VSO Events

This week was full of VSO events. First of all, there was a welcoming reception for our new Country Director. It was an official party inviting VSO’s partner NGOs and government officials. It was held at a private club in Georgetown. The picture below is taken at the party. To my right and above me are Elske and Marco, Dutch couple who lives upstairs from my apartment. To my left is Steven, British Deaf volunteer.

I took a leave from my work at the Union on Friday, and I attended VSO conference. Everyone was excited to get away from Georgetown, and it felt more like a school excursion rather than a conference. Accidents can always happen in this kind of trip, and this was no exception. Within twenty minutes of driving, the bus got broken down, and we had to get off and wait on the road side. Luckily, we managed to find minibuses that can take us to the destination before we got completely dried up under the sun.

The main objective of this conference was to share VSO Guyana’s Program Area Plans. VSO Guyana focuses on the area of education and disability. It was interesting to see how each placement relates to the wider goals and long term planning of the organization as whole.

Since my work is relatively slow at this moment, I volunteered to give a presentation in the afternoon session. This was to occupy myself and for the experience (it’s been a while since I made a presentation on an academic subject.) Although this part aimed at sharing skills and knowledge of volunteers who have expertise in different fields, it was just me and other person who offered to do it…

My topic was “Gender and Development”. In my workshop, I started with a question of “What is Gender?” I also explained briefly how the approach has shifted from “Women in Development” as well as some other useful concepts, such as practical gender needs vs. strategic interest etc. Actually, it was my first time to use a flipchart (I usually use PowerPoint), and I felt a bit nervous. To be honest, I have avoided doing this sort of brainstorming exercise by writing what participants say on the chart, because of my stupid fear of misspelling words in front of a large group (this is where my ESL side comes in…) This time, I didn’t allow myself to get away with not doing it.

I was a little nervous and hardly looked at my notes. I kept talking and apparently it was too fast for the sign language interpretation. The second segment was a group discussion utilizing case studies. I had to cut down some parts because we were behind in the schedule (the bus!), and it was unfortunate that we didn’t have enough time to discuss. Nevertheless, it was a good experience for me, and hopefully more people give considerations to their work from the gender perspective. I was happy that some people gave me some feedback saying my workshop was very good and interesting.

We stayed over one night in the hotel. We swam in a tiny pool, played ping-pong and saw beautiful stars from the rooftop (I even saw a shooting star★.) It was indeed a very fun weekend.