Dear All,

The last two weeks has seen the whole team join the Darjeeling Project, and we have concentrated on building a foundation for the community-driven approach, as well as a clear understanding of the work ahead, and the expectations for each individual.

I will try to introduce the people in the team over the next few bi-weeklies, but this one I will keep quite short since so much of the last few days has been spent either pouring over documents - like the three central objectives, and the budget - or buying paperclips.

I will, however, mention a little bit about the approach to the team. I am emphasizing discussions and decision-making to attempt to bring the ethic of participation in from the very first step. I have also been forced to admit that the paperclips here are really pretty predictable objects, so I sadly cannot produce a readable bi-weekly focused on that alone. If you buy enough paperclips, an extremely small Sherpa carries them to the office on his head, (presumably unlike in Portland), but other than that there are few surprises in the wonderful world of Darjeeling office supplies. Sorry if that is disappointing.

We began the two weeks of 'startup' with an introduction to the organization using what literature we have here from Mercy Corps ... and Tazo too as a matter of fact. I was pleased to find a sample of Om tea tucked away in the Tazo folder, so proved that you do know how to make tea. Everybody here seemed suitably impressed by the single cup we made, for which Tazo should feel quite proud. They are a tough sell when it comes to teabags (accustomed as they are to brewing loose tea leaves).

We took a full day to focus on strategic planning. The strategic planning session revolves around two or three carefully worded focus questions that help the team to envision the realistic change they would like to make in the rural communities around Darjeeling, within the practical limits of the project. Just like the community meetings that we are shortly going to begin to facilitate, the workshop is fed only by ideas from the group, and the 'leader' merely supports the structure of the process as a whole. No idea from the group is rejected, instead the session aims to produce consensus from the ideas presented after a few minutes of quiet individual brainstorming.

Literacy, women’s empowerment, and microfinance were all elements that the team feel would benefit the villages particularly.

And it works fairly well. The session helped us to investigate the commitments we have already made, as well as giving voice to needs that the team values highly, but are not specifically part of our three written objectives. Literacy, women’s empowerment, and microfinance were all elements that the team feel would benefit the villages particularly. These could all easily be integrated into the aims and objectives that we have already, so the team was able to move on to making a simple three-year and one year plan, and a more detailed three-month plan. We will return to the process at least every three months to keep a shared vision of how things are progressing.

This discussion preceded analysis of the job descriptions that HQ had helped to put together over the last few weeks. Everybody seemed a lot more certain of their individual role after the strategic planning, and were ready for their fairly testing and extensive lists of responsibilities. We then used a staff handbook that was put together for Mercy Corps in Afghanistan, and went through it line by line changing it for Darjeeling, and in a remarkably short time had a comprehensive document covering everything from staff evaluation to the seatbelt policy, that everybody understood and felt comfortable with. We were all rather amused by how little we had to change, despite the rather noticeable difference in the environment between here and Kandahar!

Next stop, two days of training in the idea and practice of facilitation – the ethic that will govern all of our team and community work. People took to it fairly quickly, and we were able to practice by facilitating discussions that were worth having anyway, for example about what we do during the general strikes that close down West Bengal fairly regularly (four in the last six weeks), and what national holidays we choose to make formal office holidays.

This will be a matter of balancing need with a willingness to work through empowered community groups – something potentially perceived as threatening to local government, management, and even the communities themselves.

And then, the day you have been waiting for … paperclips, the details of which I will spare you, but suffice to say the office is basically functional. Two days spent researching local NGO and governmental resources in health, community work, and Engineering, and assessing bids for cars, computers, and copier and a fax machine, and today a fun day of training in the participatory techniques for assessing the needs of communities. “PRA” as it is known (Participatory Rural Appraisal) has many important similarities with facilitation techniques, in that the leader is there to help the discussion to progress and works very carefully to avoid his or her own preconceptions influencing the outcome. A difficult lesson, particularly for people hired for their experience and expertise, but one that everybody is so far genuinely interested in testing in the field.

Tomorrow and the next day are to be devoted to the gritty reality of nailing down the selection criteria for how we actually decide where to work, and for how to support the communities interested in working with us. This will be a matter of balancing need with a willingness to work through empowered community groups – something potentially perceived as threatening to local government, management, and even the communities themselves. And then balancing all of those things with the basic logistical limits of two cars, one monsoon, four field workers, and a ridiculously constricting 365 days a year.

I am of course working on extending 2003 by a couple of weeks, but my petition to the UN Security Council might just be put on the back burner for a while in favor of other more pressing concerns, like attempting to stop a third world war. So we continue to work on the conservative estimate of 52 weeks a year, and will do what we can within that constricting tradition.

Best wishes from the Himalayas. You'll be pleased to know that India is doing very well in the cricket. America isn't, and if there is any shred of justice left, it NEVER WILL! Hah!




Contributed by Colin Spurway, Mercy Corps' Darjeeling Project Director.

To read another Global Envision article about the Darjeeling Project, CHAI, see One Cup at a Time.