Tuesday, November 8, 2011

First Session, Street Children, 50 Years, and The How

First Session
I finally held my first leadership trying here at site Saturday October 29th. My supervisor’s wife is a Professor at a nearby university, and asked if I would participate in a leadership/teamwork building camp that was being run on two levels, with adults training the college students, and the college students helping out younger children. I was asked to give a two hour lecture on leadership. By “lecture” I naturally interpreted as two hours worth of activities that involved making sure the students were as active as possible.

Not really having enough time to develop something in depth,, and chose four general categories that I thought might be useful, that being Teamwork, Self Reflection, Appreciation of Others, and Self Confidence/Expression. Overall it was a pretty successful (though I need to revise my Appreciation of Others part) and it appears that I will be involved more with the college in the future. I’ll share two of the highlights.

The first activity I ran I dubbed “Breaking Boundaries: Building a Tower”. I split the 20 students into two teams of ten and asked them to build me the highest tower they could. I had two separate piles of paper, glue, and scissors, and gave them ten minutes. Afterwards, I asked questions such as “who made the decisions” and “who had the scissors” and “how did you strategize?” Once the group was getting confident in responding to my question I asked them why they built me two towers. After all, I wanted the highest tower they could make, so why waste time making two of them. The catch was that just because I split them into two teams didn’t mean they had to only work with their team. Just like in real life we are told we belong to certain teams from our school to our city to our political party, doesn’t mean we can’t work with people on the “other team”, that there can be one team. After we discussed it I gave them the opportunity to try again. This second time I only gave them five minutes, heh.

The other highlight was after my session was over. The youth were in turn running teambuilding exercises with the younger kids. They asked me to try out one of their activities which involved crawling through the dirt under some ropes tied to chair legs. I’ve done it before in the Boy Scouts, I was wearing a nice (and light colored) shirt, and I frankly didn’t feel like getting dirty. However, I went ahead and did it. Got a mild rash on my arms which last a few hours, scraped my elbow, and got my shirt very dirty (though luckily it came off when washed). So why did I do it? It’s about respect and setting an example. I could have easily flaunted my age/nationality/and position as their instructor to say no. However, part o being a leader is doing what is asked of you in turn by the people around you, and I really wanted to have a good standing with the youth, and did it. Crawling through the ground was in no way crossing any professional boundary between them and me and it wasn’t that bad.

50 Years
I went to Manila between the 2nd and 5th of November to celebrate the Peace Corps/USAID’s 50th anniversary at the Mall of Asia. I introduced myself along with twenty or so others to the World Director (big honcho) of the Peace Corps Aaron Williams. Also went to a cocktail party and briefly met the US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas. He was chatting to five of us for about a minute of the normal “thanks for your work” when two ladies dropped by to say “goodbye”. Naturally that goodbye dragged on for fifteen minutes or so.

One thing I’m going to need to get over is my disdain for networking. Frankly, I don’t like it. I feel cheap when doing it. As much as I like to flaunt my great features to those around me (and to the ladies *wink*) when it actually comes time to be serious and to try to make an impression on the movers and pushers out there, I take a half step back. I feel it comes across as fake to introduce yourself to try to get ahead. Still, networking is an important part of most fields of industry, and as long as I’m aware of myself it might not be so bad. I’ll talk to a few of the staff to get some pointers on it.

The celebration itself took place on that Friday. Once again I danced in the traditional G String. Just can’t seem to keep out of it. I picked up a bunch of information from USAID for some inspiration and possible collaboration in the future. Saw a lot of the friends I had made during pre-service training. I talked to some of our staff at length. Ate a lot of American food using the money I haven’t been needing to spend at sight. Then there was the street children…

Street Children
First off my stance is not to give anything to any beggars while I am here. It’s my job to help development, not encourage handoffs. My job is to teach people to fish more than give people fish (take it as a metaphor given my province is landlocked). This is also a stance shared by my Sector Manager through the Peace Corps, Ambet, who is such a BA that he’s just getting back from a month in Washington DC training other staff and such.

So when I was in a taxi leaving the Mall of Asia, I did not pay the two street children that did a dance routine when we had to stop at the intersection. I also did not pay the street child that approached me when I was walking back to the hotel after running an errand.

In the latter case, I had to stick my hands in my pockets because after I declined, his friends came up on both sides of me. I doubt any of them were older than eleven, and I just kept walking as they tugged at my arms, trying to dislodge them from my pockets so they could grab at my phone and wallet. Suffice to say I was stronger than the street children ages from about six to eleven, and after less than a minute (I’m guessing about 40 or so seconds) they gave up, and I proceeded. Afterwards, I need to clean my arms which had streaks of dirt on them.

At this point I’m not sure what the point of this story was other than it happened, and that it happens in the world. It’s not easy to swallow callously ignoring the little girl pressing her face against the window of the taxi, or just walking and ignoring half a dozen kids trying to steal from you, but part of the job (and just general living) requires the ability to be professional about the issues in the Philippines and not let my emotions (whether pity, anger, sorrow, etc) get the better of me.

Manila is a city I’d recommend to anyone who wants their eyes opened. It’s what happens when city planners don’t separate the rich from the poor, and almost everywhere you go you are faced with both. It makes for a stunning visual for a Westerner like me.

The How
This may end up being the best thing I do for my site during my stay. After talking to other volunteers and the staff, it seems a pandemic of not being able to ask “how are we going to do this” or “how can we get what we need” when developing projects. The people know what they want, they know why they want it, but figuring out how seems to be an afterthought, if a thought at all. Please do not mistake me to say nothing is being done. During the first week here in Dupax I sat in on a project that will move around 50 families into more Typhoon-proofed housing away from the river that floods every year. It’s just one example of things being carried out.

However, I also have some examples of great ideas that have hit a brick wall here. Therefore over the next couple weeks I’ll be talking to a few of the local leaders and trying to address that issue of The How, and see what comes of it.

What’s to Come?
Hopefully more pictures. I’ll admit it already that I’m bad at taking them. It’ll be a process but I swear I’ll get better. More projects. More thoughts about development and things in general.

As a parting note, I’ll address a question that I heard in Manila of “Why hasn’t the Peace Corps been able to help the Philippines solve its problems in 50 years?” To me, that is a poor question. First of all, it puts all the pressure on the Peace Corps to solve all of a country’s problems which isn’t exactly our role. We’re to help, not carry the entire burden. Secondly, it is too busy pointing the finger at the problems, and not the accomplishments. I can point my finger to anyone trying to do anything and ask “why aren’t things fixed yet?” True merit lies in what has been done and to what extent. It’s like trying to rate a wine with the space between the cork and where the wine starts.