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Thought I could add my thoughts/experiences with volunteer development work:
the Peace Corps - requirements: you need a 4 year degree or a lot of experience. It doesn't matter if your degree was in 12th century german poetry, you just need a degree and they'll find something for you to do. You need to be reasonably healthy and not in a serious relationship - unless you are married in which case you can go only if you go WITH your spouse. Having any kind of language experience looks good, even if it's not the right language for where you're going. Having some prior volunteer experience also looks good.
Americorps: Generally not as difficult to get into; the requirements vary depending on the position, from high school dropouts accepted to master's degree required. They're not nearly as picky about your health or relationship status either.
Random thoughts: There's really only one guarentee, which is that YOU will have some kind of an interesting/learning experience. Everything else is a maybe. Where you go, what the culture is there, what your individual project is, and how well the particular branch of the organization is run where you are, are all variable.
In any development work there will be problems. There is never enough money to go around, endless bullshit paperwork and meetings, stupid regulations that get in your way, and eccentric personalities. There will probably be all the opportunity in the world for you to do NOTHING useful for a year or two and pat yourself on the back for all the policy you wrote up. It may also be easy for you to be an arrogant idiot and have a horrible experience as you try to convince a bunch of people that you know much more than they do and you're here to show them what they've been doing wrong all this time. It is very easy to do some very good work for your year or two and then when you leave everything you did is undone. And finally, it is possible that despite all your hard work and good intentions, your project just never accomplishes anything.
However, if you are very proactive you will go out of your way to go around the government bullshit and get some actual work done. If you are very open minded you can figure out how to work with the community and do something that's actually in their best interests, even if it's not what the idiots who sent you there want you to do. And if you are very, very patient you might see a positive change when you're done.
My experiences: I spent 10 weeks in Zimbabwe training to become a math teacher while trying to learn the local language and culture. Then I got to my site and was given 200 kids. The school was unable to pay their old math teacher, so these kids were sitting in a room for months before I got there, doing nothing. There was no curriculum, no textbook, and not enough pencils/paper/desks for the kids. I had never taught before and was given no supervision or time to prepare a lesson. I taught math for two weeks and then, due to stupid political reasons, Peace Corps Zimbabwe was suspended and we were all sent home. I will add that you have one and only one chance to pass your exams in Zimbabwe and if you fail the maths exam you will never be eligible for many jobs. Something like 65% of the nation fails this exam. So that was a little bit frustrating. I know dozens of Peace Corps volunteers who have had much better experiences and some who have had worse.
Americorps: My first year was at a community center in a "bad" neighborhood in Syracuse New York. I was a Website Coordinator. The center was a disorganized mess with no funding and not many youth were coming in. As my year was almost up, the center was shut down due to funding issues/mismanagement. My second year is happening right now at the Boys & Girls Clubs doing technology stuff. Again, clubs are closing due to lack of funds, and the other Americorps volunteers with me are often frustrated and fighting with the staff; two girls quit last week and another one had a minor nervous breakdown. However I have brought in a lot of resources and it's starting to look like technology classes any week now for dozens of kids.
Other notes:
1. There are equivalents of these organizations in most European countries, I'm always running into such folks in backpacker hostels and whatnot.
2. Working for Americorps can be incredibly varied; they do stuff from short periods of supplimentary emergency work (rebuilding houses for Katrina etc) to long term, sustainable policy stuff.
3. The government does do a pretty good job taking care of you; if they consider someplace "safe" it's probably not too bad, and they have medical staff, etc. in country. Still, bad things can happen.
4. The pay is more or less room-and-board; it depends a lot on your particular assignment. The insurance pretty much sucks. If you finish your contract, you get a decent stipend or money for college, and a few other benefits like loan deferrment and job preference status. |
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