With these Rocher you're really spoiling us!

Gordon pipped me to the post a bit with his earlier blog about his job here - I'd been planning one about what I've been up to work wise for the past few weeks. Great minds think alike (and before you ask, no, we don't discuss what goes up on the blog. And, yes, it would make sense if we did.) However mine is still not going to tell you a lot about what I do - mine's more post-work socialising with my colleagues.

Here's a picture of my desk (the messy one on the left) - these are the only pictures I've taken of the VSO office as I've been more likely to take pictures of one of the many fun things we've done as a team.

and the view further into the office upstairs

And this is the upstairs bit outside at the office.
The white marks you can see against the green roof are giant raindrops

I'm really lucky to work with such a great bunch of people. I really feel at home in the team and every week that goes past I feel like I get a bit closer to another team member.

Karaoke
A few months ago Sokchea was leaving the VSO finance team. For her leaving party she decided we should go and do karaoke. Karaoke here normally involves men singing, young girls in short skirts serving beer and then possibly some paid-for sex afterwards. There are quite a few karaoke bars near the VSO office - small shack style affairs where the singing ranges from painful to downright appalling (partly to do with the Cambodian fondness for having everything amped to the max). However, for this night out we were off to the Rock! A giant, fancy and more expensive KTV (karaoke bar).

Now, let me confess. I wasn't really looking forward to this. I love karaoke in the UK but I can't read Khmer and, at that time, I couldn't recognise any Khmer songs. Also, I wasn't sure how sleazy it was going to be. Gordon was just recovering from his bout of dengue fever so I invited him along, secretly planning that he was our ticket out of there should we need to scarper early.

Our own private room, complete with scarily empty dance floor 

the singing begins! That's Sokchea in the blue. And looking at the camera is Sochea. Yup, their names are that similar - and they both work in the finance office! Confused me for a while...

Needless to say, we shouldn't have worried. While there were beer girls in our private room it didn't feel sleazy. And it was one of the best nights out we'd had in a long time. The choice of songs was impressive, both in Khmer and English. After the first few songs Vantha, the Country Director, got up on the dance floor and that was everyone on it for the rest of the night.

a picture of the dancing - even better is the video of it below!

Olympics
Another fun work outing was for our Olympic PDD (personal development day, that's actually only ever half a day).

Gordon and I had been following the Olympics as best we could. Sadly, our local  Chinese TV station had a penchant for ladies football, ping pong and basketball with the occasional glimpse of synchronised swimming. We did have luck the night that good old Andy hammered Federer - the TV was showing the match and, with that on mute and the commentary on the BBC through the internet, we had our own little Olympic atmosphere in the flat. To feel a little more involved I'd organised a sweepie in the office which basically gave me freedom to chat about the Olympics at every break, to anyone who would listen. Then Dawn, our programme support manager, had the bright idea to do a team building PDD in honour of the Olympics. And so we decided to take part in that famous Olympic sport - ten pin bowling.

the office gang (minus a few who had to leave early)

Hardly anyone in the office had been bowling before. Therefore I was quietly confident that I at least wouldn't humiliate myself. How wrong could I be...

Nearly everyone picked it up within the first few throws of the ball and were soon getting strikes galore. I hit NOTHING in my first few attempts. Ah well. There's nothing like a little humiliation to bond a team together.

l-r Chamroeun, Kamonn, Reth and me.
Reth won silver in the individual competition while our team also came in second

Ambassadors, royalty and a Scottish MC
I do actually do some work in the office. I recently took a break from my day job, writing up the research looking at the motivation of health workers in Cambodia, when I was asked to organise the launch of our new country strategy.

It's amazing how late everything is organised here. The first I heard about the launch event was two weeks before - when I was asked to organise it. That was everything: deciding who to invite, finding all their contact details, designing and printing the invitation, finding a venue, planning training on networking etc. We were holding this event jointly with the British Embassy so we also had to coordinate with them, checking wording of invitations, backdrops (see the blue thing in the pic below).

My partner in crime for all this was Pisit, our office manager, who's an absolute star. The only slightly scary thing was that his wife was pregnant and due to pop any day. The day of the event was actually her due date. I was only partly joking when I repeatedly told him that he had to tell her to cross her legs.

Me and Pisit

Somehow, with only ten days notice, we managed to get 40+ guests to come along including ambassadors, government ministers, country representatives from some of the big development agencies, a guy from Coca Cola, and a Princess!

the uber glam and super friendly Princess Soma Norodom

I was asked the day before if I would MC the event - here's me in action. And before anyone asks yes, I did speak slowly. Yes, really slowly. And I had lots of compliments on my MC skills (it still makes me think that I should have been rapping whenever I hear or write MC)

The only disappointment of the evening was that, with more Ambassadors there than you could shake a stick at, there wasn't a Ferrero Rocher in sight. Ah the hardships of life in the Penh.

Take a step into my office

So, six months in and there's not really been much said about what we do. There's been a few pics of some nice places in Cambodia, the odd commentary on some issues facing the people here and a brief discourse on beer. But since so many people raised funds and donated money for us to come to Cambodia, I feel that I should at least give you a hint as to what I'm doing.

Come on in to my office. That's a mango tree you can see the trunk of by the way. 

NGO Education Partnership (NEP) is the association body for educational NGOs working in Cambodia. Their two primary goals are to represent the sector in policy discussions with government and to support NGOs by providing training, supporting cooperation and sharing information and best practice.

My role is to build the capacity of NEP to be successful in these goals, and specifically in terms of advocacy and fundraising ability. The key bit in that sentence is "build capacity". To help NEP achieve success, I'm not meant to lead people, direct work, or even do anything by myself in isolation. I'm meant to use my skills to make the people of NEP create that success themselves.

Me and Rithy, CEO of NEP. Constantly amazes me about how much he knows about things like Thatcher, Princess Diana, Falklands War, and English comics of course (see previous blog).

Mostly, I do this by sitting down with staff and working with them on their tasks and how to plan, implement and evaluate their work on these tasks. And because I am not meant to simply tell them what to do but actually to help them work out what to do for themselves, I basically ask a lot of questions. You know how 8 years olds go through phases of replying to every answer with "why?", well I'm kind of employing the same tactic.

I ask question after question to push them to think about what they are doing, why they are doing it and whether it will help them achieve what they want to. The one thing I try not to do is offer my opinion, which must be infuriating. It's also pretty hard for me!

Imagine having every question answered by a question, and then a guy who is meant to be there because is he knowledgeable about a subject refusing to give his opinion. I think it may be because they cannot reach up to my face that has saved me from a punch in the face. Even I want to punch me sometimes.

The room where it all happens - my desk in the far right corner, and Rithy's desk on the left. I broke one of the blue plastic chairs in my first month. Never learnt not to swing on chairs. 

However, the staff at NEP show a real willingness to work with me and in doing things this way, which I hope will mean that after 2 years they will not need another me, nor think that they do.

At our fundraising quiz/goodbye party, one of Claire's friends (mine too but you know what I mean) called Alasdair (not you Kipper) and I were chatting about the low enrolment rate in secondary school (35%) and that it would be a great achievement if after 2 years I had helped push that up a bit. But now, I'm realising that the real measure of success will be if it's the Cambodian staff of NEP who are pushing that up for years to come after I've gone home.

Every Friday at 4:30pm - party time! All the staff eat together with two different people each week responsible for choosing and buying the food. I'm going to hunt a haggis for them soon. 

I will leave Claire to explain how she's getting on as a newly found health expert who moonlights as a MC for Embassy receptions.
Take care
Gordon