Greasing the Wheel

01/11/10

I just recently returned from the holiday break and currently entering the swing of things once again. Realizing I’ve been here for just under 5 months but I still have a ways to go for this Master’s degree. Even so, over the last 5 months I have been learning a lot and really excited about the accomplishments that have been made in this short time that have helped to “grease the wheel” here and keep things going smoothly. One major lesson I am learning while living in an atmosphere full of hardship, daily struggles and power abuses is that you really need to celebrate the little things that come into your life as they happen and just push forward for the next accomplishments; it’s the only way to keep your head above water. So here are the highlights up until this point to help remember what it's all about.

When I first arrived to KWO it was apparent my assistance was most needed in grant and report writing as well as with their daily communications with native English speakers through e-mails and visits to the office. The timing of my arrival hit the exact time many of the KWO Program Managers were hunting down funding for their programs for the 2010 calendar year, so my focus became mostly grant writing and donor relations. I’ve never helped to head grant writing before and it was something I was eager to do, yes for the experience, but also to have a deeper understanding of the process behind organizational fundraising initiatives, something that is a backbone to all service orgs. The first grant I worked on, for the Safe House program, was an arduous one. About 30 pages detailing all aspects of the program, 11 safe houses in 7 camps, and itemizing every element for budgeting purposes, took lots of patience and plenty of time. About one and a half months later, the grant and budget requesting around $79,000 was complete and not soon after a foundation that was aware of the program, and had offered emergency assistance in the past, took the whole program under its wings on a more permanent basis. I think I was more excited than most in the office when securing funding, which probably was due to the amount of personal time I put into the proposal combined with it being the first time I had helped on such a large scale. It just amazed me that we had managed to get funding for a year that now was going to cover 35 people’s stipends, reconstruction of 9 buildings, numerous trainings, food and everything else in-between. In this process I’ve also learned that in a location like Mae Sot, this is the exact way my assistance should be utilized, helping with international relations. As much as I love programming, the best people to take on those initiatives are the people who have “been there/done that”; the refugees themselves. Who better to run the safe houses on the ground level, speak up at community meetings and figure out the exact requirements of those in need than those who are part of the same system? My experience here has really opened my eyes to see, if I really want to help continue to make change in this world, the “ground level” isn’t the most effective place for me, at least internationally.

After this grant, we quickly moved on to work on the grant for the Dormitory program. This program, very similar to an orphanage program, was really struggling in one particular camp at one particular dorm. This proposal took a lot less time, since it was only aimed for one dormitory, and there was already a private donor interested in possibly funding the program once we had completed the proposal. A short time later the $18,000 proposal was completed and the donor secured. We are still working on partial funding for the other dorm in this particular camp, but the leads for donors this time are a bit shakier.

Besides the grant writing I have been holding (irregular) English classes for the staff and attending community staff meetings. A few days ago I attended my first UN community meeting, with the UNHCR, where the meeting was focused on how to give a 13 year old girl with Cerebral Palsy, that was abandoned by her family, proper care. It was an interesting meeting, if anything it showed how different organizations collaborate with each other and where some tensions may arise. In this case the girl has been in the camps for nearly 10 years but as time progressed, she seemed to have been “forgotten” in the larger system and her services began to lessen. This meeting was a reminder to everyone involved where exactly she still needed the most help. This meeting also showed how many organizations, and stakeholders, thrive in the Mae Sot area and therefore the importance of this organizations to work well together to keep things running smoothly. Lots of factors go into why organizations work well, or don’t work well together, and it can become even more difficult when there is a constant flux of new employees flowing in and out of these organizations combined with constant shift of the number and type of people who need assistance due to resettlement and migration.

Outside of this work, I have to remind myself I am also here to complete my Master’s degree. It’s tough to constantly try and pull myself back to the work, but my experiences here are too rich to allow them to pass by without using some of the content for the degree. To help with the degree, and also help build the capacity of the staff, I will be holding a training on January 25th for the staff that focuses on helping the staff increase their grant writing abilities as well as their own training skills, since a lot of the staff are trainers themselves. The first portion of the training will be on grant writing and the second portion will be dissecting the training techniques I used in the grant writing training they then could also use in their future trainings. Lots of planning still to do for this training, but I intend to use the training as the heart of my thesis, everything from what led me to decide to do this particular training, how the training went and the aftermath of whether or not the training was useful for the staff. I still have plenty of other work to do for school (such as these Thai language classes I have been, reluctantly and begrudgingly avoiding) so I will be doing everything to focus more and making this last 5-6 months here more academically useful, while still helping the programs at KWO to the best of my ability.