Volunteering is tricky.
“I just want to help people.”
One of the most common phrases I hear in working with volunteers and other volunteer organizations. This simple idea, from my own perspective, turns out to be the most complex nature of volunteering.
Help looks different to each person. It is impossible to come into a situation and know what an entire community needs. More so, it is impossible to come into a foreign community and know anything about anything. If you don’t know how much a coconut costs, for example, you definitely don’t know the solution to hunger.
Solution. The next dilemma. My American brain seeks a clean formatted, mathematical equation. This many days and this many dollars and this many photooportunistic hugs equals a better future for a people and or place. But, I have found circumstances much more messy. Not only do we assume there is a solution and that we know it, but also that the people we are meeting are interested in being a part of our predetermined solution. A type of hierarchical thinking resulting from a habit of privilege.
My mantra while working with The Trade Foundation, or any of my other ‘volunteer’ projects has always remained, sustainability and partnerships. Knowing your skills and resources and letting the people with which you wish to ally tell you how they would like to partner and use those skills and resources, if at all. An ultimate goal of eventually having a program run itself. If the people, place, or program can not survive without you, that dependence can be as unhealthy as any pre existing problem.
Here in Cambodia, I am currently battling some growing pains towards sustainability. Initially, last August, myself, with The Trade Foundation, came into Siem Reap, Cambodia to teach a 3 month long course to a group of women on the art and science of hair. All the women being current or former sex workers (most trafficked into the business), and wanting to specifically learn hairstyling as a means of alternative income. Since, we graduated one group of students, helped them open two small salons, and the ladies have improved immensely in skill and organization.
February we are back in Cambodia to teach the same ladies advanced classes in hair and make up, refresh any skills needed, and generally spend time with the women and the community to see how the project is functioning.
As it turns out, the business itself is not brining in enough money. A few of our students are struggling to make ends meet, one of which is considering going back to work in the sex business to support her family. There are not enough hours to teach and simultaneously keep the women working their normal salon hours. There is sickness. Terribly tough stuff. And I do mean heart wrenching.
So. We must change our approach. Although difficult to admit to ourselves and our students, to continue would be to ignore the realities of our women, and to actually fail together, both ourselves and them.
Currently we are all putting our brains together to figure out who what when how to keep making more and more money. Or if this is even possible. We are being realistic, which is not fun and definitely not the fluffy stuff of Disney movies.
But we are listening. And we are so committed. To struggle with a group of people, remain by their sides, really hear them, and be completely honest, is to form an even tighter bond.
Sometimes the most important growth is not upward or outward, but a twisting, turning inwards together.
13.369587
103.843256
a broad abroad 