Out of Africa

Sending two members of staff to work next to a rubbish dump in east Africa sounds more like a punishment than a holiday. But a pair of employees from Great Places Housing Group wouldn’t have swapped their experience. The trip has not only changed them, they say, it has changed the way they work for the better.

Each year, the Manchester-based landlord pays for two members of staff to fl y to Nakuru, an industrial town in Kenya, to spend a month volunteering at a children’s centre there. The Walk Centre provides education and meals for 200 local children who live in extreme poverty, scavenging a living from the rubbish dump on which they live.

‘It was a fantastic opportunity – something I would never have got to do in my lifetime otherwise,’ says Mark Karlisle, customer satisfaction manager at Great Places. ‘I really wanted to give something back.’

His fellow volunteer was development officer Joanne Dawson. ‘The children we were working with live at the Hilton slum, the worst of the area’s five slums, where people squat and build whatever they can to live in,’ she says. ‘When a rubbish dumper unloads, the women and children all try to grab whatever they can. More often than not, they have only rotten mangoes to eat as they walk round without shoes and hardly any clothes.’

The two volunteers were selected for the trip after a full recruitment process, and the money they subsequently raised was matched by their employer. ‘We got to see how the money we raised is spent,’ Mr Karlisle says.

During their stay they had a chance to use their existing skills as well as learn some new ones, such as preparing food, helping with classes and buying shoes for 200 children at the local market, which turned out to be a mammoth task. Ms Dawson had a chance to use her development skills during the construction of a dining hall for the centre, paid for with money raised by Great Places.

Making a difference

It was, as the cliché goes, a life-changing experience, but not just for the two who went. ‘It’s made me appreciate what I do,’ says Ms Dawson. ‘Since I have come back I am completely dedicated, because I know what we do makes a difference.’

Both she and Mr Karlisle believe the way they work has improved since their return, and Maggie Shannon, director of performance and innovation at Great Places, says their new skills and changed attitude have spread throughout the organisation.

‘[The scheme] develops in our staff an ability to problem-solve and to do that in a way that is empathetic to different cultures,’ she says. ‘It does percolate [among other staff ] – you do get a sense that what people bring back is shared.’

She adds that the scheme works as a recruitment and retention tool, too, through the opportunity for adventure and variety it offers staff .

Mr Karlisle says the trip has given him a new perspective. ‘I’m a lot less stressed about how things are done,’ he says. ‘There is a calmness about the way I go about my work now.’

And, he adds, he likes to think he has fewer fixed ideas about people. ‘I got rid of my preconceptions – they were blown out of the water,’ he explains. ‘I thought these kids live on a rubbish dump, they’re really poor so they are going to be unhappy – but they were some of the happiest kids I‘ve ever met in my life.’

Thanks to the project those kids now have a new dining hall, new shoes and two square meals a day – while the staff selected to travel to Africa return with experience and training that benefits them, their employer and perhaps even their fellow staff and tenants.

‘Even though it’s a different culture [in England], we are still providing a basic service to people in the Northwest,’ says Ms Dawson. ‘I now appreciate how important that is. You get brought back to the basics – why you chose this career.’