Thursday 25 August 2011

Working at Phare

During the last week or so I have done a load of Excel stuff and even found a couple of bars that stay open past midnight at the weekend. No TV though for the football although I did watch Liverpool pound Arsenal (well, win 2-0) at my hotel before I went out. The work remains as interesting as ever and I’m slowly getting through some of the tasks I have been set and set for myself. I suppose the slow thing is deliberate – as there isn’t really anyone else here who can check what I have done, I have to be really careful to avoid mistakes so I have to double check everything myself, which is quite tricky to do objectively. Hopefully I have been successful.


The music school. They practice from dawn until dusk. Dawn's pretty early, and seems especially so when someone's using the big drum in the background

Next on the list of things to do is an ‘organisational review’ where I go through a checklist of questions about the different aspects of the financial management and systems here. I’d normally have done this first, but as something fairly specific was requested (more user friendly financial reports for the managers here that can be produced quickly and easily by the Finance Manager), I have concentrated on that for the first couple of weeks. From the review I’ll check some of the information I am given (like an audit I suppose), and then focus on any areas that look like they can be strengthened for the remainder of my time here. This part of my work will form part of the basis for anyone else who follows from A f ID, a kind of checklist against which improvements can (hopefully) be measured in the future.


Practicing hard for the shows. Many of the people who learn here also attend the school that PPS run on the site

I still haven’t got to any of the shows yet, hence no photos of that, but they will follow. I’ve peppered this blog with the day to day goings on at the site. I guess they give a flavour of all of the different things that happen here. A bit of sound would be good, but never mind. I did ‘mislay’ my camera, which stopped me from photographing the sites I saw at the weekend (a few temples, a bamboo railway and a bit of wandering about in some fields), but my gross stupidity was followed by a bit of luck as I’d left it in the office where it remained safely for the weekend until I found it earlier this week. I suppose I should photograph the plate of fruit which turns up on my desk for me to nibble on during the day, courtesy of Neary, the Finance Manager. So far I’ve had a couple of different types of citrus fruit, dragon fruit, and today a big bunch of thumb-sized bananas. All of these grow in the local area, so taste fantastic.



This is traditional Khymer dance. They had an programme on BBC World about a couple of places in Cambodia where there is a renaissance in this and other local art forms. And I get to see them all when ever I go for a wander about

So for the rest of today I’ll recheck the reports and templates I have produced and make sure that the people who will be using them can understand them and update them properly. At the same time this has given me the opportunity to interrogate the accounting system thoroughly, checking some of the things that have been unclear to me, which has thrown up a number of potential ways to do things more effectively. The way I am suggesting that the information in the system is accessed and interpreted is new here (although the same as everywhere I have worked in the UK), so understandably the way data has been entered into the system isn’t entirely compatible with producing some of the reports. But hopefully when the benefit of what I have done is recognised (producing a report in 5 minutes rather than the half a day it took previously, and with a higher level of accuracy, which Neary can already appreciate!), the ‘new’ way of using data should become standard. I think one of the most satisfying things about this work is that it’s possible to identify an area of improvement, make suggestions about it and then implement it all within a matter of days. And then assuming what you have done is reasonable and understandable, it sticks, at least in the short term. I wonder what will happen to some of the things I have worked on in the months and years to come, which is the most important thing. Maybe I’ll come back and find out.


Finally some budding artists at work. They're really good

1 comment:

  1. There was just an article in the NY Times relevant to your situation. Apparently, Cambodian laws are to be changed to give the gov't power to register/reject at their pleasure civil groups and NGOs
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/18iht-edbecker18.html?scp=6&sq=ngo&st=cse

    Any opinion on the article?

    ReplyDelete