My professional life has not followed an entirely linear path, and perhaps few people do have a straightforward career trajectory. In reality, one’s life takes turns often affected by family, location, factors of health for those in your life. Sometimes we don’t know when it is our time to leave a position, and begin a new path (should I have remained in this organization for 7 years, or bravely moved forward after three….?). My plan is to be more conscious and intentional about professional development in the next 5 years. For me, this involves an honest appraisal of the limitations and benefits of my past not for profit work experience. I have always been professionally drawn to work with community based organizations in education and advocacy, and I recognize that I am fortunate to have found my way to work that is rewarding and motivating – even if it can involve some chaos and sacrifice on some levels. This work is set in a context of underemployment , unemployment, colonial legacies, human instability resulting from war, and the demise of living wages. Personally, there are drawbacks, downsides, snags and limits to not-for profit work, but varieties of these exist in any sector. I understand, in a better society, jobs supporting people with disabilities (to access training, employment, to gain access to existing legal rights….) would not have to exist. Canada should not rank only 27th out of 29 industrialized countries in the area of children’s health and safety (UNICEF 2013).
Re-building or patching up social programs/ services, or legal aid gives us a sense of being Sisyphus, year after year pushing the same boulder up a hill, only to see it role down again in the absence of long term commitment or will from policy makers. Community based or not for profit organizations often struggle with martyrism defining organizations, lack of wages and benefits, dysfunctional boards and even competition among other not-for-profits for funding. Concurrently, they make incredible achievements with few resources and frequent collaboration and ingenuity.
The challenges that I face professionally could be reflected in the challenges of community-based organizations: organizational demands that prevent long term planning and projects, lack of updated access to IT and professional development, and a need for more consciously building relationships with stakeholders and community partners.
On the positive side, there is tremendous diversity among not for profit organizations. I am now keenly interested in being involved in more stakeholder processes that support the scale up and sustainability of important social educational programs and the PIDP has given me confidence to effectively present information and workshops to diverse groups. In the next five years I would like to gain professional experience in several areas: environmental and economic disputes/ conflicts, building on earlier work/study in the area of forest tenure reform, violence prevention programs, and adult education supporting social change among marginalized people. I particularly admire the Living Adult Education: Freire in Scotland project which applies a methodology that empowers marginalized women raising children in a neighbourhood in Scotland, with the use of Friere’s approach to critical theory/ learning in adulthood and therefore very focussed on human agency.
The really positive outcome of work in the not for profit world is that one is “cross trained” in so many areas: fund development, education, outreach, advocacy,and more. Specifically, I have an interest in local Red Cross work in the area of violence prevention, and plan to contribute volunteer hours to undertaking training through RespedED. I will complete my PIDP, with only media enhanced learning, and my captstone to complete. I understand that how organizations collect and maintain data is increasingly important in order to develop more partnerships, and I would like to further develop my skills in capturing important data and creating effective communication strategies such as “dashboards” to communicate the information. Again, through the PIDP, I will be able to provide internal and external training and workshops much more effectively so this program has been key to my professional development.
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