Wok bilong me (my work)

The West New Britain Provincial AIDS Committee (WNBPAC) works out of a small office on Provincial Administration’s Division of Health grounds, alongside Kimbe General Hospital.

Simon on the DoH grounds

The first couple weeks of my work here involved liaising with the HRC (Maryanne - HIV Response Coordinator), the M&E Officer (Ellen – Monitoring and Evaluation) and the LTV (Simon – VSO’s Long Term Volunteer Capacity Builder) to discuss areas where my experiences would be put to good use, and to identify objectives for my placement. ‘Excel is your friend’ as Ellen puts it…the last two weeks have basically been devoted to making Action Plans, Workplans, checklists, schedules, budgets and pretty much anything else that you can imaging fitting into a spreadsheet (or a table in Word when I need a change of scenery). I will basically be working trying to improve everything to do with data from the stakeholder level up to the National level. Data collection, quality, record-keeping, compilation, analysis, reporting, prioritization, and use – you name it. The wonderful thing about working at the Provincial level is that we are in regular contact with the stakeholders who directly carry out HIV/AIDS related activities in the field, all the way up the complex plans and policies of the National AIDS Council and international funding and support bodies. It is a position that is well in line with my experience and with the direction I hope to take with my career.The objectives we have laid out are motivating to aspire to, and the terms of reference allow enough flexibility to take the posting in the direction that WNBPAC sees most beneficial. 

Ellen and I on the way to the office

Consequently, Ellen and I have ended up with an outreach plan that would be labeled almost insane by some working in the field. At a minimum, over the next 5 months we hope to carry out at least 71 days of outreach, and the more money that we can save per trip, the more trips we will be able to do.Such stakeholder visits are key to meeting our objectives, as many relate to improving the quality and flow of data between them and us. The geographical constraints of working in West New Britain mediate that with the exception of settlements along the North coast highway, all outreach will need to be done by boat trips around the exterior of the island. The first outreach is scheduled for next week, where we will undertake an 11 day trip from Kimbe counter-clockwise along the coastline all the way to the south coast border between WNB and East New Britain at Amio.