Hi Everybody!!
Sorry for the delay in posts but this week has been crazy. It was orientation week at work, and as most of you guys know, orientations sure are exhausting; especially if you are still jet lagged like I was. So I arrived at my first day of work overdressed and especially early, as all first time employees should. However, this meant that I had to sit in the waiting room for about an hour just cooling my jets. Fun? I definitely say not. Anyways, I'm going to break down my week for you in a hopefully organized pattern:
Sunday- We had multiple powerpoint lectures about security and the history of Bangladesh. The history lesson was fascinating and I learned a lot about the political structure of the country. The professor's English was okay but it definitely made it hard to understand exactly what she was saying. I was dying to have some good Claremont McKenna worthy discussions regarding politics and economic growth. But, I didn't have the knowledge necessary to carry a worthwhile conversation and most of the kids are from Bangladesh, so I might venture to say that I was one of twelve people that was actually interested in this lesson. I think I will get the professor's email and ask her to lunch because it is just fascinating that Bangladesh was able to continue a 5-7% economic growth per year with such an unstable illiberal democracy. (Fancy words, I know. See mom and dad? You're getting your money's worth from my education). Our supervisor gave an extremely general overview of BRAC and we had a security briefing. What was the head of securities advice you ask? This I quote: "If you are kidnapped....don't get kidnapped" Hahahah thank you Captain Obvious. He did have some good points like in the event of an earthquake you have to go to pillars on each floor rather than the duck and cover method taught in the US. The day continued on, lecture after lecture. I didn't realize how exhausting it is to just sit there and smile, acting super friendly with all these new people, until I came home and crashed in bed.
Monday- Lucky me had another full day of lecture. Unlike yesterday where I was actually learning new things, today I was transported back to third grade. Today we learned how to tell bottom-up stories. This means that you video a client talking about his/her experience. We had a lecture on creativity and another one on how to tell a story. I nearly died when the lady said that we should start our stories with "Once upon a time" or write a middle with "Because of that." Um no. A non-fiction tale does not start with once upon a time. It was a miserable and pointless experience. I realized that I was a native English speaker and therefore had an unfair advantage, but it didn't make sitting through that six hour day any easier. Also, the school system here encourages a right and wrong answer, something my liberal arts professors not be very accepting of. So when I brought to light the significance of keeping a statistic while telling a bottom-up story, the lady was not too pleased. She believed that our videos should only have the story rather than proven evidence. Needless to say I was fuming when she dismissed my perfectly valid point of view. Whatever.
Tuesday- Today I learned all about cameras. There's a power button and different lenses. No lie, that's what we were told. Sometimes I feel like BRAC is insulting my intern intelligence. I come from the technology generation, I'm sure I know more about cameras than the camera guy himself! The one useful thing that did come out of this work day was that we watched plenty examples of bottom-up stories already created. This one was my favorite: http://blog.brac.net/author/bottomupstories/ (honorable mention to them brining up the benefits of pre-K that I learned in my dev psych class). Unfortunately I had the audacity to ask why we were creating these videos. The lady answered that "not a lot of people know about BRAC, so they want to raise awareness." Of course this wasn't a good enough answer for the crazy American (aka me), so I asked her again what the purpose was, for fundraising, for volunteers, ect? She had to call in her superior and his answer was not much better than hers. It was, and I quote again, "to put on youtube for all of the reasons that you just stated." -.-
I'm quickly becoming very disillusioned with this work environment. The dress is super casual, the powerpoint backgrounds are bright yellow so no one can read anything, and things seem to consistently run a good half an hour late around here. Honestly, I don't know how anyone gets anything done! They are acting like this is the first time they are doing this program, when I know for a fact that it definitely isn't true. I have this terrible impulse to take the entire program over and get everyone into shape and on time. So far I have been able to curb such frivolous desires, but let me tell you, it is no easy feat. I wonder how much more effective BRAC would be if it were run as well as other companies I've worked for. (Mrs. Kurtz, thank you for being so efficient and organized. You are an amazing mentor, and I learned how an organization should be run.) I'll give it a couple more days before I being my takeover haha.
Wednesday- Field Trip!!! Yeah that's what I thought when I woke up early this morning. We were going to travel to Gazipore, one of the villages nearby, to see the BRAC groups in action. However, after an exhausting two hour ride, we could not actually enter the city because of a riot. A child was killed by a bus and the entire town was on strike, targeting all vans and buses (which we were traveling in of course). We then drove to another village on the opposite side of the city. Because we were so delayed we had to rush from one site to another. Tired, cranky, and starving, we half-heartedly listened to the villagers speak. The only good thing that came out of this trip was bonding with all of my coworkers. I found a couple of girls I really liked talking to and became closer to them. Nothing like misery to create an instant bond between the eight of us. Needless to say, I fell asleep as soon as I walked in the door after this twelve hour day.
Thursday- We successfully made it to Gazipore today. This had to be one of the best days of orientation. We visited the Health, Microfinance, and Legal programs BRAC has. These women were amazing. With a simple twenty dollar microfinance loan, one of the ladies was able to start her own rice plot and make enough profit to significantly increase her living standards despite her widowed status. She sends her daughter to school, a luxury few villagers can afford since it costs them a person's worth of wages on top of school fees. I really enjoyed learning about the health program as we ended up going to a community meeting training for health volunteers regarding the maternal program. They were teaching the volunteers about the five most common dangers of pregnancy and what to do should one of them occur in a very home-based remedy style. The legal program was equally empowering as we met the different barefoot lawyers BRAC was training. They were so passionate about teaching others the law and the difference they were making just by telling these rural women and children that they did have rights. The power in numbers should not be one that is underestimated, as it only takes seven or so of these women to storm a household and be intimidating enough to stop a child marriage or domestic violence. I am working with BRAC's Integrated Development Program, which is a mix of all of the programs I mentioned above. I am really excited as this means that I will get to experience multiple projects in a broad range of subjects, rather than a single focused one.
Anyways, that's about it for now. I promise I will try to be better about blogging daily :)
Love and miss you all,
Carolyn
Sorry for the delay in posts but this week has been crazy. It was orientation week at work, and as most of you guys know, orientations sure are exhausting; especially if you are still jet lagged like I was. So I arrived at my first day of work overdressed and especially early, as all first time employees should. However, this meant that I had to sit in the waiting room for about an hour just cooling my jets. Fun? I definitely say not. Anyways, I'm going to break down my week for you in a hopefully organized pattern:
Sunday- We had multiple powerpoint lectures about security and the history of Bangladesh. The history lesson was fascinating and I learned a lot about the political structure of the country. The professor's English was okay but it definitely made it hard to understand exactly what she was saying. I was dying to have some good Claremont McKenna worthy discussions regarding politics and economic growth. But, I didn't have the knowledge necessary to carry a worthwhile conversation and most of the kids are from Bangladesh, so I might venture to say that I was one of twelve people that was actually interested in this lesson. I think I will get the professor's email and ask her to lunch because it is just fascinating that Bangladesh was able to continue a 5-7% economic growth per year with such an unstable illiberal democracy. (Fancy words, I know. See mom and dad? You're getting your money's worth from my education). Our supervisor gave an extremely general overview of BRAC and we had a security briefing. What was the head of securities advice you ask? This I quote: "If you are kidnapped....don't get kidnapped" Hahahah thank you Captain Obvious. He did have some good points like in the event of an earthquake you have to go to pillars on each floor rather than the duck and cover method taught in the US. The day continued on, lecture after lecture. I didn't realize how exhausting it is to just sit there and smile, acting super friendly with all these new people, until I came home and crashed in bed.
Monday- Lucky me had another full day of lecture. Unlike yesterday where I was actually learning new things, today I was transported back to third grade. Today we learned how to tell bottom-up stories. This means that you video a client talking about his/her experience. We had a lecture on creativity and another one on how to tell a story. I nearly died when the lady said that we should start our stories with "Once upon a time" or write a middle with "Because of that." Um no. A non-fiction tale does not start with once upon a time. It was a miserable and pointless experience. I realized that I was a native English speaker and therefore had an unfair advantage, but it didn't make sitting through that six hour day any easier. Also, the school system here encourages a right and wrong answer, something my liberal arts professors not be very accepting of. So when I brought to light the significance of keeping a statistic while telling a bottom-up story, the lady was not too pleased. She believed that our videos should only have the story rather than proven evidence. Needless to say I was fuming when she dismissed my perfectly valid point of view. Whatever.
Tuesday- Today I learned all about cameras. There's a power button and different lenses. No lie, that's what we were told. Sometimes I feel like BRAC is insulting my intern intelligence. I come from the technology generation, I'm sure I know more about cameras than the camera guy himself! The one useful thing that did come out of this work day was that we watched plenty examples of bottom-up stories already created. This one was my favorite: http://blog.brac.net/author/bottomupstories/ (honorable mention to them brining up the benefits of pre-K that I learned in my dev psych class). Unfortunately I had the audacity to ask why we were creating these videos. The lady answered that "not a lot of people know about BRAC, so they want to raise awareness." Of course this wasn't a good enough answer for the crazy American (aka me), so I asked her again what the purpose was, for fundraising, for volunteers, ect? She had to call in her superior and his answer was not much better than hers. It was, and I quote again, "to put on youtube for all of the reasons that you just stated." -.-
I'm quickly becoming very disillusioned with this work environment. The dress is super casual, the powerpoint backgrounds are bright yellow so no one can read anything, and things seem to consistently run a good half an hour late around here. Honestly, I don't know how anyone gets anything done! They are acting like this is the first time they are doing this program, when I know for a fact that it definitely isn't true. I have this terrible impulse to take the entire program over and get everyone into shape and on time. So far I have been able to curb such frivolous desires, but let me tell you, it is no easy feat. I wonder how much more effective BRAC would be if it were run as well as other companies I've worked for. (Mrs. Kurtz, thank you for being so efficient and organized. You are an amazing mentor, and I learned how an organization should be run.) I'll give it a couple more days before I being my takeover haha.
Wednesday- Field Trip!!! Yeah that's what I thought when I woke up early this morning. We were going to travel to Gazipore, one of the villages nearby, to see the BRAC groups in action. However, after an exhausting two hour ride, we could not actually enter the city because of a riot. A child was killed by a bus and the entire town was on strike, targeting all vans and buses (which we were traveling in of course). We then drove to another village on the opposite side of the city. Because we were so delayed we had to rush from one site to another. Tired, cranky, and starving, we half-heartedly listened to the villagers speak. The only good thing that came out of this trip was bonding with all of my coworkers. I found a couple of girls I really liked talking to and became closer to them. Nothing like misery to create an instant bond between the eight of us. Needless to say, I fell asleep as soon as I walked in the door after this twelve hour day.
Thursday- We successfully made it to Gazipore today. This had to be one of the best days of orientation. We visited the Health, Microfinance, and Legal programs BRAC has. These women were amazing. With a simple twenty dollar microfinance loan, one of the ladies was able to start her own rice plot and make enough profit to significantly increase her living standards despite her widowed status. She sends her daughter to school, a luxury few villagers can afford since it costs them a person's worth of wages on top of school fees. I really enjoyed learning about the health program as we ended up going to a community meeting training for health volunteers regarding the maternal program. They were teaching the volunteers about the five most common dangers of pregnancy and what to do should one of them occur in a very home-based remedy style. The legal program was equally empowering as we met the different barefoot lawyers BRAC was training. They were so passionate about teaching others the law and the difference they were making just by telling these rural women and children that they did have rights. The power in numbers should not be one that is underestimated, as it only takes seven or so of these women to storm a household and be intimidating enough to stop a child marriage or domestic violence. I am working with BRAC's Integrated Development Program, which is a mix of all of the programs I mentioned above. I am really excited as this means that I will get to experience multiple projects in a broad range of subjects, rather than a single focused one.
Anyways, that's about it for now. I promise I will try to be better about blogging daily :)
Love and miss you all,
Carolyn
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