As surprising as some of you find it that I'm still out here, there are other officially sane people who also volunteer to come to Bangladesh. The reason I mention this, aside from the fact that my last entry caused some of you to comment that you didn't think I'd last this long, is that some new VSO volunteers turned up last week. There are even those that just come to BRIF to volunteer for a few weeks, and one of those was a girl called Jill who left this week.

The main reason why Habib has asked me to work on the web site, and why he also keeps going on about finishing it, is that it attracts young educated people looking to give some of their time to a worthy cause somewhere different in the world. Habib gets e-mails from all over the world from people offering to come and work for anything between a few weeks and several months. This year alone we've had an Australian (Peter), 4 Korean girls and Jill, and before the year is out we will apparently see another English girl, a Korean lad, an Italian and possibly a Hungarian or 2. If they overlap to any great degree we're going to have this bizarre little international community in the middle of what is basically nowhere.

So who was Jill then? Well, she's currently a university student (geography at Durham) and was already in Asia doing a year at Singapore University. Incidently, she had many a story to tell of the "paternalistic" nature of singaporian society, or to put it more accurately, a feeling that big brother was indeed watching you at all times. As I learnt during Jill's time here, geography these days is much like development studies, so it was almost matural for her to want to come to a country like Bangladesh and spend 2-3 weeks working for a NGO here. What turned out to be slightly more problematic though was actually getting into the country! Habib had sent her an invitation letter saying "to be used for visa" but Jill took that to mean "to be used as visa". This misunderstanding cost Jill an additional return ticket between Singapore and Dhaka as when she arrived at Zia International airport in Dhaka she was duly put on the next plane back for not having the appropriate paperwork! Bit of a nightmare for all concerned really, but not to be deterred our Jill sorted out the necessary details and 1 week later was sitting in Habib's office helping him with various letters and documents.

While she was only here for a short time we worked together on developing case studies as a means of monitoring and evaluating BRIF's projects. Basically, a case study is little more than a 1 page story about a person / family / community that has benefitted from a project etc. and has seen some aspect of their life improved (or not) as a result. Stories about real people's lives and how someone's work has helped them can be quite powerful communication aids, but above all they help the project team to understand if they are having the desired impact. The approach is quite simple: 1) Restate the initial problem we set out to solve (e.g. no school for local children, no access to medical treatment, poor sanitation, insufficient food outside main growing seasons etc.); 2) Explain the situation of 1 specific person / family / community in relation to the general problem; 3) Outline what was done to improve matters i.e. describe the project and its activities; 4) Describe what impact, positive or negative, the project has had on the person / family / community.

The key aspect of the process is getting the project team to think about what they set out to achieve in the first place and what has really changed in the lives of the project beneficiaries. All too often projects are monitored using quantitative indicators like school attendance rates or number of farmers attending training sessions, but in so doing it is quite easy to lose sight of why we were doing those activities in the first place. Also, I believe that getting project staff to regularly look at how real people have benefitted from their work will give them enormous satisfaction and motivate them to keep going. The fact that we can then use these case studies to effectively communicate with our partners, donors and potential volunteers is just a fortunate side-effect... I presented the approach at the last management meeting and it seemed to go done quite well. Now of course I'll need to finalise the manual that Jill wrote and train up a few project team leaders to pilot things before using it on all BRIF's projects. Looking good though!

What then of the new batch of VSO volunteers? Well, there are 10 of them, and it's a very international bunch. There are 3 Ugandans (Uganda has sadly had to deal with a huge HIV/AIDS problem so has skills that Bangladesh badly needs if it is to avoid a similar fate), 2 Brits, 3 Philippinos, 1 Dutch lady and 1 Irish girl. Another feature about this group is that they're quite young compared to previous ones, including my own, and that's no bad thing I reckon. Incidently, when I arrived in Bangladesh there was a clear majority of British volunteers but that is no longer the case. The African and Filippino contigents have kept on increasing, an indication of VSO's international recruitment policy through other centres, particularly in developing countries like Kenya and the Philippines.

One unwritten rule when welcoming new volunteers is not to depress them straight away with tales of woe and frustration. Lord knows I've had a few down moments in my time here, and while there are doubtless things I have learnt from them that I could pass on it wouldn't be fair to spoil the excitement a new volunteer feels about finally getting to their placement and living in a new country. I remember hearing one particularly bitter volunteer "helpfully" sharing her problems with my group when we arrived, and to be honest we just didn't want to know. You don't want someone pissing on the strawberries as it were when you've only just arrived and have 2 years ahead of you in what you suspect will be quite trying conditions. It's a bit like starting a new job and hearing the sad grey man in accounts drone on about how bad the company is over lunch on your second day. Anyway, VSO organised a welcome party for the new volunteers in Dhaka this week, and seeing as I was coming to town anyway for a few VSO meetings, I went along and told positive tales. It wasn't that difficult - my work's going great!

Speaking of work, I had the meeting with VSO's acting Country Director this week about changing my end date with BRIF. She took it all in and was very understanding. As I pointed out to a volunteer the night before, the meeting wasn't about negotiating an outcome but communicating a decision! I also mentioned my flexibility in "extending" with BRIF if the work required, and that I'd be interested in doing short-term work in Dhaka afterwards for a few months if anything appropriate was available. Interestingly, Shahanna (for tis VSO's acting Country Director's name) asked if I'd be interested in a short placement with the VSO office, to which I of course said yes! Back at BRIF on Saturday I had a couple of meetings with managers responsible for implementing our newly defined priorities. I said we had until March next year to finish everything, and Habib added that we could do it all this year! I think he's right, and already on Saturday I felt like I'd stepped up a gear at work as I discussed project objectives with different people and thought about how much I could cram in before leaving for the UK on the 19th. It feels good to be busy, and it feels really good to be getting into the nuts and bolts of solving the problems we've been discussing all these months.