Site Development

Deciding where new volunteers just out of the States will spend two very important years of their lives is heady work. As my river is a little hard to get to, Peace Corps has been using volunteers for future site development for our area. Peace Corps debated placing any volunteers on the Tapanahony, as it is expensive, but by using us instead of sending people from the city, we have been able to cut costs and improve the quality of future sites. If all goes well, four new volunteers will be assigned to the region in May.

Since we live out here and have first-hand knowledge of what makes a positive volunteer experience, we have balanced Peace Corps’s concerns of security and cost-effectiveness with volunteer priorities of good potential projects and a decent place to live. As a result of negotiation, two volunteers will go to a large village that has wanted volunteers for a long time, but that Peace Corps had not considered viable.

It has been a lot of work serving as a liaison between Peace Corps and the prospective villages. I have spent days at a time in the future sites, making a network of contacts, selecting houses for volunteers from a variety of options, taking notes to recommend what the new volunteers should consider purchasing, distributing building materials to the different villages, arranging for transportation of materials that went to the wrong villages, resolving cost concerns addressed by those transporting the material, and of course taking lots of pictures so the new volunteers can see where they will live. Plus, having accompanied staff on several site development trips, we now can make suggestions to improve the process throughout the country.

Knowing the multitude of challenges volunteers face in the uncertainty of a completely new environment, we are more than happy to spend some time ensuring a good experience for our future colleagues.