MoldovAnn

The excellent questions I received in response to my last posting made me realize I’ve already slipped into “comfort zone” in a new world of terminology, and I need to explain more about the role of the Peace Corps, PC Volunteers (PCVs), and the Economic and Organizational Development (EOD) program in Moldova.

First, Peace Corps has three goals:
(1) To help the people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained men and women;
(2) To help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the people served;
(3) To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people.

Peace Corps is invited to a country by its government, in other words, Peace Corps doesn’t just “show up” and say “Hey, you guys look like you could use some help around here.” When Peace Corps is invited, although I don’t know all the particulars, I imagine that some kind of assessment is done to determine what programs would be most useful for the Host Country. In Moldova, we have four PC programs: Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), which has volunteers working both in schools and as teacher trainers; Health Education; Agriculture and Agribusiness Development (AAD); and Economic & Organizational Development. The EOD program initially started 10 years ago as a Business Development program, but it was not a good fit with the PC mission of non-profit, and thus has been transformed into EOD, in which we work with non-governmental organizations, more commonly known as Non-profit organizations in the U.S. Interestingly, TEFL was not one of the original PC programs in Moldova, but was added after PCVs commented on how poorly so many of the English teachers spoke English. The AAD program is not what you might imagine — PCVs don’t teach sustainable farming techniques, as Moldova has a long and rich history of quality and productive agriculture (in fact, just about everyone has at least a little plot of land somewhere on which they grow their household fruits and vegetables, and raise some animals, too). Instead, the AAD program, as I understand it, is more focused on the business aspects of agriculture.

There is, of course, some overlap between all four programs (TEFL, Health, AAD, and EOD), and I’ll come back to this later.

I don’t know it works in other countries, but in PC Moldova (PC/M), an organization or community submits a proposal to PC/M requesting a PCV. For EOD, our Program Manager, Sylvia, reviews all the proposals and selects the sites that seem best prepared for a Volunteer. Sylvia first became involved with PC when an organization she ran requested a PCV, and thus she worked for 2 years with a PCV counterpart. Over the years, she has advanced through the PC “hierarchy” and now manages the EOD program. She knows what to look for in a proposal, and she visits each potential site and meets the potential counterparts (I’ll explain that term in a moment). For instance, this year she received almost 40-some applications for the 20-some EOD volunteers available. There is a fine line between an organization that is too undeveloped for a PCV to be helpful, and one that is really ready. On the other end of the spectrum, there are organizations that are already pretty well developed, self-sustaining, and although probably have room for improvement, for the most part they “get it” and therefore a PCV would be better placed with a different organization that has more to learn.

The trick, though, is that we are assigned to the community, even though it is one organization that has specifically applied for a PCV. So perhaps a way to look at it is that the organization is the venue by which a community can get a PCV, and the organization gives the PCV a point of focus and some concrete activities and goals which will later be enhanced by activities and goals we establish for ourselves within the community.

The overarching theme for PCVs is ‘Sustainability.” Although it may be fun to do a project on your own, or it may just be easier to write a grant by yourself, we are not helping the community if we are not teaching the skills necessary for the members to sustain those activities after the PCV leaves in 2 years. Thus, we never work alone, and we are assigned a Counterpart, or Partner, by the applying organization. My counterpart is Donna Mikhailovna, and she actually works with four NGO’s, loosely coordinated by the Primaria. I know that sounds strange, as we place a high importance of the separation of non-profits from government entities, but the rules are only just being created here in Moldova, and I guess “those that decided things” figured it was more important to get the ball rolling than to worry about all the technicalities at first. The definition of NGO seems much broader here than I am used to, but then again, very little in Moldova turns out quite the way I expect it to be. But that’s another story!

The PCVs in my group are assigned to a wide variety of NGO’s. Of we three “Russians,” Emily will be working with a Parent-Teacher Organization in a school, and her counterpart is the school director. Matt will be working in the Primar’s office in Taraclia, and his counterpart is the Vice-Primar (Vice Mayor). Others are working with organizations helping disabled children and adults, others are with organizations serving the Roma (Gypsy) population. Several of us are assigned to more than one organization, and some PCVs even have more than one Counterpart. I have one Counterpart, and (at least on paper) 4 organizations: one that is called the Children’s Primaria, which sounds suspiciously like the Comsomol to me, but they assured me it was not (Comsomol was the children’s version of the Communist Party during Soviet times); one organization is kind of a Bulgarian cultural heritage group; the other two are still pretty vague to me. None of them are active right now, and I’ve already suggested to my partner that one of our first activities ought to be to determine what kind of organizations the community is interested in, rather than right away trying to “reignite” all four of them. Perhaps four is too many for a population of 5500 people? Perhaps there are some overlapping goals that could be better combined into fewer organizations so that they are not inadvertently working against each other?

Well, as you can tell, I’m already thinking a lot about my work and where to start. As I mentioned earlier, there can be a good deal of overlap between the 4 PC programs, at least in Moldova. Many PCVs pick up ’secondary projects” within the community. Again, we are Volunteers for the entire community and not just for one organization. This can be a difficult thing sometimes for the counterparts to accept or remember, but it sounds like most folks have worked it out well to have other activities in their lives. English clubs are common, and can be a quick and easy way for a PCV to get to meet people, especially children, in a community. In terms of sustainability, though, there is some debate among PCVs about whether or not the TEFL program ought to focus so exclusively on teaching children, or if it ought not be more involved in training teachers which then will result in a larger impact, ultimately. With that in mind, I’m thinking about initiating a Conversational English time with the English teachers in the school. Of course, I need to get a better handle on what interests the community members first. Other volunteers have started up sports teams, knitting clubs, all kinds of things. Summer camps are very popular with PCVs, and there are several large ones run for teenagers from all across Moldova that any PCV can get involved with, or you can do one in your community, but again, the point is to teach some sustainable skills, so it’s imperative to involved Host Country Nationals (HCNs), aka Moldovans. The camp you started may or may not continue after you are gone, but it’s critical that someone learned how to organize an event, develop a budget, advertise, etc.

Please let me know if you have questions about this, I’m not sure if I’ve explained it well or not! I’ll do my best to explain things, but of course, I’m only beginning to understand bits and pieces of it myself.