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 story demonstrates a team that overlooks these principles and does not fully engage in good planning and execution.
As you read these stories, see if you can identify some of the principles and practices (or lack thereof) from Module 1 within each story.
As you read these stories, 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. Ultimately, the goal here is to give you an idea of what a healthy short-term team 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 also 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 had sent to the team prior to their arrival, but took the time to reiterate some key items to refresh their importance. She also highlighted some new ones as well. 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 some of the 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 how God softened their neighbor. 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 leveraged the skills of the team, all versed in English, and those of two key team members who are teachers, to plan a workshop for local teachers.
Brittany also recognized that the local teachers, who engage in tutoring after school hours, are consistently short-staffed and overwhelmed by the volume of students. The team can help to engage the students with fun-but-informative life-skill activities, while the teachers work to tutor the students.
In addition, Brittany wanted local school leadership to be at the forefront of the workshop. The principal hosted the workshop and directed the schedule. In addition, local teachers had a panel discussion about the community, local needs and educational challenges and progress, which the team attended. This gave the team a great deal of insights into the complex layers of a society and its compound issues. It also helped them understand the community more and impassioned them as they engaged 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 made for a convenient start to the day. Lunch during the workshop posed 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 the establishment better and asked if they would be willing to 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 woke up with what appeared to be the stomach flu. Brittany walked through the steps in the Emergency Response Plan. She acknowledged the team member’s symptoms, ensured that no other team members were ill, shared this information with the Catalyst, determined it was likely due to the team member drinking water from the school, and worked with the team leader to ensure the team member had adequate time and space to recover.
Most evening meals were at a local restaurant close to the hostel. This gave the team some recovery space to be with each other and their thoughts, though one evening the principal hosted the team over for dinner. Again, the team and the principal had a chance to interact and learn and listen from each other, while the team got additional insights into the community and local culture as the principal shared about his time growing up and living there.
Each evening after dinner, the team returned to the hostel for a time of debrief. While the team leader led, Brittany chose 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 were seeing and experiencing in the community. When the moments presented themselves, Brittany took time to address team questions and concerns to guide the team in their integration. It was just as helpful for Brittany to share about the impact the week was having on her as it was to hear the team’s personal development.
As the team’s stay winded down, Brittany had planned 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 remembered 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 knew that this was a key moment to invite the team to tangible opportunities for further engagement in the community and the long-term transformation that was happening.
The next day the team departed, and Brittany used 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 departed, Brittany took 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 discovered there was an entrance fee to get into the country. During the preparation conversations, Megan forgot to share this information with the team. The snag sparked some nerves as they had no local cash on hand. Fortunately, the team was able to pay with a credit card in order to settle the costs. After getting their luggage and some confusion finding the pick-up location, the team was 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 required waiting for another taxi to become free in order to caravan together, as well as the team leader to go back into the airport to get additional funds from the ATM to pay for the extra cab since Megan had only prepared cash for two.
The team eventually arrived 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 gave the team an hour to drop their bags and grab a snack before orientation. While she was gathering her thoughts she realized that, while the accommodations were quite nice at the hotel, there was no meeting area where the team could sit comfortably to have orientation or daily debriefs throughout the week. Megan opted to take the team across the street to a café.
While she was able to highlight the community, the work being done there and key aspects for team members to be aware of, the café ambiance was a bit distracting and, while it wasn’t going to break the budget, it did add an unexpected expense to the budget early in the week. It all ended up working out, but she wondering how much she shared was actually being received.
That evening Megan and the team talked 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.
