Bad Leadership

Main Points:

-Some of the volunteers got extremely scared as a drunk man started banging on their glass door. The volunteers did not know why the man was banging on the door, and got extremely scared. Victor, next door, was watching Pitch Perfect and did not respond to the requests of helping them, even though he heard the banging. Additionally, he never followed up on the volunteers. The volunteers felt their safety was compromised and felt ignored when they stated their feelings.

-The leader, never communicated with the group, at all. His girlfriend did. She was the "middle-person." It was very irresponsible.

-When the volunteers confronted him about issues they were concerned about, he turned it on the volunteers. He never addressed any concerns.

-He was very last minute about the airplane group ticket. He told us that we had a day or two to buy the ticket.

The Trip:

I was so excited to go on this trip to volunteer. However, when we got to Vietnam, the group (who went to the rural area) found out that the location was not actually Phan Thiet, but Duc Linh. It was a rural area, which was a nice town with great people. There were so many mosquitoes that bit no matter what mosquito repellent you used. I was very unprepared for the area I was at. If I had known (which a good leader should have done), I would have prepared more games and brought more items for the long month there, as there was no huge 'supermarket' there to buy anything. Additionally, the "leader," was very unorganized. He spent most of the day working for his job via the internet. Also, he said some statements to the group that made people feel uncomfortable. I put quotations around the word "leader" as his girlfriend did the work and effectively communicated with the group. He did not provide competent TAs (and he only provided 2 TAs total). He had a fifteen year old boy that was our TA for one class. There was one other TA, who was excellent, but she had to leave early.

It was an unprofessional organization with an incompetent leader (as he never considered the safety of his volunteers, his relationship with another volunteer made people uncomfortable as they fought often, and he never communicated with the volunteers.)