No new volunteer

So after yesterday’s rather slow day, I’ve come in to the office determined to have a productive day. The first thing I did was respond to Charlotte’s (VSO programme manager) email informing me that my district have officially rejected Leonie (vol who was coming here in September) because they want a statistician. This is so annoying for a few reasons. First of all it would have be nice to have an ally working in the office. Most primary methodologists work in a team and though Amy is not far away, we are still based in different locations. Secondly, though I absolutely love living in the house and luckily really enjoy my own company, it would have been something different to have someone else there-and it really is so big personal space would not have been a problem. The other reason is that the district really don’t know what they need. Instead of seeing how they can solve the issues with the team they have, they think VSO will just provide a someone to sort everything out. I happen to show them (with my limited knowledge of excel) how they could manage the stats and instead of training someone here, they think they need a statistician grrrr. All they really need is someone who can input data. This attitude makes me so mad. I wish they’d have more confidence in themselves to solve problems because like all of us, they just need a bit of experience. Afterall, that’s the only reason I can do it, very simply, I’ve done it before. As it is, I have offered to train Chantal. This of course is a small issue but unfortunately larger ones are often treated in this way too…I suppose it’s fine if problems continue to be solved by outsiders but what happens when no-one comes?

So anyway, I put all this into an email and it made me feel better. Charlotte in her reply agrees, VSO will not be providing anyone else and just keeps saying hang on in there. And so I am.

What is good though is the response to the project. Have most of the applications in now and it’s been good chatting to the heads about them. At the moment, I’ve a few observations lined up but as some schools are revising for the exams I’m not sure how representative these will be. Still, it’s always just good to be out of the office.