What we actually do

Being a Volunteer - The First Three Months
Okay so now that I am moving to my site and becoming an actual volunteer I am going to work to keep the blog a little more updated in hopes that I am going to be able to do some more exciting work. Training was beneficial and my Spanish has improved immensely but I am glad it’s over and I can get to something that doesn’t feel like an extension of college.
Speaking of that real work I thought this would be a good time to try to answer the question I got a lot back home, “what does the Peace Corps actually do?” While I can’t answer for every program in the world, I will attempt to explain what the program in Peru is like, specifically that of Youth Development, or YD. There are five different programs in Peru; Youth Development, Small Business, Water and Sanitation, Health, and Environment. As of now two groups come in every year, one in June and one in September, however that is subject to change pending the financial issues in Congress. Fortunately for my group the money is already dedicated for our two years but there is no guarantee for groups following us. However now the June group is YD and Small Business and the other three programs come in together in September. We all go through ten weeks of training that includes both language and technical training for our actual programs. After the ten weeks we are sworn in as volunteers (assuming we meet the requirements such as language and professional development) and get shipped off to our respective sites throughout the country.
There in our first three months we do what we call a ‘community diagnostic’ (somewhat similar to what we did last year in Macro class for those of you in the SW program). In this diagnostic we utilize a manual of tools for getting to know our communities and at the end of three months give a presentation to the community and to members of the Peace Corps Staff on what we have found such as needs, wants, and resources in the community. That information is designed to be the starting point for us to begin our real work in the community. It is encouraged to work alongside other community members in both the diagnostic and beyond to promote sustainability of our projects. Specifically in YD we want to create things that teachers or other community leaders can replicate for other groups after our service has ended.
Due to the nature of the community diagnostic our assignments are not outlined like job descriptions. There is a field of possible programs that we can use and tons of available resources, and of course we can always create our own new projects. There are all sorts of projects from long-term to short-term that we can do. Some examples of the short-term are the World Map Project, a project where together with a group from the community we paint a mural of a map and teach about geography and culture around the world. Another can be teaching English classes (which can also be a long-term project). The teaching English can often be a way to meet people in the community and an easy thing to do when you’re still learning Spanish, and it is also a program in high demand by many communities as they have English classes in the schools but often times those teachers don’t know English that well themselves. In just one visit to my site I was asked a few different times if I could teach English. Long-term projects can be anything from HIV/AIDS education to recycling programs to working on health and diet and much more. We have a lot of leeway in what we want to do which is great because we really have the freedom to tailor projects to the specific needs of our communities. The other programs of course work with different projects which at this point I don’t know a whole lot about. I do have a site-mate that is a Small Business Volunteer so I’m sure I will be learning more about her program.
During the first three months we are also able to start some of the smaller projects (like teaching English) along with working on our diagnostic, but that is going to be my focus for the upcoming time. In my site there have been previous volunteers who have done other diagnostics so I am hopefully going to get a look at those and go from there. I will also continue my Spanish learning process, something I expect to carry on for my total time here.
Hopefully that gives somewhat clearer picture of what I am actually starting to do down here in Peru. When I have a chance I will have some pictures up of training and my site (I know I keep saying that but it is really a big effort to load pictures on the internet here). So keep me updated with what is going on back home and I will try to share some of the amazing experiences I am having in Peru.
Also if you have interest in a quick lesson in all things Peruvian check out the Peru, Nebraska video on YouTube.