In the last two weeks, the cook and the cleaning lady quit their jobs. The left-over salary money has been quickly re-allocated in order to re-hire the teacher/education supervisor and another cleaning lady. We’re not talking about much money here–only $50 or so per month–but it must be used wisely.
Why would anyone want to work at the orphanage (e.g. the cleaners or the guard)? It will never be profitable. And this one at least is constantly on the brink of disaster. A salary is never certain. Yet still they stay, because the other possibilities are no more certain.
Aid organizations do not want to provide funding for orphanages, because they will rarely be self-sufficient. And it’s not quite as ’sexy’ as micro-lending. We like the notion of giving a little money to make people suddenly self-sufficient. But in my opinion, it doesn’t work that way (look forward to my next blog post!).
Sometimes I envy the people who work in the bureaucracies of NGOs in Dhaka. Their work seems so much more straight-forward and is not so bound up in the personal lives of individuals. They do not have to weather the daily ups and downs of a struggling institution. I would never, of course, trade my experiences here in the orphanage… but it’s exhausting to be a part of something that often seems so mired in impossibility.
