So back at work today and being asked what were the highlights from the past month and obviously it's difficult to say.
Just to clarify the trip was funded by the Rotary Foundation and intended to be an opportunity for us to experience our vocation in a different culture so we can bring back learning to our current jobs.
I have to say that when I left I was doubtful about how this would work. I wasn't convinced that a quick whirlwind 'sightseeing' tour of Filipino housing would give me any insight into what I do at home or give me a real understanding of their working environment. But whilst I don't claim to have a comprehensive understanding of their systems or the challenges they face I do feel like I've learnt a lot from the experience.
Firstly that I'm a terrible vegetarian. Faced with a choice of a month of refusing food and only eating rice and soy sauce I quickly embraced eating everything from bone marrow to balut. Balut for those that don't know is a hard boiled egg containing a duck foetus. I didn't eat any head.
But work wise it was more a matter of inspiration. Seeing how things can be done differently and work well.
Communications was given a real value by all the organisations we spoke to. It was recognised as being integral to employee engagement, customer engagement and raising the public profile of the organisation.
If I said to someone in the UK I was going to see the Highways Agency I doubt the first thing they'd do would be to tell me how great the new Highways Agency app was or how their Twitter account had a great sense of humour. But that's exactly what happened when I said I was going to see the Filipino equivalent.
Customer engagement is something we place a lot of emphasis on. I didn't expect to see it when informal settlers were being moved off sites where they were in danger of losing their lives through fire or flood. Housing authorities gave people options about where to go, managed expectations and provided livelihood training to ensure that when they moved they weren't destitute. Through these initiatives good communications supported by effective strategies paved the way for stronger communities. In some schemes they also teach hope, teach people that they have the capacity to change their own lives.
Someone told me the Philippines is the country with the highest risk of natural disaster in the world. Perhaps the importance they place on comms comes in part from the reliance they have on these channels in case of emergency. Effective early warning and evacuation has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in some situations.
Capacity building was raised by every organisation. It was recognised that the resource wouldn't be there to help everyone. So children are taught at school to spot TB symptoms, the Red Cross have mass first aid training programs and those who can't pay fines for misdameanours are made to attend disaster preparedness training.
Although I'm not in any way qualified to comment on our benefits system, how it works or its possible failings I believe we are lucky to have it. We're lucky that we don't have hundreds of thousands of people living below the poverty line ($1.25/day) and that people generally get help when they need it. We don't help ourselves sometimes because we know we don't have to.
We're not just dependent in terms of housing and benefit provision but the simple ability to rely on the emergency services and the NHS. The capacity building was inspirational, uplifting and positive but it's hard to see how to translate this to my work or that of Bolton at Home.
Some of the most successful capacity building schemes were around vocational training and providing a means to work to support the housing provision but in our communities this would be almost impossible to implement. For their communities participating in these schemes mean the difference between their family starving or not. Without that kind of incentive I don't know how successful they would be. Given the cost of living and the level of income required simply giving people in our communities sewing machines wouldn't work.
So it was pretty depressing returning to work. Meeting so many people who believed so wholeheartedly in their work makes you question the impact you have. But I also don't believe you should complain about something unless you have a solution which I'm not professing to have for the bigger issues. I do think I can maybe take some of this to encourage me work harder at what I do, at inspiring our staff and customers to communicate better and participate in conversations not only nationally but within their community.
In the midst of this little downer on the whole situation I saw on our social media a message encouraging people with business ideas to get in touch with an organisation offering funding to support them and that customers are beginning to really make use of Bolton at Home's social media channels.
And noone tried to feed me any baby animals.
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