It has been six months since I began serving as a Banyan Impact Fellow in Hyderabad at Kriti Social Initiatives. One of the beauties of this fellowship is that you get to work alongside grassroots NGOs that have been working closely within the communities to bring about a change in society. The structure of AIF’s Banyan Impact Fellowship is such that we are placed with one of the partner organizations of AIF to work on a particular project of the Host Organization (HO). I was very fortunate to be matched with an organization that works on the aspect of education in order to effect systemic and behavioral change in the field of education.
While you serve and work closely with the organization, you tend to become a part of their system in no time. As a fellow who’s new to the organization, I had to map my way through the systems and the people to find my place in it. Your Host Organization, or host community, is one of the most important aspects of your entire fellowship journey. It becomes extremely crucial to build and maintain a good relationship with your HO to ensure your journey is smooth, fun, and at the same time full of learnings and unlearnings. In this blog, I will talk about how to build a cordial relationship with your HO based on my experiences and observations.
- Communicate actively
Communicating actively with your supervisor(s), coworkers, and host community members is essential for establishing a strong and trustworthy bond with your HO Active communication about your project will reduce the complexity of your project and keep your boat sailing. I have been communicating at least 3–4 times a week with my supervisor, which has helped me understand their expectations of me. It is often beneficial to reach out to your supervisor for any kind of assistance so that they are aware of your progress and both you and the supervisor can determine whether you are on the same page or not. A good practice is to take the initiative to set up monthly review meetings to discuss the progress and outcomes and to assess the scope of improvement in terms of your project. It leaves no room for misinterpretation, reduces the chances of having any conflicts, and helps gain trust.
- Volunteer in other tasks
The fellowship is all about you exploring, learning, and unlearning a lot of things apart from your assigned project. Keep yourselves engaged and involved in tasks that are not directly related to your project. For example, I volunteered to design the curriculum for one of the mentoring programs that my HO conducts, which is not directly related to my project, but it provided me with insights into curriculum design and helped me understand the depth of work that my HO does. This way, you don’t limit your growth to a certain topic but get to know the vision and driving force of your Host Organization. This will assist you in broadening your perspective and your horizons on the thematic area of your HO, as well as building relationships with other teams within your organization.
- Participate in events
Taking part in events that are organized by your HO gives you an opportunity to become a part of your larger host community. Participating or volunteering in events adds to your skills, which may or may not be directly related to your project but surely adds to your personality and shows your commitment to the organization. My Host Organization recently hosted a Woman’s Day Celebration event, for which I assisted other team members in planning and organizing the event and was also the ‘Master of Ceremonies’ (MC) for the event. This gave me an opportunity to work collaboratively with other staff members and an opportunity to network and build professional relations that could be useful for me in the future.
- Talk about things other than your project.
I personally am not a big enthusiast when it comes to having small talks; for me, conversations that are deep and thorough mean a lot. But sometimes you have to take the initiative and talk about things that are not necessarily related to your work. For example, me and my supervisor often talk about events, cafes, restaurants, and parks that I can visit in the city. How can I make the most of my time in Hyderabad and have fun apart from work. This allowed me to get to know my coworkers outside of work and learn about their similarities and differences.
- Set your boundaries.
Last but not the least, one of the most important aspects in building a good bond with your HO is to set boundaries. It is very important that while you are doing the above mentioned things and putting yourself out there to build a good bond with your HO, one should always set-up certain boundaries in terms of your personal and professional lives. Professionally, it is important to set-up clear boundaries about your competencies and how far you can stretch yourself. This opens a room for you and your supervisor to discuss if any other additional resources are required to accomplish a certain target.
Remember, you spend almost 85% of time with your co-workers at your HO rather than with your co-fellows during the fellowship, which makes it important that you have a cordial relationship with your co-workers which eventually adds value to your fellowship journey. Always remember to be yourself by keeping the values of empathy and kindness at the core of what you do, and remember that your supervisor is a human too :). In the end, all that matters are your learnings and the relationships that you build in these 8-9 months.
These are some of my inputs based on my experiences so far in the fellowship. This has helped me build a good bond with my Host Organization and the host community, which has made my fellowship experience smooth and enriching.
