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I think one way to find out whether we are welcomed by villagers, it to pay visits to the village/community before we send our teams there and do our own ‘Community Research’. Find out:

- What the village is like, what people do, what the circumstances are like, what keeps them busy, whether there are local key informants/institutions such as 村委会 or village heads to talk with, (orientation);
- Whether the locals have their own community activities already (if yes, what kind, how often, when, who participates, who organizes them);
- Whether the locals have experience with other ‘outsiders’(university students, other NGO’s, research groups, etc.) who went there (if yes, what did they do, when, with whom, for how long, how did the locals experience that, what were the expectations beforehand, what did the stay of ‘outsiders’ leave behind, positive/negative effects on local community, wishes the locals have after the ‘outsides’ left, etc);
- What the local understanding is of RCEF as an organization (our mission, goal, strategy);
- What the local understanding is of what RCEF comes to do in their villages (what kind of projects, with who, when, how long, activities involved);
- What expectations they have towards RCEF in the future (what they think we can do for them, help them with, etc.);

I think by researching these questions, you can find out a bit about their perception of RCEF or ‘outsiders who come to do something’ in general.

After spending time in 4 our of school sites, my general impression is quite positive actually. The 9 teachers I spoke to (who all attended the VP training) wish for us to come back every year, most of them say 2 weeks out of the whole summer is too short. And 3 of the 4 schools mentioned themselves that they wish we would place one of our volunteers there for at least a year to teach and work together with the local teachers. The teachers said they see us as complementary to their work; “You guys can do what we normally cannot do, you can teach the students the creative subjects such as Arts, Music, PE and Theatre. We don’t have the time nor the knowledge to teach these subjects”. They all realize that the students miss this ‘well round development’. They would like to see it in the students, but they don’t feel like they can do it themselves under the current education system and that’s why they like our presence in the summer to ‘complement’ what they can’t do.

All the teachers liked to interact with our volunteers, to spend time with them, to learn from them. Although being with the volunteers did give some teachers a sense of ‘less worthiness’ because they felt less educated, less knowledgeable and less experienced about the outside world, it was in turn an extra motivation for them to work harder, to learn more and to get more out of their lives. So from my experience, I do think that we’re very welcomed by the teachers.

Of course there were some issues here and there: one teacher said better agreements should be made between the hosts and the volunteers who stay at their homes; that volunteers should know more about local customs and locals way of life; one teacher said he could see that some volunteers were really serious in their work and that some were in the village ‘just to look around’ or ‘to play’; one teacher wished our volunteers would be more professional in the subjects they teach, etc. These probably can be solved with better communication and more background information about the sites like Ting said, and better training and selection of our volunteers where we’re already working on.

Another thing is that teachers, students and villagers don’t always know what RCEF does, where we stand for, what our mission and philosophy is, etc. For all of the teachers it was quite vague, they do relate it to terms such as ‘quality education’, ‘well round development’ and ‘student centered teaching’, but none of them could really give the total picture. I think this is also related to the fact that we ourselves are continuously developing, changing and improving our mission statement. Teachers also said themselves that they know that we are a young organization and that we’re looking for our own ‘way’ of carrying out projects.

Concerning the parents, I think this is a hard case because I think parents (plus teachers in general) and us have different perceptions of what we like the students to learn. I think many parents still like to see more ‘tangible’ results such as good grades, the product, and we go more for the process. So although if a student changed significantly through VP in the eyes of our volunteers, the local teachers who participated and through my eyes as an evaluator (because we value the skills), it does not mean that the parents will agree what their child has changed (because they value the direct outcome in grades). Sometimes I also ask myself -although it might sound a bit harsh- what do these parents actually know about their our child? Not all the parents seem to care about what happens at school, how their child is doing, what their children learn, and what skills they got, as long as they get good grades, they’re fine and satisfied. I think Diane also wrote a bit about this in another blog post (‘Meet the parents’). I also heard myself that some parents and teachers think that the children are not learning something substantial during VP, but I think we have different perspectives on what this substantial thing is.

@ 1) program evaluation: I totally agree that we should have evaluation tools, that we should keep on using them and improving them. I also think that sometimes it is said too easily than done. In my opinion, it is not something that every volunteer can ‘just do’ with either handing out surveys or a list of questions. It also involves the skills that someone should have to get the right and valid answers – what environment should you create for students to fill in surveys, or how should you approach villagers/parents to know what you want to know? Volunteers could get a crash course in this during the VP training, but we need the trainers for that, and the time. Or we should have evaluators going back to the sites, but we also need manpower for that.

@ 2) getting a truthful answer: also this involves some skills in trying to get the answer you want, if possible seen the cultural/hierarchical context as Ting mentioned. I sometimes also wonder whether we can get that ‘true’ answer from parents. The ones I talked to, also general villagers, usually say ”hen hao hen hao” when asking what they think of our VP. I don’t always think that they are just being polite, I think that many of them just really don’t know what else to say because they weren’t really interested or involved in the first place. I don’t think they’re used to being asked their opinions and therefore don’t always think too much about something, or form an opinion about something. I think that in our society we are taught to express our opinion and form our own thoughts, while local villagers might not be so used to that, so they might get overwhelmed as well. I’m not saying that none of the villagers have an opinion, because there are (the village head, village committees, etc), but parents in general might not have given it so much thought. I do find that men have more to say or the express than women.

I also experienced this with children: they are not so used to express their opinion, and that someone who is older asks for their thoughts about something serious. They can be afraid of the interviewer, they can be afraid of the interview setting, they can be afraid to answer the wrong answers and therefore tell me ‘socially desirable answers’. Also here it involves the right setting, the right attitude, the right questions.