Tuesday November 18th 2003
Clearing Out the SNV building I got two Gorilla skulls. Oh man. They are very very cool. It almost makes up for them bailing… well, almost. So, there is a large gorilla skull and a small one. The large one is.. massive. Larger than my head, huge teeth, and it has a sharp edge on the backside that I can’t really figure out. The small one has a giant crack along the back. Apparently the cause of death.
Arlette showed up late in the afternoon. We, the volunteers of the east, had a meeting in which she told us that our –comitee of the east- was welcomed by the program office, but they have no money for us, and aren’t obligated to listen to our recommendations. She did however answer a lot of questions that I have with one tidbit. The VSO’s funding is drying up… well, that may be an overstatement.. but they have less money now, than before. This puts everything in perspective. They had just started to impliment a massively ambitious (and massively flawed) new strategic direction, and the legs got cut out from under them. There is also no small amount of denial about the implications of this. Their funding comes primarily from the government, so when it gets cut, it isn’t coming back, and is probably soon to be followed by more. Not only that, but a wounded organization tend to suck protective money to the beurocratic layer, so there will be even less money available to do the actual work. On top of that, they are cutting 5% across the board, instead of cutting vertically.. so basically each program office has been asked to get more ambitious with less. This is a total recipe for pain… if not disaster.
Arlette also took us out to dinner Chez Jacky, so how bad could it really be?