by Valentina Manzato

02 March 2009

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: On a sunny and very hot morning in early February 2008 I landed at a small airport and I was actually there: Phnom Penh! The adventure was starting.

It took me some time to get used to the new place and people and to be fully involved in the office activities, but now that I’m experiencing my last months at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Cambodia, I feel part of this reality.

As a UNV volunteer Intern, I serve as a capacity development expert at the Ministry of Commerce. I work closely with the local capacity building team and with Government officials in order to assess the capacity needs of civil servants.

Being based inside a Government building has its positive and negative sides. I have the opportunity of fully experiencing everyday life from a Cambodian perspective, which is always very interesting. But there are frustrations due to slowdowns and different working habits too.

As part of my daily work at the Ministry, I support the management and coordination of the capacity building pillar of the Trade Sector Wide Approach Programme. This aims to provide assistance to Government officials in the area of trade development. During these months, my tasks and responsibilities have changed and improved according to the level of knowledge that I have gained on the programme.

I’m currently busy setting up an inventory of local training providers, with the aim of providing the Ministry of Commerce with a source of information on training centres, universities and professional schools available in Cambodia. These institutions should be capable of offering trade-related training to Government officials.

Although I sometimes feel stressed as I meet difficulties in coordinating the inventory, and because some local people only see me as a young foreign woman volunteering for a while in Cambodia (and not always to be listened to!), I am satisfied with the trust that I’ve been given. I find it a satisfying challenge to do my best as a UNV volunteer Intern and as a woman serving in a sector – trade - which here in Cambodia is still considered a place for men.

The assignment is also giving me the chance to travel around the country in order to visit various provincial departments of commerce, and to meet officials in the countryside as we complete the capacity needs assessment.

While travelling in the 4x4 vehicle together with my team, I’ve been impressed by the wide historical inheritance of this country. Magnificent ancient temples and stupas appear among green mountains in the forests that separate one village from the other. In the major cities some colonial houses are still part of the urban skyline.

It is not only the environment that affects me, but also the people. I’ve built solid work and friendship relationships with my local colleagues. We share both happy and discouraging moments together - like that time on a Monday morning when the local assistant was particularly stressed by the bad start of the day and I tried to comfort him saying that "it was just another manic Monday", like the song.

This made him laugh so much that now if the week starts off on the wrong foot, we repeat to each other the song’s refrain. The world is so small sometimes! It was just a little and funny detail of a working day like many others, but that laugh and big smile coming from my colleague and friend, who was so upset just some minutes before, helped me to understand the human implication of my UNV assignment.

A human relationship based on trust, tolerance and simplicity is not only a bridge that can help communication between people coming from different cultures, but it’s the most important base in order to make a project work. A project is first of all the people who work on it day after day. Volunteerism for development can come out of unexpected little things if people are really committed to its values.