MODULE 3 - Section 6
Local Case Studies: Successes & Challenges
20-25 Minutes to complete section and related assignments
Introduction
In the space, you will find two short-term team stories. One story offers an example of a short-term team that uses a wide variety of healthy principles, efficient planning and strong communication. The other demonstrates a team that overlooks these principles and does not fully engage in good planning and execution. As you read, see if you can identify some of the principles and practices (or lack thereof) from Module 1 within each story. Keep in mind they are not meant to be prescriptive. They are only examples. Every short-term team will be different and offers countless opportunities to do things well and to learn from mistakes or things you weren’t aware of. It will, however, be self-evident how much less of an impact a short-term team visit will be when healthy practices and principles are ignored or forgotten. The goal here is to give you an idea of what a healthy experience looks like for all involved and what goes into making that happen.
Team A
The New Life Team arrived in the morning by airplane, flying into the closest airport, which is about two hours away from the community. Brittany, the community short-term team coordinator, has already pre-arranged for a van service to pick the team members up from the airport. To give the team a warm welcome while ensuring the team makes it to curbside pick-up safely, Brittany meets the team outside of the customs gate and escorts them to their van where she has some water and simple snacks waiting. Brittany accompanies the team to their hostel, which was selected in part due to its close proximity to the community-team office. Brittany ensures the team gets checked in without issue. It also gives her an opportunity to have a conversation with the couple who owns and runs the hostel, furthering the relationship she has already been growing.
The hostel is simple but comfortable, offering breakfast as part of the cost. In the center of its two floors is a large living room space, which team members can use for debriefing and relaxation time.
After giving the team some time to get settled, Brittany leads the team through a time of orientation. She reiterates the important aspects of the work being done, local culture, behavioral expectations, safety, and general location-specific guidelines. Much of this was in the short-term team community guide she sent to the team prior to their arrival, but she takes the time to reiterate some key items. She also highlights some new ones. As part of the orientation, Brittany had already invited the local elementary principal, a Jesus-follower and key local partner, to participate in the last thirty minutes of the orientation session. This allowed the team members to begin practicing listening and learning from locals, start relationship building with someone they would be working with throughout the week, and extend leadership involvement and dignity to someone who calls this community home.
The next day, Brittany leads the team on a walk through the community so they can begin to take in the sights, sounds, and surroundings. As they walk, she points out some of the places where they are trying to make in-roads and uses visual aspects of the community to springboard into sharing about some of its assets and challenges. She also introduces the team to a neighbor they come across. Later, she shares the story of how their neighbor used to be resistant to their local efforts, but God softened them. Now the neighbor is a huge supporter and a key volunteer at one of their weekly programs.
Education is a primary need for the community. English language skills are also highly sought after. However, local resources and training for teachers are minimal. Brittany leverages the skills of the team, all English-speakers, and two team members who are teachers, to plan a workshop for local teachers. Brittany also recognizes that the local teachers, who engage in tutoring after school hours, are consistently short-staffed and overwhelmed by the volume of students. The team engages the students with fun-but-informative life-skill activities, while the teachers tutor the students.
Brittany wanted local school leadership to be at the forefront of the workshop. The principal hosts the workshop and directs the schedule. In addition, local teachers have a panel discussion about the community, local needs and educational challenges and progress, which the team attends. This gives the team a great deal of insight into the complex layers of a society and its compound issues. It also helps them understand the community more and impassions them as they engage the staff and students throughout their stay.
Feeding the team was something Brittany wanted to address well as she considered the team schedule. Daily breakfast at the hostel makes for a convenient start to the day. Lunch during the workshop poses a great opportunity for the team to connect with local teachers. A couple weeks before the team arrived, Brittany approached a local café she had been wanting to get to know and asked if they would cater lunches for the school staff and team for the week. The restaurant is a highlight of the community, and the owner seems well-connected to many other businesses in the neighborhood. The local café agreed. This brought in more local involvement, supported local business, established another local relationship, provided encouragement to the local school staff, and offered a common space for the team and teachers to engage over meal time.
On the fourth day, a team member wakes up with what appears to be the stomach flu. Brittany walks through the steps in the Emergency Response Plan. She acknowledges the team member’s symptoms, checks that no one else is ill, shares this information with the Catalyst, determines it was likely due to the team member drinking water from the school, and works with the team leader to ensure the team member has adequate time and space to recover.
Most evening meals are at a local restaurant close to the hostel. This gives the team some recovery space to be with each other and their thoughts, though one evening the principal hosts the team for dinner. Again, the team and the principal have a chance to interact and learn from each other, while the team gets additional insights into the community and local culture as the principal shares about his time growing up and living there.
Each evening after dinner, the team returns to the hostel for a time of debrief. While the team leader leads, Brittany chooses to be a part of the debrief times every other night in order to gauge where team members were at in their processing of their stay and to learn from the team about what they are seeing and experiencing in the community. When the moments present themselves, Brittany takes time to address team questions and concerns to guide the team in their integration. It is just as helpful for Brittany to share about the impact the week is having on her as it is to hear the team’s personal development.
As the team’s stay winds down, Brittany plans space and time for the team to engage in their final debrief. While she didn’t feel the need to be a part of their time, she chose to hold a final debrief of her own on behalf of the field staff and community before the team engaged in theirs.
Brittany remembers what it was like to be a short-term team member herself and how it was helpful to hear how to take what she had seen and heard in-community and make it a real part of her life when she returned home. Brittany also knows that this is a key moment to invite the team to tangible opportunities for further engagement in the community and long-term transformation.
The next day the team departs, and Brittany uses the same van service to take the team back to the airport. Brittany had plans to travel with the team again, but that morning her daughter woke up with a sore throat. There was a local staff member the team had been working with all week and Brittany asked if they would be willing to travel with the team. Thankfully, they were available and the team had someone to guide them back.
Before the team departs, Brittany takes a moment to inform the team what to expect going through customs and thanked the team for their time and investment in the community.
Team B
The Sunhill Team landed in the morning without event, but upon reaching customs, they discover there is an entrance fee to get into the country. During the preparation conversations, Megan forgot to share this information with the team. The snag sparks some nerves as they don’t have local cash on hand. Fortunately, the team is able to pay with a credit card. After getting their luggage and some confusion finding the pick-up location, the team is grateful to see Megan there to take them to their place of lodging.
Megan had opted to take two taxis from the airport to the hotel as that was a more readily available and cost-effective option, but underestimated the amount of luggage team members would be carrying with them. This requires waiting for another taxi to become free in order to caravan together. The the team leader has to go back into the airport to get additional funds from the ATM to pay for the extra cab since Megan only has cash for two.
The team eventually arrives at the place of lodging, which was a cozy hotel in town on the opposite side of the river from the community center where the team would be engaging each day. Megan gives the team an hour to drop their bags and grab a snack before orientation. While she is gathering her thoughts, she realizes that while the accommodations were quite nice at the hotel, there is no meeting area where the team can sit comfortably to have orientation or daily debriefs throughout the week. Megan decides to take the team across the street to a café.
While she is able to highlight the community, the work being done there and key aspects for team members to be aware of, the café ambiance is a bit distracting and, while not going to break the budget, it did add an unexpected expense to the budget early in the week. She wonders how much of what she shared was actually received.
That evening, Megan and the team talks about one of their community engagement projects - the grand opening for the community center at the end of the week. The team would be setting up and organizing the event alongside local volunteers and existing staff. Leading up to the event, the team would be serving dinner at the local soup kitchen in the evenings and then eat alongside the attending locals afterward.
For meals, Megan took advantage of the included continental breakfast option served at the hotel each day. Lunch would be purchased each day at the café and carried to the service location to be eaten later as a sack lunch. While at their service location, they were approached by a community member, who happened to be a chef at another local café. They asked Megan why the team did not have meals at their café. They would have been honored to serve the team. While the local café across the street was convenient, Megan forgot to consider if any local relationships could be utilized in planning various aspects of the team schedule.
The team made the long walk across town and the river each day to get to the community center to prepare. It was a bit exhausting after a few days, but turned out to be a good time for the team to converse with Megan and ask questions. She talked mostly about the challenges around town that she saw, but admitted she didn’t know much else about what was happening around the community outside of the neighborhood she was working in. The team stopped asking questions about the community after a while and started joining in about all the things they didn’t see in the community and what they missed back home.
On the third day, a team member mentioned they were feeling ill. They had a headache, low-grade fever, and were feeling nauseous. The team member wanted to push through and continue on with the day’s activities. Megan thought they looked pretty ill and planned for the team member to go to the clinic just to be sure the illness wasn’t something more than the stomach flu. Megan sent the team members on to the day’s project and accompanied the ill team member to the clinic. When the Catalyst arrived on site that day, Megan wasn’t there and neither were there any local staff. The only local person there was a volunteer and since Megan also served as the translator, the team was doing their best to communicate with them and figure out how to set up for the event. Megan had forgotten to communicate with the Catalyst, her teammate. When they were finally able to get on a quick phone call together, Megan mentioned she would be delayed three hours getting back from the clinic and had to relay directions over the phone with multi-layered instructions for setup.
Each night after dinner, the team would walk back to the hotel for a daily debrief. Megan sat in on the debriefs and noticed some exhaustion and frustration coming from the team after a few days. There were also some narrow-minded comments about the local culture. Megan noticed these attitudes appeared to be affecting interactions with locals too, but hated engaging in potential conflict. She decided she would make things better by doing better herself the next day. While her self-awareness was a good catch, she unfortunately missed out on a timely opportunity to course-correct as a team for the days ahead, as well as share perspective about local culture.
The community center launch event ended up a general success. There were several instances where the team was unsure who was leading the setup and execution - them or the volunteers - but the team worked hard to be flexible and figure things out along the way.
With the team’s visit winding down, Megan opted to participate in the team final debrief. During that time, she expressed her sincere thanks for the team’s participation and engagement throughout the week and wished them well in returning home. After all the team had done to pull off the event, she didn’t want to take any more of their time and decided not to talk about their summer internship opportunity and a key program they were hoping to launch in three months out of the community center.
After the team left for the airport, Megan wondered if the team felt like they contributed to the work happening there and would consider returning. She figured that if it was meant to be they would reach out again in the future and decided to not follow up with the team on their time there.
