The Extension Decision: the Nitty Gritty on Extending (pt. II)

This is the second post in this series on extending service beyond the initial two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  The prelude to this post gives the story of my thoughts on extension for the first year and a half of service.  This post covers practical policy aspects of extension.

Before covering my decision-making process regarding extension (pt. III) and the specifics of what I would likely be doing during an extension (pt. IV), it occurred to me that for those readers who aren’t familiar with the bureaucratic details of my world, a brief overview is in order so as to make sense of the rest of these posts.  As such, this one is mostly for those back home who aren’t so steeped in handbooks, policy guidelines, and other such light reading on the details of Peace Corps.

Upon the successful completion of two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer (not including training), a small group of volunteers may elect to extend their service.  The “extension” is calculated from the original Close of Service (COS) date, which is two years from the day that a Trainee takes the oath and becomes a full volunteer.  They then receive a new COS date reflecting the term of extension.  In the PC vernacular, a person who has extended beyond their original COS date is an “extendee”.

An extension may last a maximum of 2 additional years (making the total service 4 years + Pre-Service Training) and occurs in the same country as the initial tour.  A volunteer extending less than a year simply tacks on the additional time and gets a new, later COS date.  A volunteer extending for 1 year or more, however, is entitled to 30 days “special leave”, during which Peace Corps pays the expense and grants what is essentially extra vacation time in order to travel home.  The leave cannot be taken before the original COS date, but one is encouraged to not delay it significantly into the extension.  Additionally, the extendee is allowed to receive up to 1/3 of their readjustment allowance (the approximately $7,000 one gets at the end of service).  Readjustment allowance is calculated on a monthly basis ($250/month), but for extendees, regardless of the term of the extension the rate is increased to $350/month.  Basically, what this boils down to are some pretty hefty bonuses to those who have been living the Peace Corps lifestyle for just over 2 years.  Still with me?

In order to extend, a volunteer must be in good standing with the agency, which in Moldova essentially boils down to good conduct and positive evaluations from one’s program manager.  Additionally, it requires medical clearance, something that cannot be granted until 90 days prior to the originally-scheduled COS date.

A volunteer must also submit a proposal outlining what they intend to do during the extension and why they think it is important.  In the case of a short extension – sometimes even just a month or two – this  often involves closing out a key project or ensuring its sustainability in a situation where for whatever reason that cannot happen in the volunteer’s original timeframe.  The final decision is made by the Country Director in consultation with the post’s Senior Staff, though of course Washington always gets the final say.

In the case of a longer extension, a the extendee may also move sites (home and workplace).  Regardless of whether or not the extendee moves, their service should represent “expanded duties”, i.e. one cannot extend simply to continue doing exactly what they were doing for the previous two years.  There has to be a growth.  In this way, one is not only extending length service, but also the scope or depth of the service itself.  From the agencies perspective, after two years a successful volunteer shouldn’t really be doing what they were originally brought in to do – there are new volunteers being rotated in for that – one should be moving on to new challenges.

Finally, globally Peace Corps has one particular track known as “Peace Corps Volunteer Leader” (PCVL).    Broadly, the position is described as such:

The Peace Corps Act authorizes the Agency to enroll Volunteer Leaders whose services are requested for supervisory or other special duties or responsibilities in connection with Peace Corps programs overseas. It is Peace Corps policy to enroll Volunteer Leaders when their assistance provides added value to the Agency's overseas programs...Volunteer Leaders provide direction or guidance.

Different countries structure PCVL programs differently, but common tasks include:

·         Acting as liaison among Volunteers, host country supervisors, and Peace Corps staff;

·         Assisting Peace Corps staff in site selection and placement of new Volunteers;

·         Assisting Peace Corps staff in the design and implementation of Volunteer training;

·         Assisting Peace Corps staff in the design and evaluation of Volunteer projects; and

·         Assisting Peace Corps staff in the provision of logistical and administrative support to Volunteers and Trainees.

Not all countries have PCVLs, though Washington has been very encouraging of the program in recent years.  Overall, a post should not exceed a ratio of more than 1 PCVL to 25 volunteers.  For Moldova, that caps us at around 4, which is fitting since our PCVLs are programmatically focused, essentially making them the senior volunteer in 1 of our 4 projects (English Education, Health Education, Agriculture, and Community Development).  Moldova piloted a limited version of PCVL during my first year of service (2010-11) and last summer brought in the first full PCVLs on 2 of the 4 programs.

While a PCVL’s primary focus is improving the project they are assigned to and supporting broader post-initiatives, they are still volunteers.  As such, at any given time they must be involved in at least one activity aimed to build capacity amongst-host country nationals, although that activity may represent a small amount of overall work time.

So, what does this all mean for me?  Well first, as probably guessed by this point, the specific extension I’m considering would be as the PCVL for the Health Program.  As such, it is highly encouraged that the extension be for a full year, but not mandatory.  A serious PCVL proposal, however, would need to be for at least the better part of a year.  Which brings us to second, which is the decision of whether to opt for a shorter 9 month extension or go for the grand tour of a full year, which effects many other things like whether I get 1 month home leave.   It also informs the broader question of how I propose to craft an extension, including PCVL to host-country national balance, where I live, and what partnerships compliment PCVL responsibilities.  Third, it means I have until 5/9/2012 to submit the final version of my extension proposal, after which point I will be at the mercies of higher powers. Finally, it means that formal approval cannot come before May 18, as that is the 90 day mark before my originally scheduled COS date of August 18 and that is the earliest day I can be medically cleared.

So, with that, we blaze on bravely ahead, coming up to our next post, part III of this series, where I will consider the pros and cons of whether or not to chum about with the Moldovans a bit longer.

Millennium and Peace Corps win €5,000 HIA grant for simulation project!

Snuggled under every coat I own last night as my bus lumbered through our first blizzard of the winter on the three hour trek home from the capital, big news flashed across my phone: a team I've been coordinating just won a €5,000 grant from Humanity In Action to implement a project that will develop Moldova-specific simulation games for civic education!  With just four months to implement, it looks like I know what I'll be doing this spring in my spare time.

So what is this project all about?  From our application, the short version:

Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991, setting its course towards democracy.  After 50 years of Soviet rule, Moldova’s politicians struggled ministering a seemingly alien form of government as did its citizens in figuring out their role within it.  As markets opened, the cultural and ethnic diversity previously suppressed by Soviet culture came to the forefront of the political discourse, with formerly persecuted and silenced minority groups (such as the Roma and Gagauz) demanding justice, respect, tolerance, and in some cases increased autonomy.  Predictably, there were xenophobic, racist, and discriminatory backlashes as Moldova marched toward full-fledged democracy.  Such backlashes still occur and this march is not complete.  Thus, our project aims to develop and run Moldova-tailored simulation games that will compel its participants to address all these contentious historical points typical to nascent democracies transitioning from authoritarian rule. 

This project has two objectives:

• To create and run (24 times) a politically-oriented simulation game for Moldovan youth across the country 

• To create and incorporate a culturally-oriented simulation game in the trainings of newly-arrived Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) to speed their adjustment to the oftentimes confusing historical and cultural idiosyncrasies of Moldova.

Led by HIA Senior Fellows (SFs) and staff, who are experienced simulation facilitators, we will write the simulations during a five-day workshop that will bring together historians, civil society leaders and PCVs to design, test and translate them into Romanian and Russian. The project team will then travel throughout Moldova to administer the games.  Peace Corps Moldova has 120 volunteers, living in both cities and villages, both Russian and Romanian speaking, making it easy to identify seminar sites across Moldova’s disparate demographics.

This project is designed as a collaboration between three organizations: HIA, the U.S. Peace Corps, and the local NGO Millennium. With the network and expertise of Millennium, Peace Corps, and HIA, this project will promote deeper understanding of history’s legacy on democratic processes and civic leadership among its participants, a small but vital grassroots step along the slow path towards full liberal democracy.

Needless to say, I'm extremely excited about this project for a number of reasons.  As a national project and a collaboration between three organizations (a governmental agency, and international NGO, and a local NGO), this is undoubtedly the most far-reaching project I've found myself supporting yet.  At the same time, with its simultaneous objective of developing a simulation for Peace Corps trainees, this initiative also puts me smack in the middle of improving internal training and support. The implementation team is incredibly diverse, including people from all levels of the respective organizations: from MillenniuM and Peace Corps both staff and volunteers, from HIA both staff and Senior Fellows. Finally, the core project team includes some of the most talented PCVs I've ever had the pleasure to work with this past year and a half.  I may be the link between the funders and implementers, but none of this would have happened without those great PCVs pushing me all the way.

For those unfamiliar, a bit of background on the simulation games, courtesy of PlanPolitik, the German NGO that facilitated the HIA training I attended a few years ago that first introduced me to the methodology.

Politics is a matter of negotiation. Who gets what? And how much? The aim is to unite conflicting interests and to reach decisions concerning the distribution of money, power, security, autonomy etc. Usually, negotiations consist of tough and lengthy wrangling about what appear to be small steps of progress and minor compromises. Outside observers often find it difficult to understand why negotiations or attempts to settle conflicts succeed or fail. Which concessions have made an agreement possible or which demands have prevented it? Which strategic considerations are the actors led by? What scope are they given within institutional, domestic and other constraints? Which negotiation strategies are successful?

What can be learned through simulation games? The participants are asked to play a role. In order to do so as realistically and successfully as possible, they will aim to acquire the information they need about the given crisis or negotiation situation. Participants also gain analytic insight into the conflict or negotiation situation. On one hand, this involves analysing the conflict’s basic scenario, its relevant players and their interests. On the other hand, participants learn to contemplate the political options: which option is desirable, which one is realistic? They realize that there is a big difference between policy and politics, i.e. the actual implementation of policies is rarely congruent with the initial idea. Too conflictive are the interests of the relevant actors.


Secondly, the game inspires in participants a more reflective way of viewing the chosen conflict and indeed political decision-making processes in general. Players of the game gain concrete experience of how, in interaction with others, interests develop and how, depending on the other players’ conduct as the game progresses, these interests are subject to change. Moreover, participants learn just how difficult negotiating is: not all targets can be met and compromises are inevitable. One can gain insight into possible strategies for resolving conflicts in the “real” world. 

Finally, participants are confronted with a rigid time frame for making decisions, establishing priorities and implementing strategies. Being forced to cooperate with others, for example in a negotiation groups, is conducive to enhancing team work, negotiation skills, willingness to compromise as well as a culture of discussion.

SPA – what is it, really?

Below is a description on Peace Corps Moldova's Small Project Assistance (SPA) fund, which our review board put together early this fall to clarify the purpose of the program for the new group of volunteers.  The background to this post can be found here.  We've recently undergone a pretty thorough review of our SPA program, refocusing on the overriding goals and tweaking some of our policies to match that.  If there are any readers out there who work on their country's SPA program - or a similar program for that matter - I'm curious to hear thoughts on this.

SPA – what is it, really?
SPA exists through a special inter-agency agreement with USAID (plain English: it’s their money, we just get to spend/administer it). As such, the program is unique in that its goal furthers both USAID and Peace Corps’ missions (plain English: we can’t do whatever we want with the $). SPA has one overriding program imperative: "to increase the capabilities of local communities to conduct low-cost, grassroots sustainable development." This objective is significantly different from a goal of simply “conducting sustainable development.” It also informs the only success indicator against which we report: # of HCNs who demonstrate new capacity to guide a project through the complete PDM cycle as a result of collaborating in a SPA project.

The reason that USAID funds PC projects through the SPA program as a part of the Participating Agency Program Agreement (2009) is to teach HCNs all stages of the PDM cycle, including proposal writing, as a form of community capacity building. The focus of the program is not to fund volunteers' community projects or to teach volunteers about project design and management (though it has these positive effects).

USAID considers giving this money to Peace Corps an efficient use of funds because we have long-term, deep relationships with partners whom we can guide through the PDM cycle step by step. It's not so much that we know any better what communities' needs are, but that the process of working very closely and intensively with a project from start to finish is one of the best ways to teach these skills. In short, the project itself is of significantly less importance to USAID than the skills partners develop that can be applied in future community project work. We might not always agree with this sentiment when considering a potential project. With any other program goal, however, USAID would feel better qualified to implement the project itself. As a rule of thumb, the best projects come from the space where donor and implementer goals overlap, but this also requires the honesty to be able to walk away from projects sometimes. SPA is no exception, though we are fortunate in having a very broad donor goal.

On a deeper level, this program design speaks to Peace Corps’ broader philosophy of sustainability. We are not here simply to do, but instead to teach through collaboration with others. In the classroom, we don’t just teach students, but teachers as well. With mayors, we help to teach technology, not simply type documents. The idea of sustainability is no different with any other community project, even when it includes outside funding.

Sometimes this fact is mind-numbingly frustrating – it’s a much higher bar, so high that few organizations engage in the process on the level we do. This level of support is inconceivable for USAID (or any big development organization). But this is also the brilliance of the program: it plays to Peace Corps’ unique strengths in the development field as well as each of our unique relationships that are built on mutual trust and collaboration. Thus, this same difficulty is also the unique value of SPA – in all the grant making development programs our committee members have examined, there is nothing else like SPA out there. And it’s also one of the reasons we have so much respect for all of you.

What is Capacity Building, and what is Capacity Building Through Education
Business English.com defines "capacity building" as "planned development of (or increase in) knowledge, output rate, management, skills, and other capabilities of an organization through acquisition, incentives, technology, and/or training." In easier terms, capacity building means increasing the organization's ability to do what it does, to fulfill its mission and its goals. For the SPA program, projects must include two forms of capacity building: 1) the aforementioned increase in project design and management skills, and 2) a capacity building element through education (classes or trainings).

Here's example of how this might look: If your project sets out to bring running water to the school in order to improve students' health and to decrease the number of absences, the project may also do something like conduct health classes on the threats of infectious diseases -- or maybe conduct a hand washing campaign to decrease illness and a civic engagement campaign about taking care of "our" school so students will keep the indoor bathrooms clean. These training are matched with the goals of the project. For the trainings to increase the capacity of the school, they should not only be conducted by the PCV, but they should be conducted with a one or more HCN who will be able to conduct such classes themselves later on. In this way, the project uses education to increase the capacity of the organization, and in so doing, increases the sustainability of the intervention as well as the likelihood of meeting project objectives.

Peace Corps Moldova M26 Health & EE Swearing In - Oath

On Wednesday, after 10 grueling weeks of training, 27 new Health and English Education Volunteers from the Moldova 26 group took their oath, and with that, officially began their two years of service.  As our Country Director, Jeffrey Goveia pointed out, it's the exact same oath of office every Federal official serving the United States takes.

One year ago Thursday I stood on a stage and repeated those exact same words; I'd already been in country for 10 weeks, had already begun working with Moldovan children and counterparts during practice school, was living with a host family, and struggling through my limited Romanian.  But still, I remember distinctly the chill that ran down my spine when taking the oath.  It was one of those rare moments of absolute clarity in life when one feels the full power of an ideal much larger than oneself behind one's actions, when that "something larger" you're a part of becomes so tangible it can be touched, if only briefly.

From here on out, it's now not just halfway, but less than a year to go.  To all the M26s who just took that oath: savor it, it goes quicker than you expect.  Also: congrats, you guys are gonna be great.

Medical Center Success – pairwise ranking session!

My Program Manager recently asked me to lead this summer’s training sessions on medical center work for the new health volunteers.  Thus, while the events of this post took place a couple of months ago now, it constitutes one of my bigger successes here in Moldova and is something I’m thinking about a lot while preparing to teach the new volunteers.

One of the hard parts of the Health Education program is that we straddle worlds – we must work in both the highly structured educational system, and the much more fluid world of community medical centers.  Work at the school begins very quickly after arriving at site, and similar to English Education (EE) volunteers, the fruits of our labors become quickly visible.

Facilitating a needs assessment session at the med center.

At the medical centers, however, our job is much closer to that of Community Organization and Development (COD) volunteers – work at the organization goes in fits and starts depending on how busy they are and how effective we are at identifying projects they are motivated to collaborate on.  These two cultures can often be hard to bridge, with the fast pace of the school making it harder to be patient with the incremental change at the medical centers.  This is one reason I think so few healthies work at their medical centers for the entire two years of service.

As a result of the less structured environment of medical centers, the needs assessment stage is a much longer process.  Facilitating good needs assessment, in fact, is not just necessary to choosing the best health education topics, but is in of itself a key skill we need to transfer.  Good needs assessment is also the first step of any long term planning process.

After coming up short for months in trying to get my medical center to write a one year health education plan, we’d had a number of needs assessment discussions that fizzled.  I finally decided it was time to try a different approach, and reached out to my COD friend Craig.  One of the downsides of bridging programs is it doubles the number of competencies a successful volunteer needs to possess; one of the upsides of Peace Corps is that we have colleagues like Craig who bring the perspective of a different program.

As part of its heavy emphasis on local sustainability, Peace Corps teaches the PACA  approach to needs assessment, (Participatory Analysis for Community Action).  More than a set of tools, PACA is a whole philosophy that calls for empowering community members instead of the development worker to set the agenda through participatory activities.  It also includes a toolkit of creative needs assessment activities.  The results are better needs assessments and thus an increase in the number of stakeholders, which lays a stronger foundation for resulting actions.  The analysis itself helps build consensus amongst participants by demonstrating that the agreed upon needs were not a foregone conclusion.

For my medical center, Craig recommended we try an approach known as Pairwise Group Ranking,

Small Successes: the Mahala Boys

Mahala is a word deceptively simple given the complex construct it houses.  In fact, it is probably this complexity that makes the word so thoroughly Moldovan.  In Moldoveneşti, mahala means neighborhood.  It is descended from the Turkish (and in turn Arabic) word mahalle, a term introduced throughout the Balkans during the period of Ottoman rule.  In literary (i.e. Romanian) Romanian, however, mahala has come to mean more of a slum.  Before even arriving at the complexities of the actual Moldovan mahala then, the word itself is a signpost showing the historical fork between Romania and Moldova.  It is a very Eastern European dark irony that the word for neighborhood in Europe’s poorest country means “slum” in the same language spoken by its richer neighbor to the west.  If Romanians often point out politely that Moldovan Romanian is an archaic and rural dialect, then the word mahala captures the subtler unspoken chauvinism between these richer and poorer neighbors.

Even in Moldova, however, a mahala is so much more than a geographical boundary.  It’s an agricultural system, a living map of generations of familial histories, and a complex network for the exchange of gossip and information.

One never really leaves their mahala in Moldova.  The village knows where you grew up, and if you move, somebody has relatives there too.  Even if one moves to the city, they might well choose to live in an apartment next door to somebody else from their village – it simplifies the flow of fresh produce coming in daily from relatives on the morning bus from the village.  Our own small village has a mahala reaching as far as Billings, Montana.

We volunteers, on the other hand, come from outside the system – we arrive mahala-less.  So often, we are reminded of the frustrations that implies when trying to work with our adult colleagues – not knowing the right person to talk to in order to cut through the red tape, not knowing a particular history that prevents two potential partners from working together.  But our tabula rasa also grants us some potentially powerful freedoms, particularly with students.

Secondary Projects

In PC lingo, a “secondary project” is any project that falls outside of one’s primary program goals and partnerships.  In my case, that would be anything outside of the health education domain.

Most, if not all, PCVs worldwide have secondary projects.  For many, in fact, secondary projects often become primary projects, if not formally at least in the amount of time they take up.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First, it’s often unclear where a program ends and a secondary project begins.  At my site, for example, my work at the mayor’s office and the soup kitchen are both outside of the primary assignments at the school and health center that the HESC program manager set up for me.  But both include a significant health promotion component.  So is it primary, or secondary?

Second, the very nature of long-term intensive grassroots work in rural communities is such that the partnerships Peace Corps arranges for a PCV before they get there are often not the most fruitful collaborations.  Sometimes the organization doesn’t have two years of work, sometimes the local counterpart didn’t fully understand that a PCV normally means more work, or sometimes everybody just agrees there’s a different local organization the PCV can better help.  Peace Corps understands this, and it’s one of the reasons the organization is flexible and encourages secondary projects as a way to find the best uses for one’s time.

Finally, contrary to popular opinion, PCVs are human beings, and few human beings find total life fulfillment in their work life.  It just so happens that PC is so all-life encompassing that just about any non-work non-familial social activity is likely to be a secondary project, whether it’s playing basketball with community members or playing with kids at the pre-school.

There are two main categories of secondary activities: the kind one does at site, and the country wide Peace Corps activities.  Posts tend to have a number of these activities, which are run by volunteers and tend to focus on key national level development priorities.

Besides working at the soup kitchen and mayor’s office, I’ve also been working on a number of the country wide initiatives.  It’s fun to work with other volunteers, as it so often seems much more straightforward and there’s no language barrier.  At this level, my main secondary activities have been the Gender Workgroup (GWG), the Small Project Assistance Program (SPA), Girls Leading Our World (GLOW), and Haiducii.

March Wrap-up and my Great Trek North! aka, Site Visits (slideshow at end)

Well, March was certainly an action packed month!  At site, school had a week of spring break, my nurse partner and I held our second public health education activity for the community, my work with the soup kitchen has been going full speed ahead as we finished off a grant application, I planned my first seminar for the teachers at my school, and I facilitated a raft of needs assessments with partners.

A lot of these projects were long on the to do list, so spring break came at a welcome time to do some catch up.  Break it was not, and come to think of it, neither was it spring (though the latter was finally making some progress this past week, with the exception of last Monday’s rather unfortunate snow…)

Both for better and for worse, action packed also meant a month when I was away from my site far more than normal – a full third of the month by my tally. Previous posts have already covered the exciting 50^th Anniversary Kickoff  and even more exciting visit by Vice President Biden.  Aside from that, other travels that pulled me away from my non-routine routine at site included facilitating two GLOW seminars (Girls Leading Our World, a global Peace Corps girls empowerment program) and an extended trek through the north of Moldova to 5 other volunteers’ sites during the final week of the month.

“Site visits” are a practice heavily encouraged by Peace Corps.  There are a number of reasons for site visits, but they generally involve some combination of work, learning through observation of fellow volunteers, and cultural curiosity/travel. I’ve hosted a number of volunteers on visits at my site.  Melissa came to facilitate a Schimb de Experienta for my youth club – twice, in fact, as the you may recall the first one was snowed out.  Craig came out of a general curiosity in the HESC program, and another time just to keep me company when my host family was away.  Most recently, Lindsay (my BFF here in Moldova) spent the night after we co-facilitated a GLOW seminar in a neighboring village.  Yet despite all my own hosting and Peace Corps’ encouragement, I had yet to pay visit to other volunteers.

My own trek north was an odyssey of long-overdue social visits, youth programs, and classroom observations.  It was my first time north of Chişinău, and in the space of a week I doubled the number of raions (districts) I’ve visited, from four to eight.

Biden visits Moldova!

Opera house decorated for the visit.

I know I’m a little behind on this one, but on March 11, Moldova played host to a very exciting visit from our Vice President, the Honorable Joseph Biden.  In case you missed it (his visit happened the same day as Japan’s earthquake and tsunami), here is the AP story.

The Vice President’s visit marked the highest level visit of a U.S. official to Moldova in its history.  Though he was only on the ground in Moldova for 6 hours, you wouldn’t have known it from the country’s enthrallment in all things Biden for a good solid week before, and many days after as well.

Biden met with the government while Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden toured a wine cellar outside the capital with the Prime Minister’s wife.  The Vice President then gave a speech to a large crowd in front of the opera house (video embedded at the end of the post), which was followed with further meetings, and then a closed door event for U.S. Embassy Staff and Peace Corps Volunteers.  Needless to say, volunteers were more excited than even the Moldovans, and I’m not just talking about your own political junkie of a blogger here.

The only picture I've been able to find that offers proof I met the Vice President.
Where's Zach? Look to the left, in the top row.  It's a little like Where's Waldo...
(click to enlarge)

Happy 50th Anniversary Peace Corps!

Last Tuesday, March 1, marked 50 years to the day since President John F. Kennedy - less than two months into his presidency - signed the Executive Order 10924 establishing the Peace Corps.  It would take Congress an amazingly short additional six months before approving the final legislation on September 22, but the first group of volunteers were already in training by June.  Since that time, over 200,000 American men and women have served their country as Peace Corps Volunteers, working at the grass roots levels in 139 countries.

Those early days were heady times, filled with idealism, learning moments, and a healthy dose of experimentally making things up on the go.  It's hard to remember sometimes in todays globalized world that the notion of volunteering abroad was a radical new idea in 1961.  Today, many (most?) volunteers have already studied abroad in college before beginning their service.  In 2008, over 1 million Americans reported doing some form of volunteering abroad.

Despite the change a half century inevitably brings, however, Peace Corps remains unique in the length, depth, and quality of that service.  We stay for two years, living in our communities, learning the local language, and participating in the events of a daily life, from work to celebrations.  We don't helicopter in and disappear, and we're not paying a travel agency or firm for the opportunity to do our work.  We have host country nationals as bosses and co-workers, and we grind through work with them on a daily basis.  And in the end, well, it's probably still a little too early for me to finish that sentence...

The 50th Anniversary is more than just a one day commemoration, it is a yearlong period of reflection and celebration, both for the organization and those of us here in Moldova.  Check out Peace Corps' 50th Anniversary website, where I particularly recommend the interactive 50 year timeline.

My Health Education poster for the Coffee House event

You can also discover the action closer to home - well, my home - at Peace Corps Moldova's 50th Anniversary website, "365 Days of Peace & Friendship."

Here in Moldova, we kicked off the anniversary year with a round table and coffee house event in Chisinau.  Volunteers from each program were asked to prepare posters at this event, and yours truly was one of the representatives for the Health Education program.  Check out the full story here! (If you just want to see me, mom, scroll to the bottom.)

This is unlikely to be my last reflection on this unique American tradition, but as it is my first, I'll let President Kennedy have the final word.  I find those words to be as relevant today as they were in 1961.

R. Sargent Shriver, Jr., 1915-2011

R. Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps, passed away at the age of 95 last week.  The timing is significant, as the Peace Corps approaches its 50th Anniversary in March.  In his New York Times obituary, he is quoted as saying:

‎"Break mirrors. Yes, indeed. Shatter the glass. In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. Learn more about the face of your neighbor and less about your own.”

Below the jump is a historical excerpt from his time as Peace Corps' Founding Director.  R. Sargent Shriver left a lasting legacy of public service, not just amongst the more than 200,000 volunteers who have served in the agency's 50 years, but amongst all Americans.  The Peace Corps family is grieving the loss of this incredible public servant this week, but more importantly, we are remembering his call to service.

Thank you Sargent, for all you taught us.

My job, pt. II: So what do you actually DO?

This is Part II of a three post series introducing the work component of my life as a PCV, in which we’ll look at my program’s objectives and major projects at the general level.   The series is moving from the broad to the specific; Part I is a general introduction to the public health situation in Moldova and Part III will conclude by a look at what my work involves on a daily basis.

Every Peace Corps Volunteer worldwide works in a program; here in Moldova, I work in the Health Education in Schools and Communities (HESC) program.  My formal title is Health Education Specialist – yes, even as a volunteer one gets a snappy title.  In PC Moldova parlance, I’m referred to as a “Healthy.”

As a HESC PCV my primary work focuses on building local capacity for the educative aspects of a public health program.  As I explained in my previous post, Moldova has one of the highest health care provider ratios in the world, but the concept of public and preventative health is still taking root here.  It also has a decent public education system, considering the local resources available.  But again, health education is still struggling to be integrated in an intentional and coherent manner.  The local providers, in short, aren’t yet accustomed to being educators, and the local educators aren’t yet accustomed to the specifics of health education.  I’m here to facilitate that step.

That step is broken down into two overarching goals and seven objectives:

• Goal 1: Improved Health for Youth
• Objective 1.1: Develop School Health Educators (i.e., teachers)
• Objective 1.2: Improve Students’ Learning
• Objective 1.3: Promote Peer Education in Extra-curricular Activities
• Objective 1.4: Increase Parental Involvement in Schools
• Goal 2: Improved Community Health
• Objective 2.1: Develop Community Health Educators (i.e., medical staff)
• Objective 2.2: Enhance Community Involvement in Community Activities
• Objective 2.3: Improve Use of ICT to Support Community Health and Education

Response to Alms Dealer

Just finished Philip Gourevitch’s “Alms Dealer,” in October’s The New Yorker.  One part review of Linda Polman’s “The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?”, it’s a very powerful and thought provoking article its own right.  The article was posted to my Facebook wall by Lindsay Toler, one of the brightest fellow volunteers I have the pleasure to serve with here in Moldova (and a healthy, which clearly speaks to her good character).  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about international aid – its ethics, its effectiveness, and its unintended consequences.  Until now, my thoughts have been mostly focused on development aid, so this article struck a chord and made me think about development’s humanitarian cousin.  What follows are some unorganized thoughts that originally began as a FB comment but grew too long for that medium.  Not the update friends and family back home were probably hoping for, but it’s the one that got written.  Preemptive forgiveness given if you decide to skip it.

The article starts on the familiar terrain of the greed v. grievance debate within conflict studies.  The whole argument is premised heavily on the greed side of this debate, within the academic camp of liberal rationality.  In short, people are rational, including warlords.

The initial problem then that this article forces is that constructivist bane of all rationalist attempts to remake the world into a better place (realism and liberalism alike): rules are not stable, and as soon as the rules of the game are known, rational actors adjust to manipulate the rules in their favor.  The result is a constantly shifting arms race of changing rules.  Unfortunately, as the tomes of failed humanitarian interventions show, the “bad guys” seem to figure out how to work the old rules in their favor much quicker than the “good guys” can come with new rules to prevent them from doing so.

Very quickly, however, the article leaves behind technical questions of why intervention might fuel conflict, and goes for the moral jugular of humanitarianism, whether there can truly be any neutral or unambiguously good intervention.  The single most prescient sentence: "The scenes of suffering that we tend to call humanitarian crises are almost always symptoms of political circumstances, and there’s no apolitical way of responding to them—no way to act without having a political effect."

Look Ma, I’m a Real Volunteer!

Speaking to US Ambassador Chaudry
after the ceremony

Wednesday, August 18^th, was a special day for all the M25 HESC and EE PCTs – we swore in as volunteers and officially launched our service.  Let me decipher that sentence:

• Wednesday, August 18^th – hopefully clear
• M25 – my training class, Moldova 25 (we’re the 25^th group of volunteers in Moldova; these days there’s one training class a year)
• HESC – Health Education in Schools and Communities, my program; commonly known as “Healthies”
• EE – English Education program, commonly known as EEs; collectively we’re referred to as Education Volunteers as compared to the Development Volunteers
• PCT – Peace Corps Trainee, what one is for the first 8-12 weeks in country; not volunteer in privileges, allowances, status, or job
• PCV – Peace Corps Volunteer, what one becomes after successfully completing training and taking the oath; the formal beginning of the 2 years of service

In short, I stopped being a trainee, and started being a volunteer.  If the distinction sounds small to those who began thinking of Zach in terms of Peace Corps Moldova back in June, the distinction is quite large within the Peace Corps itself.

How I Learned to Promote World Peace in a Tinderbox for WWIII, or, Two Weeks of Practice School

One might observe the slight gap in postings.  While rumors of my demise were generally overstated, I was, in fact, enduring what is normally described as the most trying part of Pre-Service Training (PST) for Health Volunteers in Moldova: Practice School. (Imagine that’s written in a scary Halloween font and is accompanied by a far-off scream of terror…)

In short, practice school brings our future partner teachers to our training site, where we spend the final two weeks teaching real children real health lessons in a real classroom setting using real Romanian for two really long weeks.