Audrey Robinson from Co. Mayo, is sharing her skills in Sierra Leone
Audrey Robinson, a 47 year old business person from Killala Co. Mayo, is currently sharing her skills in Sierra Leone with VSO.
After undertaking a variety of communications and business development roles in Irish companies, Audrey decided this year that a more modest life helping others was for her.
Having departed in June 2011, Audrey took up a challenging 1-year placement in Sierra Leone. Now she is working as a Business Services Development Adviser with a local organisation called AFFORD that promotes employment by supporting small businesses.
During her time in Africa Audrey will be imparting crucially needed knowledge to businesses in Sierra Leone, and will thus play a major role in developing its economy, which has been devastated by numerous conflicts in recent years.
Audrey speaks about her first few weeks:
“I am collected each morning in the VSO four wheel drive pickup which takes me and the other volunteers to the VSO office for our first two weeks of training. We are a multicultural and multi-disciplined group consisting of: a Canadian who will be working in water management; two Ugandans, one working in business development and one in marketing; A Kenyan also working in Marketing; a New Zealand statistician who will be working with a government department, an Indian who will work on fundraising and me. I will be working in business development and so am grateful to find that there is another ‘newbee’ working in my field.
The training itself has been fascinating covering everything from the cultural aspects of the country, lessons in Krio (the local language), health and safety issues to an analysis of the Secure Livelihoods Programme area in which we are all working. The sessions have been lively and interactive and the lunch time discussions even more fun as we compare cultures and attitudes to everything from food to the amount of housework men should do in the home. Us opoto’s (white people) are also getting a good slagging from the other Africans as we constantly complain about the heat.”
