---WARNING: this post is a bit dry and a little less personal than usual because I wrote it as an observation report for FED. More peppy postings to come soon!---
Sandra asked me to go on all of the Community Visits so that I can take notes on what is happening and come back with a report about what goes on during the various community visits. She said she’d never been on one and it would be helpful for her to know what’s going on in that (very large) part of FED when she is writing grant applications. I agree, knowing what goes on in the communities is instrumental to running this organization well and hugely important when considering what to tell donors. They want to hear real stories about what goes on and no one can share that more than someone who has experienced these situations firsthand. So first I will say that Sandra should definitely find a way to explore these communities herself, because as vivid and accurate as my story-telling is (har har), nothing beats immersion. Second, I will say that as unbelievable as last night was… the biggest message I came away with was that no matter how much “observing” I do, what I’m hearing is for the most part… useless. I cannot speak Burmese, so the issues these people discuss and the conversations I overhear the children having are all things I can only guess at based on body language and eye movements.
Yesterday Milena and I joined the health team on a trip to a Burmese village (it felt like what I would imagine a refugee camp to be like) near Takua Pa, about 40 km north of here. We arrived and the health care workers lugged big crates from the truck into one of the shacks. It is a long stretch to call the buildings here actual buildings when what they actually are is pieces of corrugated metal hammered onto a wood frame structure. Picture a leanto-like structure, although there are walls (and occasionally windows) in the front of the structures. Some have wood siding, and you can see light filtering in through the slats of wood onto sparsely covered concrete floors. The health team set up in shack number 16, the home of the community health worker (each community has one individual who was educated by FED and this woman brought out her first aid kit to give us a glimpse of what her duties entailed). Milena and I followed the two healthcare workers into the room where some mats had been rolled out on the concrete. Four women in varying stages of pregnancy sat crossed legged on the floor. One worker soon began drawing diagrams of who knows what and pointed to different points on the diagram and then to different points on one woman’s belly. It was dark and cramped in the room and, unable to follow the conversation, Milena and I soon escaped to the bench just outside the door.
Once outside I began taking notes of what I was seeing, and what I could report back to Sandra. Of course, I was writing more questions than answers. Trying to gather an overview of the situation I began asking myself questions about the sustainability of FED’s work. First, they provide work to the healthcare workers and driver we arrived at the village with. Before being hired and trained by FED their work hours were undoubtedly more rigorous, more dangerous, and underpaid. Secondly, FED provides healthcare to a community of individuals who would not be able to receive it otherwise. But immediately I am asking—how sustainable is this model? From what I understand, FED is just providing healthcare and education for these people “in the meantime”, while other branches of FED are working to change the political scene so that Burmese workers will eventually gain equal rights in Thailand so that they can have a self-sustaining life here in the future. This all makes sense. But how much improvement has FED seen in the political environment? How much has changed in the eleven years they have been operating? This is a complicated issue, involving both the Burmese and Thai governments, although for the meantime focusing on gaining rights for Burmese people living in Thailand (and thus under Thai law) is the focus. Thailand’s government is miles more progressive than Myanmar’s; these people didn’t leave their home country for a life of minimal rights in Thailand because things are worse here-- things were even worse before. However, returning to the point—donors want to see what improvements FED is making with regards to the quality of these peoples’ lives over time, and we all want to see the gains increase as time goes on.
There is absolutely no doubt FED is helping these individuals. They are providing them with all sorts of healthcare, a substantial piece of which is family “panning” as our driver explained to us; though when Milena and I commented on the disproportionate number of children we saw, he laughed and held up a box of condoms, saying “they don’t listen, or use these”. Bingo. Judging by the number of kids around, they don’t seem to be listening, but maybe more are listening now than were at the beginning of this program. And if FED hadn’t brought family planning education to this village maybe it would have 150 rather than 100 people living there.
I don’t know the answer to these questions, although I’m sure someone at FED does. These facts are so important, because to write a convincing statement that will gain you a wide breadth of donors you must paint a convincing story of current change and enduring hope.
Donors don’t only want to hear about the little girl that brought me a flower when she saw me pull out my paper and start taking notes. Or about how all the children stood around Milena and I, giggling, and staring when I started writing. Of course they were adorable, all these dirty little children handing us flowers and candy, prompting us to practice “thank you” in the most incomprehensible language that has ever traipsed across this earth (“chay-soose-tim-ba-day”, now say it three times fast and imagine learning it without having it spelled out phonetically for you). Sure, they pull tenderly at your heartstrings, but they are not any indication of FED’s accomplishments. So—where are those indicators of accomplishments? How do we measure success in this small not-for-profit that, by an eyewitness’s account definitely seems to be improving the lives of Burmese immigrants. For a convincing argument we need a way of measuring those things, one that is a more empirical and less emotional measure than the kind I’ve been using.
This is something that I will certainly learn with time here and that Sandra certainly already has a strong grasp of after working with the numbers and the people from the office. But for now I will rely primarily on my abilities of interpretation—reading body language between individuals and asking questions to the health team, which due to thick accents and broken english invariably leaves me with more questions than I began, but it is definitely a start.
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