Dear Bernie, Jack and everyone!

I've been reading the recent responses to the video stuff and people's reactions to them with great 
interest, but haven't had much time to respond. As I pack up to leave Beijing to come to England 
for a month before going back to Guyuan as an independent worker, I've been thinking about the 
qualities of humanity represented by the utube presentations Jack compiled, and all your 
responses to them. Like you, Bernie, I was also once convinced of the superiority of text over the 
visual. The work that you're doing, Jack, is really important in terms of finding ways to represent 
truths realistically, helpfully and authentically. I really like the way the visuals help us to clarify 
what it is we're trying to do and in the name of what.

Friday was my last day as a volunteer with VSO, an organisation I have worked with for over five 
years. Its slogan is 'sharing skills, saving lives', something I find has grown in dynamism and life-
affirming energy, the longer I have remained with the organisation. My brief there was to work 
with colleagues (about twelve of them) on action research enquiries, and also to take a look at 
their monitoring and evaluation procedures in the light of an impending whole-country review in 
November 2007. If we 'fail' the review, we'll be closing the VSO China programme after March 
2009.

I don't know whether the following anecdote is meaningful for anyone else, but I offer it here as a 
celebration of something wonderfully human and inspiring, something, I hope you'll agree, we can 
all recognise. Something that shows that what is remembered isn't necessarily ideas, but, as in 
recent postings from me and others, more akin to love, respect, fairness and justice.

On Thursday last my colleagues took me for lunch in a really lovely restaurant and as we ate and 
drank toasts, they decided it would be a good game to say something about Moira! This is so 
Chinese. 'What enduring memory of Moira do we have?' the country-director asked. I suggested 
that my ability to leave the table pronto was a good one, but that was ignored!

What was really fascinating to me, was the qualities they drew out had little to do with the quality 
of my work in terms of ideas, and almost all about the way they see me interacting with people 
and how I treat others. Each person told a personal anecdote that was, on the surface, trivial and 
yet not so. A young colleague with tears in her eyes, talked about the fact that she had learnt so 
much from the way in which when I'm getting a drink in the office of a morning, I go round to 
everybody to ask what they want. She said that she had not seen anyone else doing this kind of 
thing so consistently, and that she realised that it wasn't my ideas that stuck with her, it was the 
way I showed respect to others. One colleague mentioned the time when I said in a one-to-one 
meeting we should perhaps concentrate on something she was worried about rather than 
continuing the Action Planning session we had arranged for. I'd forgotten the incident but she said 
she never would. She said she didn't realise she could be more important than a scheduled 
meeting. Another colleague said that because of her daughter having sudden onset asthma, my 
internet search and discussions with my sister whose son had the same problem at the same age 
as her daughter, was something she'd never forget. She had tears in her eyes too. And this is 
China where people don't cry that in public.

My point? Everyone said that the demonstrations of respect for them as unique individuals had 
really moved them and some mentioned times when they had acted differently as a result of their 
insights about the importance of relationships in any endeavour. It's so moving because it 
vindicates so much of what I believe about process and people, and means that the ideas we have 
been sharing in the office may truly have a chance to embed themselves in meaningful ways with 
the individuals concerned and within the organisation because of the nature of respect and trust 
that has built up between us.

I offer this anecdote because it moves me, because it reveals what matters about being human. If 
our research can focus on ways to help us show respect, to help us make connections and walk 
around from inside others, then surely this current research has to be very important indeed. I 
wish, so much, that this had been videoed. NOT because of what they said about an individual but 
because of what it says about all of us. That's what I want to understand better.

Warmest regards to you all,
Moira