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Financial Advisor in India
3 months - Delhi
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Working as a financial manager, volunteer Alasdair MacFarlane was attracted to Challenges Worldwide to realise his desire to ‘do something different, overseas, but using my skills and experience’.
Alasdair was matched to a women’s research and gender studies organisation based in Delhi, the sprawling capital of India. As the pilot volunteer at this CWW partner, Alasdair pioneered the start of a 2 year intervention plan between CWW and the host partner.
Alasdair’s role was to use his financial knowledge and experience to develop an overall financial strategy for the organisation. They had requested someone with Alasdair’s skills in order to assist them in shifting the organisation from a reliance on grant funding to a revenue model over the next 5 years.
Overseen by the Executive Director at the end of his 3 month placement Alasdair submitted three comprehensive documents clearly outlining his proposed strategy, a full budget breakdown & a plan of how the organisation could go about implementation of the strategy in a realistic way.
CWW volunteers will continue to support the host and build on Alasdairs work as the organisation develops and starts to deliver on Alasdairs planning work.
Alasdair says that “on a personal level I have learned so much about the challenges in the developing world and the challenges (India) faces. How do you govern a nation of over one billion people?”
Alasdair was fortunate that in his accommodation were guests of a similar age, doing similar work as him. This meant he had a social network outside of work to informally discuss ‘life in India’. He found living with a host family an interesting way of gaining an insight into what living in India as an Indian was really like. Saying that, he admits it was also pretty stressful at times!
One of Alasdair’s biggest learning curves was in the appreciation of just how huge cultural differences can be. Timekeeping and communication were very difficult to adapt to. Learning to live and work with a less reliable infrastructure, like the frequent power cuts, was also a daily frustration he had to deal with.
“India really is an experience - chaotic, strange, frenzied, relaxed, hot, bureaucratic and maddening at times. I wouldn't have missed it”
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If you are interested in doing a Placement similar to this one, contact us quoting Case Study Reference: India Financial planning (CSR)
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