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Frontline: A world away from the internet

Fundraising | Beth Yorath | 10 Mar 2011

Volunteering in Romania, Beth Yorath has discovered that frontline staff bring many unexpected benefits to the charity they work for.

Despite a lengthy management career in the UK, this is my first time living and working in another country. At my usual job, sourcing information on potential new suppliers for the business is easy, I have all the information at my fingertips via the internet. I know where to look and how to find what I need. This is the information super-highway that I have grown accustomed to in the UK.

But how do I cope when I find myself on the ‘information dirt-track’ (that’s the one with grass growing in the middle) instead? Welcome to Romania.

This is something that has been a constant source of frustration within my job and yet another part of the very steep learning curve that I am faced with in my position as an NGO worker for Little John’s House in Romania. If I want to find a supplier, information on local tax legislation or a database of local companies, I am at a loss to know where to find them. I've not yet tapped into 'the system'.

I am now in full-time education as to how this system functions. But it is sinking in, I have learned something - the fastest way to find information is to talk to someone.

To find a supplier, for example, everyone knows ‘someone that can…’ so, rather than spending hours on the internet researching good companies and setting up quotes meetings, I need to ask a friend to get the contact details of a ‘guy that can...’, leading to a five minute telephone call with a price and when he can do the work.

If I want to know about tax legislation, I speak to a tax adviser about it. If I am looking for local information, the city hall has it all under one roof. I don’t need to trawl through 30 websites to find the right information.

This is efficiency of information in a totally different way – actually, the way it used to be done before the days of the internet – and guess what? It works! Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t swap the internet for anything – it is a valuable resource in my job – but it is a refreshing change to do business on more of a face-to-face level. This also helps the local economy and means that the large multi-nationals haven’t yet completely taken over.

Without people like me on the frontline, living where the charity is based, charities would not understand such limitations. Whilst time is taken to learn this cultural difference, it is time invested well and becomes vital to the local success of an NGO working abroad. I don’t expect to finish learning the system by the end of a year, but the peak of that particular learning curve is certainly within sight.  

As part of the Vodafone Foundation World of Difference International Programme Beth Yorath is volunteering with Orphan Aid in Romania, a charity that finds permanent, loving homes for abandoned orphans

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Who's Who: Beth Yorath