The world of work

In response to my request for topics for the blog ‘anonymous’ asked how my work is going; witty and eloquently (or not) I've put some ideas together below - I think I may also cover one or two of Kerry's (many) suggestions, but please keep the ideas coming.

Although my job was facilitated by VSO, I actually work for a local NGO called Yayasan Ayo Indonesia (literal translation: Come On Indonesia). It’s quite a small organisation – about 30 staff, mostly working in the field, and headed up by a really dynamic and enthusiastic leader. Historically, Ayo worked primarily in road and water infrastructure, but now they also have programmes in sustainable livelihoods, marketing, institutional capacity building, and health.

There are five of us in the research team; we get on well and the work is interesting. We are at the analysis stage now and finding that although the physical infrastructure of the roads, transport systems and medical facilities is a barrier to women’s health, the biggest barrier is men. Culturally, women are not allowed to make decisions – including decisions about their own health care needs. So having to ask their husbands (or in the case of widows, their late husbands family) permission to seek treatment is a potentially fatal problem.

The next step is to write the report, and this is where my biggest problem lies. The report needs to be written in English – easy enough for me, I’ve written and published plenty of reports in English, but VSO is about “sharing skills”. How do I share the skill of writing a report in English with four Indonesians who despite speaking pretty good English will never be able to write an academic style paper in the language? If they do write sections I will just end up heavily editing them which would be disheartening for all involved. They could do the appendices – the graphs, tables and photos – but that still isn’t really sharing properly.

I think this is the reality of the theoretical problem I posed in an earlier post (just here to do a job)… I could just do the job (write the report myself), or I could work to the greater good (somehow facilitate my Indonesian colleagues in writing it). I still haven’t figured out what to do – answers on a postcard please!