Change

Before I first met with my Executive Director Dr. Chantha, I had many goals written down to work towards throughout the duration of my placement. After meeting with him, we narrowed it just to a few, although deep down I still wanted to work on more. After about 2 months, I've realized why these goals were narrowed.

Building capacity in a small non profit organization with limited resources is much harder than I expected. I came out of training from VSO knowing that the pace of production is slower than at home, but didn't realize the feelings that I would get when asking myself "why can't we just start doing this? What about changing this? Or implementing this? Etc..." Reality is that change is good, but slow. As we work together to fulfill our mission effectively, I've had to change my thought process drastically.

At home, my work environment is very fast paced. I don't think I ever left the office at the end of each day without at least a few more things I could do. Here, I create a lot of my own work and do a lot of observation to assist with training and development. One of Dr. Chantha's biggest requests was a manageable database. I went through their enormous shared folder to find many databases scattered, some with similar information but different formats, some not updated since 2006, etc. I've never seen a system so scattered in my life. Since we don't have the funds to purchase a database program, I took it upon myself to create a template on Excel to hold all customer information and activities. I've compiled all the databases into one file, different tabs of course to make all information more organized and accessible. I've trained Boran, our marketing/sales/advertising colleague (yes, it is such a small organization he does all of it) to use this database, filter through categories, update information and keep track of activity to increase production. I still run through it step-by-step with him every once in a while to ensure he understands all the benefits of the database and he seems to be very receptive.

Many of my colleagues also wanted assistance with improving their written and verbal English skills. With our Admin Narom, I assist her with creating agenda’s for meetings and also writing the minutes following those meetings for colleagues to see. Verbally, she really enjoys learning everyday communication which usually ends up being a very comical couple of minutes. With Boran, I assist him with writing emails to clients, sales communication and creating business proposals. He also really likes hearing about the differences of sales in Cambodia and the states, which is an incredibly different type of sale! Everyone has all the time in the world to meet with you, literally an 80% scheduled meeting/call ratio, but very hard to close the deal since this country is so poor. We are pushing through though!

I’ve joined Boran to attend meetings and seminars to network and increase exposure for the magazine, which we gained a new sponsor for our next issue! After this, Dr. Chantha asked me to give a short speech to the entire team about the importance of networking and building not only a business relationship but also a friendship with current and potential customers. In addition, for the first time since this organization has been in business, we’ve successfully secured funding to print the next 4 issues! We all jumped with joy when the email came through from WHO with the request for the 3rd and 4th issues of the year to be topics of ‘Pneumonia and Diarrhea in Children’. Dr. Chantha couldn’t get the smile off his face, especially when thinking back to only 5 months ago when they were scraping to get funding to print just 1 issue, which resulted in issue 37 being delayed 2 months. So, I guess as I write it all out, although slow and still much to do, change is happening, and I’m proud to say that I’ve been a part of it!