It's been about a month and some since I visited my blog but I'm never far away from it, sometimes life gets in the way of blogging that's all.
Well, I spent most of May rounding up outstanding administrative issues at the former GCAP offices in CIVICUS House in Newtown. GCAP shut down their offices in Johannesburg because the hunt was still on for a new campaign manager and a mobilisation manager so it was not really clear where these persons would be situated. The logical and most cost-efficient step was for existing staff to work from home.
Where was I positioned within this transitional period? As I mentioned in a previous post, I applied for the position of secretariat assistant but since the recruitment process was stalled for various reasons, I found myself without an anchor so to speak. At this point I was having discussions with the partners of a private business entity that had opened a gallery in 2007 and who were looking for a professional to manage the gallery for them. And best of all the gallery was dealing in Nigerian art, West African art to be precise.
I was torn between accepting their offer and facing the challenge of being instrumental in building up a business or taking the safe route and waiting to be re-instated back into GCAP. There was however no certainty that I would infact be offered a permanent position at GCAP but sometimes one feels safer with the status quo.
I decided to bite the bullet and accept the offer to work with the Africore Group and manage the Africore Gallery. There are a lot of things to consider particularly in this economic climate but I am excited and challenged to do the best I know how to do and to push myself beyond the limits of my area of expertise. To stretch myself mentally and to learn as much as I can from this experience.
Well, I spent most of May rounding up outstanding administrative issues at the former GCAP offices in CIVICUS House in Newtown. GCAP shut down their offices in Johannesburg because the hunt was still on for a new campaign manager and a mobilisation manager so it was not really clear where these persons would be situated. The logical and most cost-efficient step was for existing staff to work from home.
Where was I positioned within this transitional period? As I mentioned in a previous post, I applied for the position of secretariat assistant but since the recruitment process was stalled for various reasons, I found myself without an anchor so to speak. At this point I was having discussions with the partners of a private business entity that had opened a gallery in 2007 and who were looking for a professional to manage the gallery for them. And best of all the gallery was dealing in Nigerian art, West African art to be precise.
I was torn between accepting their offer and facing the challenge of being instrumental in building up a business or taking the safe route and waiting to be re-instated back into GCAP. There was however no certainty that I would infact be offered a permanent position at GCAP but sometimes one feels safer with the status quo.
I decided to bite the bullet and accept the offer to work with the Africore Group and manage the Africore Gallery. There are a lot of things to consider particularly in this economic climate but I am excited and challenged to do the best I know how to do and to push myself beyond the limits of my area of expertise. To stretch myself mentally and to learn as much as I can from this experience.
1 comment:
I think you made a good choice. You can always go back to NGO work. I am a bit impatient with organisations that are so disorganized that they dont have proper positions and procedures in place. 'Work from home', yes, if it is a clearly defined consultant position for a free lancer, but not some mish-mash in between. To trap employees in this sort of consultancy position stuff is bad enough and certainly inflicted upon unskilled workers and the NGO sector should lead with fair employment practices and not copy the bad examples from the corporate sector. So whoever shows the most commitment and the best paycheck should get your approval.
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