It is with great misfortune that Ina, our new coordinator who was due to start on Monday, had to phone up on Saturday and inform us that she would not be able to join the team, not at the present time at least. There were one or two issues that needed her support at her home which she wasn’t aware of until very shortly before she was due to come and join us and, upon finding out, found herself with only one decision she could make.
It is a great shame. Ina would have been fantastic at Hunar Ghar. She may yet still be, but not in the foreseeable future. Ina was to be the first employee to join us because she wanted to take part in something she believed in rather than joining because she needed a job. In her lies the kind of intrinsic motivation and desire to learn and work hard that we are looking for in Educate for Life. We do see it in some of our staff that joined for the sake of work rather than ideas, such as Deepak, and we’d like to see it a more pervasive theme within the motivation of our staff.
So the search goes on. And on. And on. I have every confidence that in the end we will succeed, just this time it didn’t happen in quite the way we envisioned. It is very important for us to (1) have someone through whom we can diversify how Hunar Ghar interacts with the community, (2) find someone to support Deepak in the work he does and (3) break our dependence on Deepak 0n whom so much is based.
Deepak has show yet further marked improvements in his abilities of understanding, organisation, time keeping and communication so I am now much more confident in his ability to take a lower-standard employee and to train them to be well comptenent at Hunar Ghar. Before this was not the case, so I had reservations about taking on ‘un-inquiring’ individuals, such as Deepak once was himself, without Ash or myself there to guide them appropriately. It is strong testament to Deepak’s personal achievements that that is now no longer the case, so I’d better get on the phone to Sharmaji to see if he can’t sort us out with such a person. The exciting thing here is that if we do take on such a person and they are motivated sufficiently by Deepak and the rest of our support system to develop their work ethic and understanding, then it is a very positive thing for the potential growth of Educate for Life beyond one school. If that personal development is achievable without the physical presence of Ash or myself, that our ‘employee’ and resource structure is sufficient in generating it, then it means perhaps that Educate for Life can grow using the existing stock of excess bog-standard employees rather than needing people with initial special motivation. This gives far greater scope for broad implementation of our work than if we are dependent on ‘special’ people. As they say over here, let us see.
