PCVL Orientation

This was my last official week as a PCVL and no better way to cap it off than to lead an orientation for the new group!

The orientation was a few weeks in the making and the activities leading up to it included a complete overhaul of the PCVL role. This was spearheaded by myself and another PCVL with support and oversight by our post's Director of Programming and Training (DPT). We wanted to make the position more meaningful and find ways to add additional value to it and to the post through PCVL involvement. This meant meeting with program staff, admin, and the training team to see exactly how PCVLs could be of greatest use and then negotiating the new job description accordingly with the DPT and Country Director.

The big reveal happened the day before the orientation and the current PCVL team and the staff were very excited about the direction the role is taking.

The orientation was jam-packed with sessions to explain the enhanced position, with technical training and meetings with all the departments in Peace Corps to provide practical application and explanation of PCVL duties. Round-table discussions added value and we were able to unpack the position and come up with even better ideas for working together. Everyone left with renewed vigour towards the position, myself included and I only have days left!

I am really excited about the direction the PCVL role is taking and I am happy to be a part of that movement. I genuinely believe that this position, which is still fairly new at our post, is going to be one of the best that Peace Corps has to offer.

PC Botswana's First All Volunteer Conference

Peace Corps Botswana held its very first all volunteer conference to commemorate 10 years of HIV/AIDS work in country. This was a monumental time for our post and something worth acknowledging on a grand scale.

For three days, all 134 volunteers from across the country gathered together in one of the capital's nicest hotels to share best practices, to coordinate collaborations, and to be briefed on the scope of key issues facing Botswana to date as a means of developing pragmatic solutions and innovative projects.

I am proud to say that the conference was an overwhelming success. It was met with praise by volunteers and distinguished guests alike, both for the content of the sessions and for the overall event. And this is no small feat when your guests include the American Ambassador to Botswana and the heads of many international organizations like the CDC and Baylor Center for Excellence.

I am even more proud because the planning, logistics, and execution of the entire event was entrusted, in large part, to myself and a fellow PCVL. This meant long hours working alongside staff, making calls to representatives from various international and national organizations, meeting with banquet managers at the site, making session plans and outlining evening activities (complete with a "coffee house"!), and stuffing personalized folders and making name tags for every PCV, among other tasks. It was a tireless effort that paid off in spades. I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to support such a significant event for our post - the very first of its kind. And I am so happy that it was deemed "the best training to date" by PCVs. Because, after all, they're who it was all for!

Another PAC Meeting

The quarterly meeting for Peace Corps Botswana's Project Advisory Committee (PAC) Meeting was held yesterday. Leaders from the Government Ministries, the National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA), Peace Corps staff, and other relevant stakeholders came together to discuss our post's program and build on previous meetings. This meeting is invaluable for sharing information and improve both relations with these parties and the quality of our service to the country. Simply being a representative is an honor. This meeting, however, my Country Director asked me to step up and present to the group.

My task was to present examples and best practices of volunteer activities across the different sectors (Local Government Capacity Building, Community Health Team, Non-Governmental Organizations, and Life Skills). This meant scanning the work done by 134 PCVs and isolating projects that would be of interest, both because of their direct relevance to the PAC members and to demonstrate alternative types of projects volunteers participate in that have a significant impact on their communities. (I have to state that this was no easy task because PCVs in Botswana are doing some very good work!) I then created a presentation to accompany my discussion and prepared for what I assumed would include an onslaught of questions by the PAC members. This was going to be a very big meeting for me - presenting and honoring the work of my fellow volunteers to such high level officials within Botswana. If I'm being honest, this means I fretted about it.

I needn't have worried, however. My presentation went smoothly, the PAC members were extremely impressed with PCV activities around the country, and Peace Corps staff were happy with how I portrayed our work. In fact, they were so pleased with it that they sent my presentation back to Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington DC to show the type and quality of activities going on at our post! It was a proud day for me. I was proud of myself for a successful presentation in the face of these bigwigs and proud of my colleagues and friends for all of the great things they are doing. It was an honor and a privilege to share their work with PAC.

PC/Botswana Project Advisory Committee

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer opens up many doors for unique experiences. This takes shape in the work we do, the people we stand to meet, and the places we get to see. Every day can be an adventure if you are open to it. I have been fortunate to seize many such opportunities. I am delighted to say that, in my third year, they continue to present themselves to me.

On 29 July 2013, my Country Director called to invite me to be a member of Peace Corps Botswana's Project Advisory Committee (PAC). The PAC is new to our post but has already made a significant impact on the work we do in Botswana. Essentially, PAC is comprised of Peace Corps Botswana's key project stakeholders, who are among the highest level officials in the country (having representatives from the heads of key Ministries and the National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA)) and acts as the voice that helps Peace Corps ensure that it develops credible, realistic, and responsive projects and training programs. Additionally, the PAC provides input and guidance to Peace Corps and helps to ensure stakeholder coordination and serves as an advisory body to the post's Program and Training Teams. My role on PAC, my CD explained, would be to represent the 102 volunteers currently serving in country and to shed light on what is happening on the ground. This offer was an honor and an opportunity I jumped at.

As I expected, my first PAC meeting was well attended and impressive. The stakeholders were outspoken, energetic, and eager to discuss the issues before the committee. Included in the topics were: the new project frameworks, preliminary results and a sampling of volunteer activities, administrative matters pertinent to the Ministries, site development, the incoming group of trainees, and projections for the upcoming year.

I was most taken by the collaboration between these groups and their passionate and keen interest in furthering and supporting the Peace Corps projects. This working group felt productive and I believe a great stepping stone towards enhancing the work we do around the country. It is no secret that I feel strongly about the potential of Peace Corps Botswana to make a real impact. PAC is a move in the right direction to get everyone on board and working together to ensure that our post can achieve a higher level of functionality and have a profound effect on the communities we reach. I am grateful to be a part of it as we move forward.

My New Roles: Third Year Begins

My last few weeks have been jam-packed as I moved into my new apartment in Gaborone, said goodbye to a dear friend, mourned a loss, settled in, and officially began working at my third year assignments. Needless to say, there has been a lot of adjustment - something that I have gotten used to in my time abroad. Through it all, I maintain that the best things in life are seized out of moments like this - when there is an air of uncertainty coupled with a sense of adventure and an open mind. Change, vulnerability, adjustment, and opportunity are the lifeblood of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

So far, the adjustments to my new assignments - as a Volunteer Leader for Peace Corps and a Technical Advisor for PCI - have been positive. The orientations went smoothly, I have remained very excited about the work, I already feel a deep sense of purpose, and the teams I will be assisting are among the best I have known.

With PCI, I will be working with a very diverse and multicultural group of people, hailing from the far corners of the globe. Their experience is just as varied, which offers me ample opportunity to learn and grow. Similarly, the components of the $16.7 million project that PCI has me working on are just as multifarious, ranging from behavior change to economic empowerment to orphan care to integrated early childhood education and finally to women's empowerment. These facets are intertwined, thereby offering me a chance to work alongside specialists and implementing partners in all areas of the project.

While the opportunities for professional growth and exposure to various topics are plenty, there is also much more clarity in my exact role with PCI. I will be advising particularly on the integrated early childhood education (IECD) component and helping mainstream gender (which the project incorporates into all areas). My exact deliverables go as follows:

• Draft and finalize an Adolescent Life Skills Toolkit. This toolkit will be adopted as part of Botswana's National Strategy for life skills education. In this vein, I will also develop a training plan to introduce this toolkit to partners, stakeholders, and government. 
• Finalize an IECD Resource Pack and develop a training plan to launch it. This includes researching and writing resource modules and rolling out trainings on the resource pack to PCI partners and stakeholders.
• Provide technical assistance to setting up an "IECD Model Site" at a village outside the capital to demonstrate best practices. This is from concept to national expansion.
• Plan and organize an IECD Forum to be attended by Botswana Government, USAID, and other key national and international agencies.
• Assist with monitoring and evaluation and reporting of the implementation of the IECD project component according to USAID's indicators. This includes conducting field monitoring activities and compiling M&E reports.

This role has me pushing myself to a higher level. It will be both challenging and immensely rewarding. And, if I am able to satisfactorily pull it all off within my one year's time, be an exceptional feat! Regardless, I am thrilled about the learning opportunity and what I stand to gain from it all. I mean, how many people can say they published two nationally-adopted manuals and created a model site from scratch?! I hope to be among those who can...

My role with Peace Corps is every bit as elaborate and will have me keeping extra busy - and, yes, it may actually feel like having two full-time jobs. It spans an array of duties, including providing technical assistance and information to volunteers, assisting staff with site development and conflict mediation, giving feedback on post and volunteer assignments, and so on.

To date, I have been being a mentor to the incoming group of Peace Corps Trainees who will be coming in two short weeks. This means hosting conference calls to discuss various topics (home stay, safety and security, packing, etc) and responding to countless emails as they prepare to come to Botswana. It has been fun getting to know them prior to arrival and makes me even more excited to meet them and participate in their upcoming training. I have also started helping with site development for the incoming group - attending community meetings to assess buy-in of the village, meeting with potential host agencies, and talking with Peace Corps staff about sites. My involvement has been minimal so far but even getting a taste of what's to come has been compelling. All in all, I think the role as a PCVL will offer extremely valuable insight into the oversight and running of a field office.

That is my third year, in brief. Or at least how it looks today. 

My professional career to date has been varied. I have found the utmost satisfaction doing hands-on capacity building, as with the grassroots development work of my last two years. It will be interesting to see how this new path will feel. Will it be rewarding? Will I like this hybrid office-field assignment? Does it feel different working in an office setting now that I see the direct results in the field? Will this change the course of my future? I will keep you all apprised of my evolution and my impression of the work. I can say that I am most confident and excited about what lays before me. And I am certain that it will be a rewarding, challenging, and eye-opening year.

Getting a Head Start: Third Year Assignments

Third year assignments typically start after a PCV finishes their work at site and reaches their original COS date. For many extendees (myself included), this also means they usually take their month-long "special home leave" before starting their new assignment. This allows for significant closure to be reached in their projects before beginning something new (and sometimes wholly different).

As I have mentioned before, I will have two assignments when I start my third year: one with Project Concern International (PCI) as a Technical Advisor for their Tsela Kgopo OVC and Gender Project and the other with Peace Corps as a Volunteer Leader. I will officially begin my new assignments on July 1st. But, as you likely could infer from my ramblings over the past two years, I have never been one for "going with the grain", so to speak. My natural instinct is to gather all the information available and dive head-first into whatever lies before me. This has served me well in the past so it is no surprise that I would do the same again here in Botswana with my third year assignments.

PCVL Head Start

Two weeks ago, my Country Director called and asked me if I would be willing to help plan and host a "Take Your Kid To Work Day" at the Peace Corps office. My role would be to come up with the agenda and activities, coordinate volunteers, and facilitate the day. A chance to play with adorable little kids all day and call it "work"?! Of course I agreed!

In collaboration with the office's Executive Assistant, I planned the agenda for the day. We decided to make it like a real work day for the kids (aged 3- to 10-years-old). They would get "official" nametags with the Peace Corps insignia and the title "Junior Staff" presented at a mock staff meeting in the morning, where they would also take their Oath of Service alongside their parents and other staff. They would go on to receive "medical clearance", complete with watching their heartbeat on a monitor, then go through "security check", which meant learning about basic safety then learning how to use an air horn and put out a real fire with a fire extinguisher! The rest of the day required them to be "Program Support" for the different sectors their parents worked in. Activities included shredding paper (big fun for a little kid!), stamping envelopes, and making friendship bracelets and doing crafts (to help come up with fun activities for PCVs to do with kids in their villages, of course!).

Besides being such a fun day playing with all the kids, it allowed me to see the staff from a more humanist perspective. Yes, we are all a family here - staff and PCVs - but it becomes a more powerful connection when you open up and see these more intimate moments. Knowing that I'm going to be working so closely with them in the upcoming year, I feel this was the perfect opportunity to share something deeper and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity. Also, have I mentioned that I like playing with adorable kids? Because their energy and excitement over it all really makes it worthwhile. Totally.

PCI Head Start

Last week, after submitting my updated resume, one of the staff from PCI called and asked if I would be willing to attend a meeting put on by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). The meeting was being called to review and revise a toolkit for HIV prevention and treatment for adolescents - a facilitator's guide for trainers, a manual for teachers, and three separate workbook for adolescents (ages ranging between 10-years-old and 19-years-old). Essentially, there is a pre-existing toolkit that has been being used in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern African nations, and they are hoping to implement something similar in Botswana. To do this, they asked a group of experts to assemble and adapt the current documents to something usable here.

The room was literally full of the best minds Botswana has to offer and some of the highest government officials. They ranged from the heads of NACA (Botswana's National AIDS Coordinating Agency), the Ministries of Education and Health, and Baylor Children's Clinic to directors of some of the key national and international NGOs dealing with adolescent health issues in the country. I felt like a very small face in this specialized crowd and wondered why I had been invited to join this meeting. I resolved to try my best to contribute and to learn as much as I could during the meeting, in the hopes of being a valuable resource in the future.

By the end of our first reading of the documents, the representatives in my group were providing me with accolades for my insights and all that I had to offer in terms of contextualizing the document for Batswana youth and for organizational structure and ease of use. It seems that my work on the ground and in the villages has provided me with keen insights often overlooked at this higher level that were extremely useful in revising the toolkit. To the point that the project head from UNESCO asked me if I would be willing to continue my revisions after the meeting because they wanted to get it finalized and begin implementation by June of this year.

All of this gave me confidence in myself and in the skills and knowledge I have developed during my time here. I was overjoyed to be in this company and to be able to contribute meaningfully to the project. I was proud of myself and grateful that PCI felt I was a worthy representative for their organization.

So here I am, with less than a month left in my two year contract, preparing and actually starting some activities for my future extension assignments. I am so content with where things are going and full of excitement about the work ahead of me. I think this is really going to be something great!

Extension Granted!

Despite incessant (and inconvenient) water and power outages, hairy spiders, ant hordes, insane temperatures, and thorns in my shoes, I love it here. Yes, I said it, I love Botswana. I have fallen in love with the simple life in the village and with international development work. Although I had a hunch before coming here that this might be the case, there really was no way for me to predict how deep my love would be. And, honestly, my trials at the beginning definitely pointed more towards "enmity" than "love". But this love has grown from frustration and disappointment and perseverance and is likely stronger because of it. It is like your favorite romantic comedy movie - girl wants to find love, girl sets out to find it, girl is angry with and/or hates what is set in front of her (usually a guy, in this case the work), girl fights it, girl feels like all hope is lost, girl has a realization or transformation, girl flirts with the thing she once resented, and finally girl realizes it's the only thing for her. I didn't think this sort of romance happened in real life. But, like many people before me, I have been surprised by the way things turn out. This could very well be the tale of my pursuit and my love of international development work.

But I made it! I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, my heart flickered, and I got a warm fuzzy feeling with every person who learned something from me and with every organization that ran a little smoother. And that is why, with a joyous heart and an excited mind, I announce that my application for extension was granted! I have been given the opportunity to continue pursuing this love and see where the next phase in the journey takes me!

For my extension year ("third year"), I am assuming two roles:

In my first role, I will be working with Project Concern International (PCI). PCI is an international non-governmental organization that currently operates in 16 countries to promote sustainable change and community development. I will be working directly with two projects funded by USAID - one for orphans and vulnerable children and the other for integrated childhood and youth development. In this capacity, I will get the opportunity to oversee and manage high level projects that I am passionate about, work alongside leaders in their field, and also continue doing some field work with PCI's 10 implementing partners across Botswana. 

In my second role, I will be acting as a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL). The role of a PCVL is multifaceted and includes: working with Peace Corps staff to assess organizations and villages for successful site development; mitigating issues between staff, volunteers, and host country nationals; assisting with regional support issues; designing and conducting trainings for incoming volunteers; liaising for Peace Corps Botswana, connecting staff with volunteers; and informing current PCVs about available resources to better assist their host country agencies. I am passionate about Peace Corps' mission and believe that every volunteer deserves the best chance to make the most of their service. I am thrilled to have the chance to put my magnanimous experience to work in helping serving volunteers.

I am overwhelmed and excited about the potential for personal growth and the opportunity to continue doing good work at an even greater magnitude in these new roles. To me, it is my perfect placement. I have incredible hopes for this country, its people, and the work Peace Corps is doing. I know these hopes are achievable because, time and again, my dreams in this country have come true. I am honored to have the opportunity to stay here one more year to see that continue to happen.