My Habitat Job

I am working in the “Volunteer Development” office within the National Habitat Office in Quito.

Here’s a photo of my co-workers in the Volunteer Development department: Hugo, Jonathan, and Valeria. Valeria and I have the same birthday!—except she turned 25 and I turned 26;-).

A LOT is changing organizationally in Habitat Ecuador!... I unknowingly picked an ¨era of flux¨ as my time to arrive here! This is both exciting... and will make things more challenging.

The first change is that the national organization is consolidating affiliates, from 7 to 3, in order to achieve greater outcomes in the areas that need it most. Building will be taking place in: Guayaquil, Santo Domingo, and Tosagua. These towns-cities are in the provinces with the greatest need in terms of housing deficits and poverty. Also, Habitat Ecuador must become financially independent of Habitat International (Americus, Georgia, USA) within the next few years and they are pursuing this goal by concentrating on the areas where houses are most needed and are most easily erected in order to both conserve resources and accomplish the greatest impact.

The next change is a shift in leadership and personnel! Already, I have been to the farewell party for the current director. Hugo, former Volunteer Mobilization Church Relations Coordinator, will be our new Director... which means the Volunteer Mobilization Department is losing a person. On top of that, Valeria is finishing school and cannot travel with international brigades until February! So our office of 4 (including me), is now staffed at 2.5, and I will be traveling with brigades from the end of November until March.

This is the Habitat Office building (you can see the Habitat sign on the second floor window), and the view of the mountains from the street in front of the office.

In addition to:

a. General support within the National Office and Volunteer Development office
(I have already helped out with several translations, the annual report and project proposals), and

b. Traveling with the brigades almost non-stop beginning in November,

my job is to strengthen the volunteer program by:

(not necessarily in order of importance)

1. Define and further develop an individual volunteer program:

• Expand the breadth and depth of volunteer opportunities for individuals
• Create mechanisms for general and profesional volunteerism
  
• Coordinate with all Ecuador Habitat departments to gain participation from all areas
• Promote the new and expanded opportunities through national and international means
  

2. Improve the brigades’-general volunteers´ orientation process:

• Create materials and method to convey the global, national and local housing and living conditions context in which the volunteers are working.
• Educate volunteers as to the country-specific economics, politics and cultural factors which contribute to, or aggrivate, the country´s housing problems.

3. Build the international volunteer brigades program:

• Increasing the number of brigades
• Broadening the geographical representation of the brigades to have a greater proportion of the world represented (volunteers are currently primarily from the United States).
• Creating an “alternative” brigade volunteer track for those volunteers who either feel they are not capable of building, or for times during the year that construction work may be saturated.

4. Improve volunteers´ follow-up process:

• Create mechanism for volunteers to share their experiences in their home countries to be shared with their families, clubs and community orgs, friends, coworkers and classmates.
• Improve follow-up communications with volunteers by creating news bulletins and other materials regarding Habitat Ecuador, and Habitat International.