General Administration:
During a staff meeting early in the month, I presented on the progress of the patient registration process for Grace Family Health Centre. At this meeting I took minutes which I forwarded to Sunrise’s Supervisor, who then forwarded them to the Director. During the month (as has been the case every month of my Co-Op), I kept up to date on daily communication between and among the Community Programs Coordinator, Supervisor and Director. This communication included emails containing feedback from the Director about existing projects, and information about upcoming and potential projects including budgets and site plans. At the end of the month, I completed and sent my final comments in the baseline for improvement the director established after her visit in April.
Filling in where needed:
Sunrise strives to provide the best services possible to its beneficiaries, with a special focus on empowering low income earners. In pursuit of these goals Sunrise encourages the feedback of its beneficiaries. Accordingly, this month I worked in consultation with the Community Programs Coordinator and Director to create a set of surveys for collecting the perspectives of community members on Sunrise’s services. Once the surveys are completed, the information gathered will be aggregated to provide Sunrise with a picture of anything that might be perceived as lacking in its programs.
As well, in the coming months, Grace Family Health Centre’s head nurse plans to start researching health issues facing the community. He hopes to display his results in pie charts and bar graphs, but until this past month he had no experience presenting data in these formats. I actually didn’t have experience with pie charts or bar graphs either, but he asked if I could provide him some instruction nonetheless. Thus, I found an online tutorial to help me learn. After figuring out the basics, I passed the information I had gathered along to the head nurse. I also emailed him a copy of the tutorial I had found online for his future reference.
This month I continued spending time researching grants that Sunrise could potentially receive in the future. Also, I spent time downloading videos from Youtube for teachers to reference when planning activities for Circle Time in the future. Finally, the Director requested that I record some video footage to bring back home for her. So, I spent time recording Sunrise students engaged in various classroom activities, as well as an interview with a mother who had recently given birth at Grace Family Health Centre.
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| Head nurse Moses Oloput interviewing new mother. |
Supervising Projects:
This month, my participation in the patient registration project for Buiga Sunrise’s Grace Family Health Centre wrapped up. Using the card templates I designed the previous month in Microsoft Word, I proceeded to transfer patients’ personal information and matching identification pictures into the card templates. Along the way I updated the spreadsheet I have been using to keep track of all the information we have gathered during the patient registration process. Once I had finished preparing all the cards on computer, I printed and cut each one out, then laminated them by hand with the help of other Sunrise staff.
Once all the cards had been made, I was able to show the Community Programs Coordinator the multi-step process I used to produce them. This was so that Sunrise will be able to update and/or produce more patient registration cards as necessary in the future.
Reflections:
Completing a Co-Op for Buiga Sunrise has been challenging and enlightening. In terms of work experience, volunteering for Sunrise has allowed me to explore and develop my administrative and management skills. For example, management is often thought of as the process of achieving results through other people. I gained experience doing just that when implementing the Circle Time/Choice Time project in the classrooms, and supervising the patient registration project for Grace Family Health Centre.
In the case of Circle Time/Choice Time, my first priority was to provide an example of how the Director eventually wanted the project run by the teachers. Then it was my job to transfer the responsibility of running the project to the teachers, with guidance to ensure that the intended results were achieved. In the case of the patient registration project, it was my job to develop process for completing the necessary tasks. Then it was my job to administer Sunrise staff and/or volunteers as they completed these tasks. In both cases I was responsible for the results my teammates were achieving, and I did my best to have the results meet the expectations of the Director.
During my involvement with these and other projects at Sunrise, I have also encountered workplace challenges I would not generally encounter in Canada. For example, in the Sunrise School administration office where I have done most of my work, electricity has not always been consistent and internet service has typically been slow and often interrupted. On days when my main priority was responding to emails, these challenges were sources of frustration. However, I usually had secondary work priorities to keep myself occupied.
Far more interesting than challenges of this sort, however, has been the challenge provided by the significant and pervasive cultural divide I’ve experienced in volunteering for Buiga Sunrise. This divide has manifested itself in different ways, one of which being language. During my time in Uganda I have learned a few helpful words and phrases in the local language (Luganda) to use around the villages, but in the workplace I relied on English. Although each Sunrise staff member speaks English, the use of English in Uganda only overlaps the use of English in Canada – it does not mirror it. Additionally, the difference in accents between my co-workers and me has made it difficult for us to make out certain words when spoken by the other party. Thus, at times it has often taken several attempts for either me or any of my co-workers to successfully communicate an intended meaning or idea to the other person.
Another example of the cultural divide I’ve experienced is a variance in the emphasis on time and punctuality in Uganda. While it is my preference to start and finish work projects as quickly as good quality allows, at Sunrise projects are sometimes slow to start and slower to finish. During my time with Sunrise, this was especially the case for projects that involved multiple parties like surveyors or contractors. I found it challenging to adjust to this type of schedule at first, but as time passed it became routine. Also, as was the case when electricity or the internet failed us, when projects took longer than expected I would focus my efforts on secondary work priorities.
In addition to the challenges it has provided, the cultural divide has also given me occasion to witness great examples of effective organizational behaviour. Buiga Sunrise is a community-based organization in Uganda, founded through a non-profit organization called Sunrise Centre in California, funded predominantly by donors across North America and Europe, and managed by teams whose members live in Canada, the United States and Uganda. This means that the stakeholders of Buiga Sunrise come from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, and that defining and achieving the goals of the organization requires an acutely sensitive and inclusive approach to project design and implementation.
On the one hand, the donors and management team in the West all use their knowledge, life experiences and personal values to continually formulate exactly what they want Buiga Sunrise to achieve in Uganda. On the other hand, the beneficiaries of Buiga Sunrise’s programs in Uganda all have their own knowledge, life experiences and values that contribute to their expectations for the programs Buiga Sunrise offers. This means that for Buiga Sunrise to achieve the most effective results, the perspectives of all of the organization’s stakeholders need to be considered. Meeting the agenda of only one group would ultimately be detrimental for everyone concerned.
During my time with Buiga Sunrise, I have observed that this balancing act has the potential to cause a tug-of-war situation in which debates could arise over whose interests are more important. However, I have also witnessed a sincere concern from the management team in the West for the interests of Buiga Sunrise’s beneficiaries. This has been evidenced by the degree to which the Director seeks feedback from beneficiaries, and encourages staff on the ground in Uganda to share their own knowledge and experience when programs are being planned and implemented.
As my Co-Op with Buiga Sunrise draws to a close, I look back on my time in the organization with gratitude. At Sunrise, I have been able to gain experience managing information, resources, projects and people, all in a variety of circumstances. This experience will be beneficial to me as I continue my studies as a management student, and when I eventually enter the job market and begin applying all that I have learned to the professional world!
