Maybe it's because I've never really worked in the UK, but I have never been on a diversity training course. You know what I mean, those training sessions designed to help people of different backgrounds, sex, race, religion etc. to work better together. From what I saw when I was back in the UK this summer the whole "diversity" thing seems to be very widespread and trendy almost. I can't honestly say I really understand what it's all about, but then I've generally worked in France's racially cleansed corporate arena so haven't been in an environment where "diversity" issues have arisen.

VSO in Bangladesh is of course a very different kettle of fish. Not so long ago it was generally just a bunch of Brits with the odd Dutch and Canadian thrown in. Now however, through an initiative called South to South, volunteers from countries in Asia and Africa are recruited and sent to other developing countries, either on their own continent or elsewhere. From what I've seen this is a very popular scheme with the partners as they value the NGO experience that these volunteers bring as opposed to the general management experience and skills that someone like me would have. Here in Bangladesh for example we currently have roughly 6 Filipinos, 4 Ugandans (for their valuable HIV/AIDS experience) and a Kenyan.

When I arrived last October the country programme was by and large dominated by the Brits numerically speaking, but that has now changed, and this trend of increasingly recruiting South to South volunteers is continuing. I don't really believe anyone gave this much thought, until this year's annual volunteer conference in February when a few negative opinions were expressed about how certain persons or groups were treated by others. Wishing to nip the issue in the bud and address whatever problems existed, a working group was formed to examine and solve any diversity problems that existed amongst volunteers and/or between them and the programme office staff. So far so good.

While we've all been aware of the working group since it started, I only learnt about problems being aired at the conference this week! Personally I'd always assumed that the diversity event they were planning was the watered down version of a racism workshop the last Country Director wanted to run until she decided she'd made enough enemies in her first 3 months to resign. That said, I've become increasingly aware of at least a perception in certain quarters that the various volunteer committees etc. didn't fully represent everybody. Being an active member of some of those committees I was naturally concerned, and also began to wonder if I was in fact more part of the problem than the solution. Not a pleasant thought as I'm sure you can appreciate.

So why am I mentioning this now? Well, on Thursday we had a professional group meeting (volunteers getting together to discuss and address any professional questions or issues they have). While not strictly speaking part of the group's remit, a slot was made on the agenda to discuss the upcoming "diversity" event. I knew this discussion was coming, along with a broader one about what we as a group wanted to do with the professional group(s) in the year to come. Now, because of what I'd heard about certain persons or groups (always nameless) having issues with their voices not being heard, and knowing how I can take up a lot of space in discussions I feel strongly about, I decided it best to pipe down a bit and leave the floor freer for others. My reasoning was that, if there was even a suspicion that I was preventing others from speaking out merely by being my natural outspoken self, then I wanted to dispel it as soon as possible.

At the same time though I felt like I'd been accused of something I wasn't guilty of. Worse still, I hadn't actually being openly accused of anything at all as it was all suspicions and half-whispered comments via 3rd parties. I was also annoyed that I felt I should back off when all these people had to do to be heard, as far as I was concerned, was speak up. Of course it's not that simple, but I wasn't convinced I had to keep quiet for others to be heard. Finally, I resented the implication that my work for the volunteer committee favoured any group over another, especially given the broad nature of the issues we discuss and the progress we've made for all this year already. Anyway, rant over.

And so it was we came to discuss diversity, 20 odd volunteers from Africa, Asia and Europe in an air conditioned room at VSO. First of all the diversity working group expressed its disappointment about receiving such a poor response to their recently sent diversity questionnaire. I was of those that had not responded as I didn't actually understand what the questions were trying to clarify i.e. what the working group was trying to do. My suspicions were immediately confirmed when, spontaneously and quite openly, we also learnt that they didn't really know what this diversity event was actually trying to achieve. Why? Because they didn't really know what exactly the so-called problems were/are. May the record show that I for one fully support this admission as I think organising an event on this subject without knowing what it's for is potentially more dangerous than doing nothing at all.

That much is clear and publicly accepted - the rest of this is hearsay and my personal opinion. It seems that, when a group of friends got together at a party on Friday and chatted about it, there are no issues between the Africans and the Europeans. You'll note in passing that there is a basic assumption that it is the Europeans who are at fault here... I also heard that a certain member of the working group had to be reigned in a few times by others to prevent personal issues becoming sweeping generalisations that magically became problems for all. Again, most of this is no more than gossip, but I am left with the personal opinion that a whole organisation may well be going through the painful process of having nasty accusations bandied around for no better reason than 1 person going through some personal issues. Now that's just plain wrong if it's true, but to be absolutely sure we're going to run a short 1 hour workshop just to see what diversity issues we do have as a group. Should be a giggle eh?