Hélène Gagaille and Simon Manning are two of the amazing volunteers who greatly contribute to PN’s activities each year (117 volunteers in 2015!). They led Passerelles numériques’ new website project with success. Crossed interview with our 2 favorite digital nomads!
Hello Hélène, Simon! Can you briefly introduce yourselves to our readers?
Hélène – I’m French but I’ve been living in Australia for 7 years. I’ve been working in communication for the last six years but specialized in digital communication and production in the last three. Before joining PN Cambodia, I was working as a Digital Production manager in an agency based in Perth.
Simon – I’m from Perth, Australia. I studied a few things (film, photography, psychology) but ended up in software development, which has been pretty cool! I’ve been working in a small mobile development agency for about four and a half years, working mostly on iOS and Android projects for a broad range of clients, from health insurance companies, to ISPs, to government transport departments. For the last year and a half, I’ve worked remotely, initially in Berlin, then a few places around Europe, before heading to Cambodia!
You’ve just spent 8 months (Hélène) and 5 months (Simon) volunteering for Passerelles numériques. What brought you to us? How did hear about us?
Hélène – A longtime dream! I decided to take a year off work to travel in Southeast Asia. I didn’t want to do the usual backpacker tour so I looked for an NGO where I could work and help on a project. One of my sister’s friends actually told me about PN. I later looked up the website (didn’t judge) and got in touch with you guys. I totally clicked with the project! Delphine, PN’s Communication manager in France, told me they had a project to rebuild the website (which was obvious), on hold for a while… so I jumped at the opportunity!
Simon – I learned about PN through Hélène and was instantly drawn to it. Working in tech, I thought what PN is doing was not only important and inspiring, but one of the most effective initiatives I could imagine. With such a low barrier to entry (a computer and an Internet connection), but with infinite possibilities, helping a new generation to get involved in tech and software development is an amazing mission.
Yes indeed, you led a very important and big project for PN: the rebuild of our website. What are the main challenges you faced?
Hélène – The start of the project was quite straightforward, with the audit and planning of it. I think the main challenges were probably the content production and the production of the site in three languages, French, English and Vietnamese.
One of the other challenging parts was the secured donation section of the website. Obviously one of the main sections! We wanted to improve the user experience, make it as easy and user friendly as possible and also responsive to all types of screen devices. Simon recommended a great service, which we incorporated into our website, enabling customization, supporting many languages and donations from various countries.
I was a little worried about the decision-making process with the different stakeholders but this was very smooth and easy!
Simon – I think the biggest challenge for me was time. During the project, I was still working for my company back in Australia four days per week, and working with PN on the website one day per week. I started in March, and also had to take a month-long trip back to Australia for work in between. So with ~4 months and one day a week, it’s about 16 days. Not really realistic to create a website! So we had to be pretty effective with our use of time, making sure we had done our research and always knew the best path forward each week. Helene helped tremendously with that, and had already done most of the planning before I started, which really saved us a lot of time.
On the technical side of things, setting up our secured donation page was pretty painless, but we had a tricky requirement to automatically create fiscal receipts (as a PDF) for donations from France or Hong Kong, and each had a completely different kind of receipt. These are automatically sent to the donor’s email. It was an interesting challenge!
Was this your first/only experience as a volunteer?
Hélène – I volunteered one week at a Mother Teresa center in Kolkata a very long time ago but that was it!
While in Cambodia I also volunteered with Plastic Free Cambodia (PFC). It’s a project that started in Australia a few years ago, and was recently implemented in Cambodia. PFC is raising awareness about the over consumption of plastic at schools, NGOs, restaurants, private companies, and about its impact on our health and on the environment. Actually, PNC actively took part in this challenge (see here).
Simon – I’ve done some teaching before on software development before, taught young kids to code. PN was my first big volunteering project though, and I can only hope I get the chance to do it again in the future!
What did you gain through this experience?
Hélène – It was an amazing project to work on from planning to go-live and I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished. I got to learn more about the CMS we used, some technical elements too. But moreover, it was a very rich human experience. Parallel to the website project, I also contributed to the daily operational communication at PNC. So I got to work with many people on different projects: the 2015 graduation ceremony event, the student club newspaper, the Khmer New Year greeting card contest, the implementation of a recycling system in the center, and a little bit on the Solidarity Act too.
Being part of the daily life of the center is amazing and I will cherish these memories forever. Seeing the students every day, being part of the activities of the campus and dancing at the student parties, just to name a few!
Simon – On the technical side of things, I got to learn front-end development, which I had never really dug into before. But like Helene, I think the human experience is completely incomparable to anything else I’ve done in my life. Getting to know the people and students behind PN and learning more about PN’s mission was amazing. I’ll never forget it, and I hope I can come back and visit soon and regularly!
You were based in Phnom Penh and the PN Cambodia center. Can you share with us one of your best memories of your life here?
Hélène – Living in Phnom Penh can be challenging in itself. Everything is so different to what we’re used to! Some of my best memories are simply cycling around Phnom Penh at any time of the day and seeing what’s going on in this crazy city!
Simon – My best memory is probably going to sound really boring, but I think it was after I had settled into Phnom Penh life: I was riding my bike to work — wearing shorts and a t-shirt, a million miles away from normal office life — and had a really simple and pure feeling that life was pretty good. It gave me a new perspective on what happiness is and what’s important in life.
You are now traveling around Asia, what are your plans for the next few months?
Hélène – We were in Japan for the last few weeks. Now I’m in Myanmar, discovering another great Southeast Asian country. Then the plan is to go to Laos and eventually head back towards Europe by train.
Simon – I’m still in Japan for a bit longer, currently in Kobe, but I’m flying out of Tokyo to South Korea very soon! Hoping to see some beautiful autumn colours. We’ll be around Vietnam for Christmas, but who knows after that!
We are very proud of our new website
and it was amazing having you around! Thanks again!
