Randstad volunteer Saskia in Namibia
Saskia Furrer, consultant with Randstad Netherlands, is working with the VSO-Randstad program HR Solutions for Hope Initiatives Southern Africa (HISA). She’s been working in Katutura, one of the townships of Windhoek, since September 2008. The organization consists of a bridging school, a kindergarten and three soup kitchens. Saskia’s job is to advise and help HISA within HR-related activities.
“First let me tell you something about HISA. The bridging school is a school for children who haven’t been to school (yet) and are too old to go to a normal school. The kindergarten is to prepare the smallest children in the community for school. Hot meals (breakfast and lunch) are prepared in the soup kitchens and dispersed among these children. HISA have two buildings in different locations in Katutura and its employees are busy building a third. About fifteen people work there (all locals) and about ten volunteers (locals and volunteers from Europe and America). The organization is quite new (about five years old) and is growing rapidly.
"My job is to advise and help with an HR infrastructure. Think of setting up a salary system, creating an HRmanual and putting together an introduction program for new employees. These things are all needed to offer employees a good working environment and to keep the organization going.
"In the beginning I was mainly busy getting to know HISA and the people who work here. I also spent a day in the kindergarten and a very memorable one in the soup kitchen in the poorest parts of the township. Eight to ten people live together in a small hut with no electricity or running water. Most families have to deal with problems such as alcohol addiction, HIV and AIDS, teenage pregnancy and domestic abuse.
"At the end of the first week I spoke to the program director to pinpoint my tasks for the coming seven months. That was very helpful because I then knew how to structure my activities for the coming period. Although basic building blocks are actually already underway, including job descriptions, an HR manual (draft), contracts and lots of good ideas about how everything should be. Workflows and cohesive infrastructures, which take into account legal issues and local regulations especially, still need to be developed and organized. So my work was cut out for me! I immersed myself in the legal rules around Work and Social Security and have tried to bring order into the chaos, for example by making a list of all the papers present and missing in the personnel files. Next steps: making sure the missing papers go into the files, checking and updating job descriptions, finishing the HR-manual, drafting new contracts and setting up a salary structure."
Greetings from Windhoek,
Saskia Furrer
