Training Update

The past couple of days of training have been great because the sessions are starting to focus on Peace Corps’ development strategies and what is expected of us as volunteers. I have a much better grasp of what my life will be like for the next two years and how to integrate myself into my host community. Now that I have a more realistic view of my role as a volunteer, I feel a million times more confident about starting service. I realized that I am a lot more prepared to do community development work than I thought because of my background in anthropology, the work I’ve done with Students Helping Honduras, and even just my personality.

What I consider the most important and effective aspect of our service is that we are not coming to our communities with an agenda nor is it our job to find things to change or improve. And we aren’t expected to be experts on any one thing. Instead, we have certain tools we can use to get the community to express its own wants and needs. After they have identified things they want to do, we are sort of like their personal cheerleaders who egg them on and support and encourage them as much as possible as they work towards achieving their goals. So we don’t have our own personal projects that we’re working on. Instead, we’re helping to get people more involved in their communities and trying to help them realize their full potential as empowered agents of change.

We’ve also been discussing how Americans have a “doing” mindset, i.e.: what do you do for a living or what did you do today? But for the first few months in our community, our goal isn’t to “do” anything. We are outsiders and our job is to get to know people in our community and make personal connections, not jump in and start changing things. On one hand, I know that at first I will have to battle with my own desire to feel productive or reach certain benchmarks, but on the other hand, it’s very exciting to have the time to truly get to know my community and to be a part of something much bigger than myself.