Charlotte's Web: Regional ICS Asia Workshop, Thailand

In between facilitating workshop sessions at the ICS Latin America Workshop in Nicaragua last year (see 15th November blog post), I was also busy arranging flights and booking the hotel for a similar workshop to take place in Thailand in February 2014. Working to a range of 14 hours of time zones doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else but who needs sleep anyway?! What I didn't know at the time was that there was any potential for political unrest in Bangkok. But just after Christmas, with elections finally scheduled for February 2nd (8 days before the workshop), I found myself researching alternative locations (at the same time as trying to exchange and complete on the flat I was buying). Fortunately it never came to that, but it definitely kept me on my toes!

So on February 10th, 28 participants from 5 different ICS agencies (VSO, Raleigh International, Restless Development, International Service and Y Care International) delivering ICS in 7 different countries across the Asia region (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Cambodia, Philippines, Palestine) arrived in Bangkok ready for the Regional ICS Asia Workshop. As well as staff from country offices within the region, my colleague Iain (co-facilitating) and I were joined by other colleagues from the ICS Hub as well as UK agency staff from VSO, Restless Development and Y Care International.

28 participants - 5 agencies (plus ICS Hub) - 7 countries (plus UK)

Timetable for the week - my terrible handwriting as neat as I could make it!

The week followed a similar format to that in Nicaragua but with Country Office presentations being integral to the themes of each session. Again structured around the ICS Programme Quality principles, we covered a wide range of themes from monitoring and evaluating ICS projects through to supporting a diverse range of volunteers. Like Nicaragua there was also space at the end of each day for individual country offices to plan what actions to take forward based on what they'd learned each day.

Talking to Sophia from Y Care International and Daniel from Restless Development

Restless Development Nepal action planning at the end of a day of workshop sessions

Habib from Tajikistan presenting on their regional Tajik/Afghan recruitment model

Gaby from VSO sharing feedback in a plenary session

Feeding back on the monitoring and evaluation timelines

I particularly enjoyed the launch session for the volunteer learning resources I've been working on over the last two months. The resources are designed to support volunteers in their ICS learning journey, enabling them to reflect on key questions on a group and individual basis. I've been in near-continuous proof reading mode over the last month (damn that detail oriented nature of mine!) and they were finally printed just before we left for Bangkok, so now I'm excited about getting them into the hands of the volunteers and hearing about how they are actually used in practice. As a starting point I'll be going to Malawi in April to see how Lattitude Global Volunteering are incorporating the resources into their in-country orientation and training.

Introducing the new Active Citizenship Pack and ICS Learning Journal resources

Small group discussions about the new learning resources

Evaluating the week with post-its (what else?!)

This week has been really interesting but also pretty intense - I barely saw daylight/breathed natural air for 5 days straight, so once I had had my last meeting with the hotel events manager today it was really nice to venture out and see a bit of Bangkok. 35 acres of the bustling Chatuchak market was like going from one extreme to the other with all my senses coming back to life in one hit. I explored the maze of market stalls with Sophia from Y Care International, but even bumped into Mabel and Sheilla from VSO Philippines so 35 acres didn't seem that big after all!

Tuk Tuk mirror selfie

And self selfie

Chatuchak market

35 acres but still bumped into Mabel and Sheilla from VSO Philippines

In the afternoon Sophia and I took the boat along the Chao Phraya river through the centre of Bangkok and went to see the Wat Arun temple before Sophia headed home to the UK and I joined my friend Naomi from London who's working on a BBC documentary about Bangkok airport at the moment. We're off cycling to Ayutthaya (the ancient capital of Thailand) tomorrow. Naomi is a GB triathlete so I'm pretty confident it won't be a little pootle past some paddy fields but hope it doesn't involve tri-suits and 10km splits....