  That is where the similarities stop.  Everything else is different:  the strategy, the programs, the areas of the country in which it works, the profile of the organization (11 volunteers including me versus over 40 when I was here in 2009), and generally, just the vibe in the office.

 

The goal of my project was to research current Corporate Social Responsibility practices among the multinational companies located in Jakarta, with a special emphasis on Employee Volunteering (EV), and make recommendations to VSO in order to fine-tune its corporate engagement strategy.  My experience with EV is unique because I am both a Volunteer and I manage Randstad Canada’s EV program with VSO.  I can speak for both sides.  Randstad’s partnership with VSO is world-class.  Replicating it - long-term, community-based, participative volunteering - was my understanding of what VSO wanted to achieve with its corporate engagement strategy.  Alas, no.  In Indonesia, that is Pie in the Sky thinking!

 

Most EV programs in Indonesia are glorified photo-ops:  tree planting, painting schools, donating books to orphanages.  Don’t misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with those things, but the impact is limited at best.  I attended a CSR Conference in Jakarta last week, and one of the speakers said something very powerful.  The headmistress of a school in Yogyakarta, site of a devastating earthquake in 2006, was the recipient of many typical volunteer initiatives from local companies: renovation of classrooms, painting, book drives.  So many local companies wanted to help that they were falling over each other.  When asked about the real impact of the efforts paid to her school, she said, “the only impact is that I no longer know from one week to the next what colour the school is going to be.”  Imagine if the companies that put all this effort and expense into her school had simply asked her or her students what they actually needed, they may have been able to really make a meaningful difference in the lives of those children.

 

There was no way that any EV program in Jakarta was going to be like Randstad’s.  It was all a joke; no impact, no results, no measurement.  I have been reading over my meeting notes and can actually see the sarcastic tone of my writing!  I had become jaded.  I didn’t feel very good about EV in Indonesia, or about VSO’s strategy.  I no longer recognized VSO.  I was deeply saddened.  So I told the Country Director, Mike, about how I was feeling – and he agreed.

 

I didn’t expect him to agree.

 

Interestingly, what happened is that I got over myself – Mike’s validation of what I was feeling gave me permission to recognize that no, there wasn’t likely to be a Randstad-calibre partnership – but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t still potential to encourage incremental improvement in the EV programs that exist, and to encourage creation of programs where there are none.  I had forgotten rule number one of volunteering for community development – manage your expectations.

 

VSO’s proposed Corporate Engagement strategy (which is only a small part of its overall strategy) will be to act as the authority on volunteering for development in Indonesia – it does, after all, draw on over 45 years of volunteer management experience in Indonesia.  VSO will consult with companies to review their EV programs, and provide training on volunteer program management, partner selection, community advocacy, and monitoring and evaluation.  VSO will speak “corporate” lingo - encouraging companies to ensure EV programs are aligned with business goals, no longer a nuisance or an expense, but a strategic component of overall business strategy.  Through all this, VSO can not only secure additional funding for its development projects, but can encourage companies in Indonesia to really make small and incremental, but meaningful and impactful, changes to the way they think about, and contribute to, development. Which sounds like a win-win-win strategy to me.

 

Titi was right, and amazingly, I had to learn the toughest lesson about volunteering all over again.  A three-month VSO assignment is way too short to change the world.  But it’s enough time to encourage people to think about change, one tiny piece at a time.  And that’s what it’s all about.