Our project had high potential, worthy reason and motivated eight volunteers full of ideas of how to leave a meaningful impact on women's life here. We were ready to give our everything to achieve a common goal and to work hard for it. We knew that in six weeks it's impossible to change the whole world, or a whole city, but we believed in changing something in one person's whole world; whether it would be one's mindset, attitude or view on things in general.
The problem was, that there wasn't a common goal we would have been heading to. What we faced with all of our excitement was a wall of counterarguments, lots of questions not being answered and lack of willingness to listen genuinely. We were sharing our reasons for choosing this project but never actually got to hear the local committee's reasons for creating the project. We didn't know, what was supposed to be the aim of the things we were asked to do.
We wanted to take ownership of the project but as a response to that we got long procedures to go through in order to get our ideas to the project agenda. The communication felt non-existing, when searching for answers just got you from person to person; there was always someone else who was responsible for this topic, and as we didn't get a proper preparation in the beginnig, we had no clue who that person could have been.
In addition to all of these, the NGO we were supposed to work with, closed after our first week, because of summer. Accommodation issues distracted us from focusing fully to the wanted achievement of the project as a team. Along the way, our group became smaller and smaller, as people left because of the chaotic situation and when finding some more promising opportunities.
Today the last two of us also resigned from working with the local committee. There was nothing more left than a name of the project and continuous discussions about the same issues without any improvement. We don't have a clear plan for the remaining two weeks, but we are sure we don't want to spend them stuck in something which doesn't exist.
Going through all of these, has of course been disappointing. After several days and hopeless conversations, our comments have too many times been type of "this one was the worst ever". As an AIESECer myself experiencing something like this has sometimes made me think if I still do believe in the organisation and want stay working with it after going back home. However, when wondering that out loud, I've also got good comments which speak for it: leaving after seeing problems it's actually about leaving the opportunity to make things better.
As for now, I still want to stay in the country and I still want to work for gender equality. And I still believe in making an impact. The next step is to broaden our working possibilities through our already existing contacts and searching for new ones. We still have two weeks to make all the best out of the experience. Challenge accepted.
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