Namaste!

 It has been quite a while since I posted anything so I thought I would update on how my mandate is going with the Centre for Micro-Finance, here in Kathmandu Nepal.
People warned me of the fact that the Nepalese work a bit slower and are more social in the office compared to Western standards. This I have discovered is a myth. I actually find the speed of work the same compared to back home in Canada. The Nepalese people work hard here!  a friend here explained to me that Nepalese people think that time is circular, therefor whatever you do not get done today you can get done tommorow…but this does not mean they slack off at all. The Nepalese are very hard working! This does not mean they aren’t warm and welcoming in the office though. They just have a very good balance  in the office environment. Perhaps we can learn something from them and realise that perhaps having to schedule coffee breaks a week in advance at home is a bit too schedule driven. Although I have been warned not to compare Nepal to things back home, I thought comparing office environments was interesting because there is not much difference.

Now on to what I have been doing for my mandate. I have been tasked with documenting the experiences and lessons learned of the Centre for Micro-Finance from the years of 1998 (its establishment) to 2011. Wow this is a bigger task then I thought it would be! One lesson I personally learnt with this task is that not every organization has their resources organized, managed, readibly available and easy to find.  I know now that it was very naive of me to think that I would come and have a pile of hard copy reports to sort through, read, and write about. Nope! instead I have been on a treasure hunt to track down any copies of any project the Centre has. This includes sorting through shelves upon sheves of books and reports without a management information system in place. Kind of like if you were to go to the library and not have access to the catalogue system. It has been proven pretty difficult. Even asking staff has been difficult because a majority of the staff was not working at the Centre in the Centre’s early development and existence.

So far my experience with the centre has kind of made me think abotu what I want to do once I am done with my undergrad and Ottawa u. Dalhousie's School of Information Management has been calling my name and I might pursue a masters related to that and somehow try to apply it to my field of studies of Human Rights. Maybe I can take up a job as a librarian for my field and help the NGOs in developping countries manage their information. Networking and sharing of best practices becomes very limited when you can not find where you have kept your information...which is a big shame when the NGOs are trying to learn from each others experiences and avoid hte same mistakes twice. Ok ok I am officially done my rant :)
Needless to say, I have been working with my mandate for about 2 months now and I am way behind schedule due to my difficulties in finding information. I just really hope I can get caught up eventually and be able to succesfully complete my mandate. I know it is a common fear among other interns that we will not successfully complete our mandates. I wonder if any other interns have had  a similar experience. I am sure it is a common problem to arrive in a new country and have limited knowledge and power to attain the information but be expected to work through a mandate despite.

I have been fortunate enough though to be placed within a work environment that I can not complain about. The staff is very friendly and are eager to help me out anyway that they can. One worry that I know other interns I had spoken to back home prio to my departure did not actually follow me to Nepal.  Tehre were numerous discussions about worrying about whther or not our mandate would change upon our arrival in the country. We were provided limited knowledge about what our tasks would be at our respective organizations and warned that mandates usually change by the time of your arrival. So far my mandate has not changed. I was also warned prior to leaving Canada that our mandates would most likely change once we arrived in our country. I have been lucky that my mandate has not changed so what I am experiencing I somewhat expected.

I will continue to blog about my experiences here at the Centre for Micro-Finance.  I think the next blog will be about the role the Centre for Micro-Finance has played within the micro-finance sector in Nepal reaching out to the poor.

Adios for now!