What kind of work do you do? This is probably the most common question I receive as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Family, friends, people in El Salvador or anywhere else I find myself, almost everyone asks this question. Unfortunately, I really don’t have a straight answer. The best I can come up with is “a little bit of everything.” How else do I explain that my work spans from HIV/AIDS awareness training to coaching a teenage girls soccer team, among many other projects. How do I tell someone that some days I teach art to little kids, and some days I have nothing to do. I have no basic description, only a random list of activities and projects. Yet, strangely, my title is Rural Health and Sanitation Volunteer, which doesn’t exactly apply to more than half of the work I do. So yeah… to date “a little bit of everything” is the best answer I have. I hope everyone can make do with that explanation. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, sometimes finding our place or our project work within our communities can be the toughest part of the whole experience.

 

When boarding their respective departure plane, I believe all volunteers had visions of amazing and “ideal” project work they would soon be immersed in. As we found our rows and seats we couldn’t help but think about how we are going to help make the world a better place, one small piece at a time. But for some Peace Corps Volunteers, the reality is they never find those “ideal” projects, and sometimes when they do, they don’t always work out.

 

So what is this “ideal” project work I speak of? Well, Peace Corps is a development organization, and like many other similar organizations, development is what they are after. Development can be viewed from many different angles and can be found in the smallest of actions. The definition can be debated over for hours (believe me, I have seen it done), but ultimately there is an agreeable ideal form. What makes a development project ideal is sustainability. What puts the icing on the cake is if it was developed from the “ground up,” commonly referred to as grass-roots.

 

Now this does not mean that other projects that do not fit into this ideal sustainable grass-roots category are not appreciated, needed or beneficial, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am simply just trying to peg down the ‘ideal” development work. Most of everything we have done or been a part of thus far would not fall under this so called “ideal” category.

 

Ok, now that’s out of our way, so let’s move onward…

 

So after a little over a year of living in my community and no “ideal” project work coming across my plate, I went looking for it. Shouldn’t be two difficult to find, I thought. So I loaded up my gun and took my best shot, with the assumption that I would be celebrating my triumphs later on back home. Unfortunately, I had no idea my best shot was going to miss, and the duck would poop on my face and fly off, so to speak.

 

So here is where this story all begins…when we were first assigned to the community I was given a piece of paper with general information about the site as well as project areas of interest that had been expressed by the community leaders. With the grass routes style mindset this would be the perfect place to start, as the community leaders had already expressed their willingness and interest to work in this area. So I considered this list when selecting my “ideal” project venture. Several things were listed, many of which had already been addressed, and one area that had still to be touched-on was some sort of trash project.

 

Our community has no form of trash pick up. Current residents of my community have several options. They can burn it or simply just throw it out in the open. They can dig a whole and toss it in.  While not ideal, currently this is the best option. However, it is by far the least popular. Last but not least, is the most popular option. Throw your trash in the ditch and wait for the rainwater to wash it away, so it then becomes someone else’s problem a little farther down the line.

 

So there it was, the idea… we were going to start trash collection. The community was interested and it was very much needed, which set the stage for sustainability as well as ground up development. Everything was perfect. It was going to be easy enough to accomplish, right?

 

The process would go something like this. Solicit the mayor to send the town trash truck to our community once a week. Write a grant proposal to obtain funds for the community trash bins and organize a few community clean up days as well as workshops to teach the importance of trash pick removal. That’s it, problem solved, a cleaner community, healthier people and a gratified gringo. It all seemed pretty basic.

 

To start the project I planned a brief 30-minute meeting with the community leaders. I gave a brief presentation on why we needed this project and how it would benefit the community. We talked about the necessary steps to take in order to complete the project. Everyone seemed rather excited about the idea, especially how simple it appeared to be.

 

Then, at the end of the meeting it was time to divide up the responsibilities. The first step was to write the solicitude for the mayor. As the grant money to buy trash bins would do us no good unless we had someone to physically remove the trash. Alright… so who would like to work on the solicitude for the mayor? I asked. No volunteers, only excuses as they went around the circle trying to call one another out for not volunteering (It should be noted here that these are the community leaders, they are not just random people from within the community. Together, they are more than capable of getting together and writing a solicitude). Then came the proposition… Why don’t you do it Ross, you know how to use a computer. Well um ok… after all I am one of the community leaders, I think. I reluctantly agreed but only under the condition that one of the community members would do it with me. So after a few no shows for scheduled work times I went ahead and wrote the solicitude myself. After all, time was running out, the grant money we intended on asking for was only available for a limited time, and we all understood this. While this did make for somewhat of a tight time frame, it was by no means unfeasible. 

 

Next step, the solicitude has been written and needs to be dropped off at the mayor’s office. This I had no trouble finding someone to do. My counter-part, the local Health-promoter, and the most responsible and respected of the community leaders took it into town and hand delivered it to the mayor’s office.

 

Now we just had to wait, as we could not move forward with the rest of the project until this part had been figured out and the actual trash removal had been secured into the project framework. I was told it would take about a week for the mayor to get back to us. So we waited, a week went by with no response. So we waited another week, still nothing. Assuming something was wrong, as we should have received an answer by this point, we decided someone should go and talk to the mayor. Maybe our paper-work had been lost, maybe she was still pondering the idea, possibly she had agreed and word never made it back to us. We really had no idea; all we really knew was that it was best if someone go find out. But who was going to do it?

 

While I could have easily gone myself, I was refusing. This was just as much an organizational-development project as a trash project and I was not willing to complete every step along the way by myself. I had already written the solicitude by myself, which I shouldn’t have done, and I was not about to try and fix the first kink in the line as well. That would defeat the whole purpose of the project idea, which was, I remind you, a sustainable GROUND UP development project.

 

So my counter part agreed to go to the mayor’s office and see what was going on. A week later I met with him to ask what he had discovered. Turns out, he still hadn’t gone. However, he assured me he would in the next few days. I ran into him a few days later and he told me he still didn’t have the chance to stop by.  Time was running out to apply for the grant money and we really needed an answer about the solicitude. A week later I spoke with my counterpart again. Neither he, nor any other of the community leaders had gone to find out the hang up. With the deadline for the grant proposal only a week away, I was faced with a decision.

 

Should I go to the mayor’s office and see what’s going on? Would that defeat the purpose of my ideal development project? It’s such a small, really quite basic task, would it really matter if I went ahead and did it for them? Is there lack of motivation a sign that this project will unlikely be sustainable? From a development sense, was letting this project fail the right thing to do?

 

Soon after, the grant proposal deadline passed, and neither my fellow community leaders nor I had gone to the mayor’s office to uncover the hang up for our solicitude. So with the deadline now in the rearview mirror my “ideal” project was now dead in the water. No one, really seemed to care all that much, I think some of the community leaders had already forgotten about it all. But I still I found myself asking, was allowing this project to fail the right thing to do?

 

They say hindsight is 20/20 but if that is the case, my hindsight needs Lasik. I still am not sure if I made the right decision. Would the community have benefited from a trash project? Of course! Would doing all of the work for them have defeated the purpose of my project? I believe so. Does the development aspect of the project out-weigh the benefits they would have received from a successful trash pick up project? Ultimately, that it the question, and in all honesty… I still do not have an answer.

 

- Ross

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