Engagement
AI Report brings thoughts and opinions from many different beneficiaries together to further and strengthen the programs and work that is in place to serve them. Working directly with beneficiaries and getting their insight is important because they are ultimately the ones getting the direct services. They could have cultural insights or opinions on what they need or how they need to receive services.
Refugee interviews were conducted at a the Dzaleka refugee camp with the purpose of publishing an article in an adventist magazine about Adventist refugees, their stories and experiences. Refugees have unique experiences and have quite the story to tell. Being able to spent time and care for refugees when they feel like no one has cared for them. They deal with trauma and a whole host of other things. Listeining to them is a big part of loving them or serving them.
Including locals into services projects and
various projects teaches them skills. This
helps make projects more sustainable
allowing them to be completed without you
or after you leave the site. Coming in and
just doing something for a community can be
harmful. But including members of the
community and mentoring them and involving
them in the process is much more beneficial.
It is important to teach than to serve.
It is important to involve children in children projects
this creates engagement and helps the kids be more
involved and improves learning and strengthen skills.
Children are the future. They look up to those around them
loving them and caring for them can change the future
or the outlook of a country. The children need to see
their is hope for their future and their country so they
see a purpose in getting involved and helping their
country grow and succeed.
Organizing
CBO Training takes a lot of pre planning and organizing to make sure you know what you are going to be teaching as well as making sure you have a time, place, and all the necessary supplies in order to conduct the training. Organizing events or trainings or anything really takes a lot of planning and preparing. It is a skill that takes a lot of practice and help. It is okay to ask for help when organizing things. It is important to be able to delegate duties.
Taking notes and being aware of what
needs to happen before you do something
is a great way to make sure you get
the most out of your project. Being organized is important
when you are organizing something. Taking notes and
keeping track of what you need to do is important.
I always try to keep detailed notes of things when I
am organizing an event or a training or something.
We had people sign up for a grant writing workshop,
this was a good way to advertise and make sure people
know about your training but it also gave us a good idea
of how many people to expect and how to plan ahead.
Part of organizing something is getting the word out
about the event.
When I was in Haiti we had planning
meetings after our vacation bible
school programs. This allowed us
to debrief what happened in the
previous meeting and what to
do differently and improve for the
next meeting. We organized the events
and talked about how to make things
go smoother. I think part of being a
good organizer of an event is being
able to change and improve things as
needed.
Civil Society Building
CBO Manual this is the guideline that we helped train student at Malawi Adventist University to create clubs and create groups with similar interests and skills. These clubs each had officers, were overseen by the school administration.
Training Powerpoint these were training points that we talked about during our training for the whole student body. These were things we thought would help prepare students to be in leadership roles and start school clubs.
Training Advocacy Notes were for a training we did the the student body leaders on how to effectively advocate for the rights and needs of students in a productive manner. Students sometimes have concerns that they are not able to present to administration. Being able to effectively advocate for yourself or someone is a big part of developing a civil society.
In Nepal, we interviewed and hired women to start
sewing a variety of products for our organization.
We started to create a civil society of women
entrepreneurs. We provided jobs and a community of
women who needed jobs and had the skills to make
textile products. We created a group of women who
could now provide for their families with the skills they
had learned.
Advocacy
Dzaleka Refugee Camp was a refugee advocacy event that I had the honor of participating in. This video gives a quick overview of my experience. This event was created with the hopes of drawing in people and bringing awareness of refugees and their experiences. I think this event did a really great job of that. There was music, and food, and things for sale and it connected us with real refugee families to connect with. This was a very rich experience.
I had the opportunity to interview adventist church members about their experiences and stories of being refugees at the refugee camp. This was in hopes of getting their stories published in an adventist magazine and bring awareness to the fact that there are refugees and people in our own church communities that are hurting and needing support and people to advocate for them.
The following are pictures and resources that were used during several advocacy training events for students at Malawi Adventist University. One of the biggest things that we did while we were at the school was a training with the leaders of the student body. We conducted trainings where I spoke on a variety of topics, . We also provided notes and powerpoint presentations for them to view after we left.
Advocacy class Debate is a video of me during our class debate. This was a practice of public speaking as well as the format of a debate. It is a good skill to be able to debate things you both agree with and don't agree with in order to be able to see a topic from all sides. We discussed the topics of child marriage and if it should be allowed or not.
Governance Building
Advocacy Manual is a tool that was created in order to help teach groups of students how to form organized groups on campus. We hoped to teach them how to take leadership positions and lead groups of students in fundraising and running a group of like minded individuals.
Employee Handbook is a form document that is being used at The Beehive International in Haiti in the hopes of having a standard guideline for all employees. Having a standard in which employees are to act and are held to is important. It is also important that everyone has access to it and is aware of what they are entitled to and what the company will not stand for.
Job Descriptions were created for each employee at The Beehive in hopes of creating job responsibilities that are clearly defined. They are looking to hire some more people to their team in the next year or two and they needed to have defined job descriptions for these positions as well as all their existing ones. This is creating a standard of which each employee knows what they are expected to do, as well as the company now knows what to look for in that position if they should need to hire someone in the future.
Advertisements for our student club training. We did a variety of trainings on this topic in order to teach students basic leadership skills and how to mobilize themselves in a constructive manner. This training was in hopes of empowering students to create groups of common interests and motivation, all in hopes of training students to create their own civil societies.
Policy Analysis
Policy Paper explores and analyzes policy, the benefits, disadvantages, and why it is important. Being able to look at policies and analyzing them is important. They all have advantages and disadvantages but being able to see what is being affected by a policy is important. It is important to not just take everything at face value but to question it and see what could be improved upon.
Girls Education Paper explores the issues of educating women and why that is important in different cultures. Not every culture encourages women to become educated. Some cultures put women in a box and create roles that each women is to meet. Other cultures encourage women to be as educated as possible and to aspire to be as much as they want to be.
Policy Review/Analysis is a paper that looks at United States based nonprofits and the laws that they are bound to when working overseas. They are established and registered in the U.S. but they work overseas. This can complicate things as there are still some local laws they are bound by. This is a list of laws that the organization needs to be aware of and abide by. It also analysis some of these laws as well.
Minimum Wage Analysis looks at U.S. based organizations that work overseas and how they are to deal with minimum wage in other countries. There are different minimum wages in other countries, however if the point of a nonprofit is to enhance the lives of others, do they need to pay minimum wage or should they pay more?
Social Marketing
Social media accounts are used to create awareness for issues being faced and addressed by two organizations that I worked for. It is a good way to let donors and supporters know how various projects are going. Using social media for business can be a different strategy than personal use. It is often more intentional than personal social media use. It needs to share things that will inform people of what is happening at your organization and draw them in to support you.
I completed a seminar on the best ways to use social media for the benefit of nonprofits and creating awareness for various causes. It gives the best ways to use different strategies to create support and engagement on your profiles. This training talked about company accounts the best ways to use them to enhance your organization.
I conducted a training with two supervisors at Dayako Ghar. We worked through a variety of issues and tools that would benefit the organization and their leadership. One of their main goals is to bring awareness to the issues in Nepal and create awareness for how people can help create jobs for Nepali women.
Training Planning &Implementation
CBO Manual is a large document created with the intent of training a group of people. A document this big and this thorough takes a lot of planning in order for it to be as effective as possible. This manual was also used for training which means that the content was implemented.
Training video this is a video of me during the manual training. We created a manual of how to start a school club, which is basically a mini organization and we taught them all the parts of an organization and what they need in order to succeed. This took a lot of planning and a lot of work to implement but I think the training and implementation of the training turned out really well and was pretty well accepted over all.
A lot of planning, setting up, and executing went into our Vacation Bible School in Haiti. We had to have meetings in order to plan what we wanted to do and then debrief meetings in order to discuss what went well and what could go better. We did planning and got a lot of materials together during the day in order to be prepared for the meetings at night. We had materials and stories that we used during the meetings at night.
Creating a promotional video takes a lot of planning in order to know what shots you want to capture and what story you want to tell. It is important to know this ahead of time, then you film your shots and then you edit it all together. This takes a lot of planning and implementation.
Activity Innovation, Design, Execution &Budgeting
Mumbai Project Proposal was a project that took a lot of design and innovation as it was a project that looked at a lot of different aspects of women trafficking in India. Human trafficking is a big issues and is very prominent in India. This project looked at saving women from these situations, teaching them a skill, and helping set them up with a better future. There was a lot of elements in this project and took a lot of different skills to be able to finish.
PNI Handicraft Proposal is a project that looked at a lot of different aspects of selling handicrafts in the Pacific Islands. This takes a lot of budgeting and design planning. This was a project that I did as a group project while in Kenya in intensive classes.
I have tried to be very proactive and plan things ahead of time. I have tried to keep detailed notes about things that I have to do in order to be efficient and get things accomplished. I am always looking ahead at what I need to be working on and how I can set myself up to be as efficient as possible. I think it is important when you have a lot of different things going on at once.
Sustainable Transition
We did a training in Nepal on the new sewing machines so the women know how to use them on their own and how to fix them if someone thing goes wrong. This is important for this organization especially because the leaders of the organization do not live in the country so they cannot come in a help fix things all the time so the women living there and working need to be able to trouble shoot small things. Obviously they can call if something really breaks but they should be able to know what is wrong with the machine on a daily basis.
We always involved the locals in everything we did while we were in Haiti in order for them to learn what we were doing so they could continue and finish projects when we were gone. We wanted them to be able to work on similar projects in the future and not have to have us come help them. It is also a good things to do to bond with the locals and help them feel empowered, rather than just helped. It should not just be free help but a learning experience as well.
NPR Article Response talks about what sustainable projects look like and if our current model of doing things is sustainable or not. It is often that groups go into a place and they offer support and resources for a few weeks but then once they leave, the community goes back to the way it was before. This is not a sustainable model and doesn't do much for the people of the community.
Sustainable Response is a response to an article on how to make sure projects and efforts are sustainable for locals and people are not just coming in and "saving" people and then leaving. It is important to go into a project with a plan on how it is going to be sustainable and how the locals and beneficiaries themselves are going to have "buy- in" to the project and be able to sustain after the help leaves.
