I'm sure this will bore some readers to tears but here it is anyways:
A: The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.
My first priority in Peace Corps service will be to fully integrate into the community, so that I feel like I deeply know the locals and the locals deeply know me. I see success in this goal as a necessary prerequisite to my second goal: to implement projects that prove to be self-sustaining in the community. Specifically, I want to empower local youth and businesspeople with the skills and motivation to pursue their academic and professional goals, and to become leaders in their community through that process.
If I truly want to empower others, I will need to let them take the steering wheel. I have had significant successes in the past in empowering new leaders, but I will always need to remind myself that while something might get done faster if I do it by myself, we cannot build local capacity until my counterparts have those skills themselves. I will draw on my past experiences of patient mentorship and development of protocols and written guides to bolster institutional capacity. In addition, I have prided myself on my consensus- and participation-building skills in the past, and believe I can apply those skills to a new context in Peru. While the aforementioned professional characteristics point towards “caution” or patience in a lot of cases, I also plan to utilize my action-oriented attitude towards community issues. While local knowledge will provide much necessary guidance on my projects, I will work hard to show that conditions can change with the appropriate investment of time, effort, and commitment to new ideas.
Another ambition I have is to use some existing resources in Peru to spur local and potentially national change. If Peace Corps find the work to be appropriate, I would like to eventually connect with el Instituto de Libertad y Democracía, which works to reduce bureaucratic barriers to entering the formal economy; doing so could have positive effects on the local level as small business owners try to legitimize their businesses. Also, I would like to connect local youth with Instituto Invertir’s EmprendeAhora! Program, which awards training and funding to regional university students for their proposals for small business projects in their communities. I was introduced to both of these organizations during my internship at CIPE, and hope that their work will prove relevant to my community’s developmental needs.
B: Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
In order to achieve my goals, I will need to be the “best version of myself” that I can be. First, I will need to be open-minded, and to consistently listen before making recommendations. The most effective solutions will be found through the input and investment of the community. It will be important for me to recognize that my counterparts may have a better idea of what is achievable in their community and what is not, and that they may be shy to express that my idea is unrealistic. I will need to look for quiet signs of disapproval and encourage my counterparts to provide alternate approaches.
Another strategy I plan to use is pin-pointing the right partners for specific projects. The books The Tipping Point and Three Cups of Tea taught me a lot about the power of local partners, especially when they are “Connector,” “Salesman,” or “Maven” personalities that can profoundly influence the success of a project. I hope to spend the first few months at my site getting to know the people deeply enough to understand their informal roles in the community, so I can find the best people to work on and market our projects.
C: Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.
I anticipate that my 27 months in Peace Corps will involve a great deal of personal struggle, exasperated by frustrations with the local culture. While I am generally a patient person with strangers and friends, living under the roof of a family other than my own may present difficult interpersonal moments. For example, I may be uncomfortable with the health practices (boiling water without filtration, etc.) or the gender roles in the family and community. I believe my most crucial strategy for adapting to my living and work situations will be maintaining a sense of humor. If I imagine how strange and frustrating my habits and attitudes may be to the locals, I think I will be able to laugh at myself, break the tension, and regain perspective on the situation. For cultural differences that I find offensive or unethical, it will be important for me to “choose my battles” wisely as I aim to maintain a position of trust and respect within the community. Lastly, I will remind myself that I have expected and even welcomed these challenges as part of the difficult but rewarding Peace Corps experience. I hope to take on cultural challenges bit by bit, day by day, so that I can focus on small achievements like learning to bathe and cook without reliable running water.
D: The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community and project.
The improvements I saw in my Spanish comprehension during my five weeks in Spain were monumental. I am confident that training will bring my language and comprehension skills up to speed, and hopefully to an even higher level in the local dialect and accent. Armed with my language skills, I hope to gain confidence in “being myself” within the local context, so that I am prepared to settle into my site. At the same time, I recognized that as I leave pre-service training, I will encounter new frustrations with my health, abilities and resources; I hope that training will equip me with some methods for maintaining resilience in the face of these challenges.
In terms of small business promotion, I hope to learn about best practices based on past projects in Peru, ideally on projects near my specific site. I also hope to hear from past volunteers or other experts about the most important needs of Peruvian people so that I can appropriately prioritize my goals.
Another important topic for training will be the nuances of cultural practices, not only because I want to integrate more quickly into the community, but because I want to keep myself safe. I want to leave training with good idea of what might offend community members, and how to best approach sensitive topics. Most importantly, I hope that my training host family will help me learn how to cook!
E: How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.
I applied to the Peace Corps because I am committed to a career in global development and I would not feel qualified to enter that field without spending significant time on the ground, integrated into a community in a developing country. I want to come away with new ideas for solving the world’s developmental and social problems. My unrealistic professional goal is that I want to be the next Muhammad Yunus; I want to develop a new approach as revolutionary as microfinance to helping the world’s poor through a blend of profit and social service, and I believe that I will find that idea during my time in Peace Corps. I am currently considering an MBA (focused on Social Enterprise) after Peace Corps service, and I know that my 27 months in Peru will give me a very interesting perspective on the business world.
On a more practical level, I believe that completing Peace Corps service will make me a very resilient person, teach me a lot about myself, and show future employers that I can handle pretty much anything, even with limit resources. One of the best quotes I have heard about the benefits of Peace Corps service came from a promotional video; a volunteer said something to the effect of “After walking into an African village by myself, trying to learn the local ways and conquer local problems, there is not much in the United States that I am intimidated by.” I hope that I will complete Peace Corps service with a sense of purpose, specific ideas for achieving economic and social development, and the confidence to work towards those goals regardless of the obstacles thrown my way later in life.
