The Great Circle
Two of the things us volunteers ask ourselves while serving, are; what useful skills am I gaining during my time here, and what skills did I bring down here with me? In slightly different words it’s; how can I really help my community, and, how is this time preparing me for my future? These questions are much more popular with the younger set…just out of university, still trying to figure out what they want to do, ect… For me it takes a different form. I am constantly amazed at how frequently some skill from my “diverse” past becomes useful and needed down here! Who would have thought that a “teacher/biologist/firefighter/construction monitor/environmental consultant/project manager/gardener/park maintenance worker/painter/cook/film editor/who-knows-what-else… is such great preparation for a Peace Corp Volunteer?
Take the other day. I was down in the garden doing some clearing with my cuma, when I realized it needed some sharpening. So I pulled out the “lima” (file) I had recently bought and tried to find a comfortable position to sharpen it in. Turns out there isn’t a really comfortable position for this tool. However, those hundreds of hours of tool sharpening while working as a Hotshot, sure did come in handy! I’m sure it would have flummoxed those recent grad type volunteers, good thing I spent those 7 season fighting fires!
Later that same day I needed to write my part of a solicitation for funds to operate a camp/workshop for youth. I had volunteered to write up information about the communities that we were taking the youth from. Surprise, this is just like writing up all of those background sections of environmental assessments! Even more so because two of the three communities were ones I knew pretty much nothing about. Having written numerous descriptions of places I had never actually been to or seen while preparing environmental documents, this didn’t phase me in the slightest.
A few weeks ago, the association that I work with on the worm compost project had to give a report on the project in order to secure funding for the second phase of the project. This had to be done in front of a panel of donors, and an audience of peers. The format was basically an interview, with us explaining how great we are, that we have the proven abilities to perform the next phase of the project, and why we deserve being funded again. Sound familiar consultant types? Sure, the only thing we were lacking, which I unfortunately decided to remedy, was a good powerpoint presentation!
In reality Peace Corps volunteers are mostly put into a situation where they are expected to be “expertos” in some thing or another, and of course they are not. In my particular program for instance, you would think I might be somewhat proficient in “Agro-Forestry”. Well, I do have some forestry background, but really, does any of it apply to the tropics? I also have a bit more agricultural background then a lot of the younger set these days… because I at least grew up in rural communities that were agricultural. Also, while I was growing up, California was more known for Ag, than for tech. Still, what do I really know about agriculture? Not much. So, what do us volunteers bring to the table so to speak?
This issue came up while I was participating in a review of our Program Plan. We are getting ready to write up the new plan for the next 5 years, and brought together a group of current volunteers to review, and advise. One of the first things to come up is that the current program is largely technical, and that the volunteers simply don’t have the technical backgrounds to really run with the program. Not only that, but in the country there are plenty of “tecnicos” who do have these skills, and work with many of the communities that we are in.
We decided to do something that is quintessential PC, we used a community diagnostic tool, called a FODA (at least in Spanish speaking counties) to look at our own program. This stands for Forteleza, Oportunidades, Debilidades, y Amenaza, or in English, Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats. Without going into a lot of boring detail, one of the interesting things to come out of it was that we did think that the volunteers brought a lot of very valuable skills to their communities, but that they lay more in the realm of cultural strengths of the US. Meaning things like ability to organize, knowing how to find and absorb new information, intuitive knowledge of business and money, and social networking skills. Most of the successful volunteers were really making use of one or more of these kinds of skills, rather than the hard-core technical knowledge.
To bring this entry back around towards where it started, I’m not going to go into the planning process in great detail, the important thing is that as critical as some of us wanted to be, we really did find some great strengths that volunteers bring to their communities, they just may not be the ones that people who come to change the world expect. They all work much more slowly, and mostly through constant exposure to another way of thinking.
To close, I will also point out that here I am down in El Salvador, yet again working on plans and planning. We were even making vision statements, and talking about SMART goals! What’s the lesson here? Maybe something like; no matter if you “run away” from, or decide to drastically change your life, your past will always come back to influence your present and future. It is not a bad thing, far from it… but you should take this into account as you make decisions.
Oh, and to put an even sharper point on this… at this moment, Katie is down in San Salvador, working on computers! Anyone remember her love for this activity! She is pulling hard drives, cleaning keyboards, reformatting disks, and installing new programs, woo hoo! It is all to help get some computers for her school up here in El Centro, but still a bit ironic! Even better will be when next school year (school here starts in January) we are both called on to teach classes on computers. Heh! Good times!
Take the other day. I was down in the garden doing some clearing with my cuma, when I realized it needed some sharpening. So I pulled out the “lima” (file) I had recently bought and tried to find a comfortable position to sharpen it in. Turns out there isn’t a really comfortable position for this tool. However, those hundreds of hours of tool sharpening while working as a Hotshot, sure did come in handy! I’m sure it would have flummoxed those recent grad type volunteers, good thing I spent those 7 season fighting fires!
Later that same day I needed to write my part of a solicitation for funds to operate a camp/workshop for youth. I had volunteered to write up information about the communities that we were taking the youth from. Surprise, this is just like writing up all of those background sections of environmental assessments! Even more so because two of the three communities were ones I knew pretty much nothing about. Having written numerous descriptions of places I had never actually been to or seen while preparing environmental documents, this didn’t phase me in the slightest.
A few weeks ago, the association that I work with on the worm compost project had to give a report on the project in order to secure funding for the second phase of the project. This had to be done in front of a panel of donors, and an audience of peers. The format was basically an interview, with us explaining how great we are, that we have the proven abilities to perform the next phase of the project, and why we deserve being funded again. Sound familiar consultant types? Sure, the only thing we were lacking, which I unfortunately decided to remedy, was a good powerpoint presentation!
In reality Peace Corps volunteers are mostly put into a situation where they are expected to be “expertos” in some thing or another, and of course they are not. In my particular program for instance, you would think I might be somewhat proficient in “Agro-Forestry”. Well, I do have some forestry background, but really, does any of it apply to the tropics? I also have a bit more agricultural background then a lot of the younger set these days… because I at least grew up in rural communities that were agricultural. Also, while I was growing up, California was more known for Ag, than for tech. Still, what do I really know about agriculture? Not much. So, what do us volunteers bring to the table so to speak?
This issue came up while I was participating in a review of our Program Plan. We are getting ready to write up the new plan for the next 5 years, and brought together a group of current volunteers to review, and advise. One of the first things to come up is that the current program is largely technical, and that the volunteers simply don’t have the technical backgrounds to really run with the program. Not only that, but in the country there are plenty of “tecnicos” who do have these skills, and work with many of the communities that we are in.
We decided to do something that is quintessential PC, we used a community diagnostic tool, called a FODA (at least in Spanish speaking counties) to look at our own program. This stands for Forteleza, Oportunidades, Debilidades, y Amenaza, or in English, Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats. Without going into a lot of boring detail, one of the interesting things to come out of it was that we did think that the volunteers brought a lot of very valuable skills to their communities, but that they lay more in the realm of cultural strengths of the US. Meaning things like ability to organize, knowing how to find and absorb new information, intuitive knowledge of business and money, and social networking skills. Most of the successful volunteers were really making use of one or more of these kinds of skills, rather than the hard-core technical knowledge.
To bring this entry back around towards where it started, I’m not going to go into the planning process in great detail, the important thing is that as critical as some of us wanted to be, we really did find some great strengths that volunteers bring to their communities, they just may not be the ones that people who come to change the world expect. They all work much more slowly, and mostly through constant exposure to another way of thinking.
To close, I will also point out that here I am down in El Salvador, yet again working on plans and planning. We were even making vision statements, and talking about SMART goals! What’s the lesson here? Maybe something like; no matter if you “run away” from, or decide to drastically change your life, your past will always come back to influence your present and future. It is not a bad thing, far from it… but you should take this into account as you make decisions.
Oh, and to put an even sharper point on this… at this moment, Katie is down in San Salvador, working on computers! Anyone remember her love for this activity! She is pulling hard drives, cleaning keyboards, reformatting disks, and installing new programs, woo hoo! It is all to help get some computers for her school up here in El Centro, but still a bit ironic! Even better will be when next school year (school here starts in January) we are both called on to teach classes on computers. Heh! Good times!
posted by Jon & Katie | 8:44 AM
1 Comments:
This is great info to know.
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