monday morning

Every week on Monday morning we have a chapel service at work. Each department takes turns being in charge, and this morning it was Microfinance’s turn. Most of the time, departments will ask pastors to come in and speak, or a visiting field member will come in and talk about their work. Most of the Microfinance team is actually gone right now, they are in Africa checking in with the projects we have. Anyway, the few remaining people did chapel today and even though they went in a more non-traditional route, I think they did a fabulous job.

They basically did a background piece on their project, explaining what was new with the MFI division and talking about stories of things that are going on in our project countries. There were numerous slides of people who do programming overseas with us, and as we were watching I found myself being touched. There are so many incredible projects going on in this organization that are making a real difference in people’s lives, especially in microfinance. The loans that our field offices give out everyday help people be another step closer to self-sustaining, and it encourages them to feel empowered when they get the chance to pay back part or all of what they may owe. It is especially interesting, because this organization specializes in establishing microfinance in post-conflict environments that are particularly vulnerable and unstable. These are people who are in desperate need of help, whose countries have a completely demolished infrastructure and no way to provide its citizens aid.

Being here everyday and dealing with mostly administrative stuff that has very little direct impact on programming, it is easy for me to lose sight of my job and whether it is really important or not. It is so easy to think about my frustrations with go-to work, faxing this, copying that, checking this expense report, booking this plane ticket. It becomes frustrating because I don’t feel as if I am making an impact, and I feel like my resources would be better spent out in the field somewhere rather than in a headquarters environment. But when I see faces and hear stories of people who are impacted by our programming, I realize that even the most menial jobs are worth it if it can enable those results, if it can truly help make a difference in people’s lives. I know that despite my unhappiness at times, all the menial jobs I do everyday in my department frees up hours of time from other people who need to devote all of their time to programming. So, at least for today I feel happy about my job.