A Government A.R.E. (Acronym Rich Environment)

You know you work for the government when you catch yourself using at least two acronyms in one sentence. All these acronyms naturally aid us in streamlining and simplifying government work for the greatest efficiency possible. The practice of using these abbreviated forms started out gradually at Staging in Miami, affectionately termed PDT (Pre-Departure Training). Once we arrived in-country, however, we would be PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees) of the class SUR 14 (the fourteenth team to Suriname), engaging in PST (Pre-Service Training), and we would be expected to use as many acronyms as we could contrive. We even had to know acronyms in other languages. Our initial training facility was called NAKS (roughly “After Work Comes Sports” in Dutch).

At NAKS we met Ann, our CD (Country Director), Marlon, our SSC (Safety and Security Counselor), and “Doc,” our PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer), as well as many first or second-year PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers). PST is divided into several segments including a week-long orientation, TOT (Training Of Trainers), CBT (Community Based Training), CPC’s (Counterpart Conferences), and future site visits. I have no clue why we do not have an acronym for future site visits, but I’m thinking of suggesting FSV’s). During CBT, we have HS (Homestay), when we stay with a HCN (Host-County National) family, have language classes with an LCF (I do not really know what this stands for, but it means language-teacher), and formulate a CDA (Community Development Activity) based on our conception of CED (Community Economic Development) in our respective HS sites. For our CDA we use PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) tools such as FREEHOP and SWOT to assess what we should do before we do it.

During PC service, we have an EAP (Emergency Action Plan) in case anything goes wrong, but during training we have a PST EAP (Pre-Service Training Emergency Action Plan) specific to our locations. After we are sworn in, we have access to ICE (Information Collection and Exchange) resources, the IRC (In-country Resource Center), as well as IST (In-Service Training) to help us with ideas. IST is, in-turn, divided into EST, MST, and LST (Early-Service Training, Mid-Service Training, and Lat-Service Training). If we decide not to ET (Early Termination of Service) before our COS (Close Of Service) comes around, we have to submit a DOS (Description Of Service) or a DOW (Description Of Work), but I’m not sure what the difference is yet. There is still so much more to learn.