My name is Guillermo de la Figuera Morales, I am a Spaniard civil engineer and from the last two months I have been working as a volunteer at Renewable World Kathmandu office.
Guillermo in Nepal Katmandu
Here I want to present a personal reflection about life inside the office, so, it should be understood and judged just as a personal experience. Finishing my presentation, my expertise areas are hydraulics, energy and water supply. I have previous experience on site in third world countries, both in Kenya and Cameroon. In the private sector I worked as business consultant and nuclear engineer.
One of the most surprising facts about the daily work in the office is the country where it is placed. It sounds obvious, but, for the people who do not know Nepal, I want to remark how fantastic this country is. Absolutely everyone, inside and outside the office, will welcome you with a beautiful smile. There is not a single Nepali who would reject to help you, and at the office it is even better. Our office is sharing the building with IDE and all the staff from both organizations is interested in my personal well-being, working progress and happiness. With some of them I cannot communicate at all because they do not speak English. However there is not any barrier for helping or smiling me; always.
Nowadays, the RW staffs in KTM consist in three people:
Lata Shrestha is the senior project manager in the office. She is very smart and she has twelve years of experience working in the UK. She is always very busy because she is the main responsible in the office, and, furthermore she recently got a son. But somehow, she always find the time for helping the other members. Her social perspective of the Nepal challenges, field experience in the country and inside RW, sums a huge added value for the office and the organization.
Baburam Paudel is civil engineer as me, but he also has studied a postgraduate in renewable energies in Japan. He is the senior technical project manager. He is also very smart and hard worker. The most impressive is that Baburam is not only an engineer able to understand technical problems, he has seven years of experience working in Afghanistan and he has developed a huge capacity to understand and tackle social impacts in the communities.
Laksa Shaky is also covering an intern position as me. She is studying BA at the same time that she takes care of all the administrative labour in the office. She has always a smile on her face and she is very efficient. She was recently incorporated to the office and I am sure that she will give her best to RW in the next future.
About my work: I am in charge of three projects: M&E, Metering and Solar MUS, which I will be blogging about in the future. The most surprising of my short experience in RW has been the super-professional way of working in the whole NGO (also in other offices). There is no difference with any of the private companies where I have been working before, and this fact allows the organization to maximise the potential of the crew, funds and projects. At the end this is translated into a super-efficient work, and therefore in the projects excellence.