YOUR ASSIGNMENT
Country: Senegal
Program: Preventative Health and Environmental Education
Job Title: Environmental Education Extension Agent
Dates of Service: May 2010 - May 2012*
Orientation Dates: March 9 - 11, 2010*
Pre-Service Training (in Thies): March12 - May 2010*
*dates subject to change
After reading though that packet and the details of the assignment, I continued the inspection of the blue packet. It soon became apparent that I still had some paperwork to take care of once I officially accepted the assignment.
First was to take care of the Visa and Passport (apparently my personal passport isn't good enough). Then came updating the resume and the "Aspiration Statement." Apparently the Peace Corps in Senegal didn't have too much information on me yet, and I needed to remedy that. Just a few short minutes ago I sent in the last of that paperwork via email, and now I am putting it here for you to read.
What better way to kick this blog off than with my aspirations for service?
Aspiration Statement
A: The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.
I have been working in Environmental Education on and off for the past 6 years. My first summer job once I started college was as a camp counselor/naturalist at the Central Wisconsin Environmental station. That opportunity changed the direction of my life, after returning there for a second summer I transferred to the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and earned my BS in Wildlife Ecology. During my time at UWSP I continued developing my environmental education skills and experience. I hope to utilize the environmental education knowledge I have gained, from planning and organizing programs to helping to create a mural as a teaching utensil, to improve the quality of life in Senegal. I look forward to working with locals to encourage the protection, improvement, and understanding of natural systems especially as a way to improve the general health of the area.
B: Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
From all of the reading of Peace Corps materials and research I have done on my own I believe the most important strategies/skills I will need to utilize to effectively work in Senegal are flexibility and patience. I am sure there will no one way to effectively convey the desired message to everyone involved. Flexibility will be important for me to not only pull from what others have done, but to also try to incorporate new ideas to help the message reach a wider audience. Connected closely to this will be patience, the patience to take the time that is necessary to really get a message across as well as the patience to make the necessary adjustments to make it stick. It also seems to be apparent that everything will take longer than it would in the United States because of differences in the pace of life throughout the world. Patience and flexibility will also be necessary to help me adjust to a new culture and a new way of doing things.
C: Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.
I have a rather large interest in Anthropology and pursued that for a time as a career path. Other cultures interest me a lot, and I think that curiosity will help me to adjust quickly. Because of my Anthropology classes I am aware the dangers of ethnocentrism, and with that in mind I feel that I am prepared to experience and adapt to a new culture. One of the strategies I use to adapt to a new culture is analyzing why certain behaviors exist; once I get curious about ‘the why’ it becomes a fun challenge for me to solve. In that way I adapt to and try to integrate into the culture as a way of solving that problem. Once I understand the reasons behind the behaviors it will be all the easier for me to fully experience the culture and be able to share it with my family and friends back home. On a more experiential level, between summer jobs and changing schools I have done a lot of moving and experienced many, albeit slight, differences in culture through that. These past experiences will be something more for me to draw from in understanding a new and different culture.
D: The Skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community project.
The biggest skill I hope to get out of pre-service training is the language experience, for what are probably obvious reasons. Outside of that, I hope to gain a better understanding of the ecology of Senegal. Health promotion seems to be a major goal of this particular project so I would like to gain more knowledge on the aspects of health that are being degraded because of environmental issues. Along with that, what changes can be made, or that people want to make, in order to improve the health of the community I am assigned to, as well as the whole of Senegal.
E: How you think Peace Corps serves will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.
It is hard to say what kind of an influence Peace Corps service will have on my future plans before I have even begun my service. What I hope that it will do on a broad scale is to solidify my goals and aspirations in life. It has become apparent to me that Environmental Education and Interpretation is the major direction I want to go. What I hope this experience will give me a more specific heading within environmental education - what I want to pass on to future generations and why it is so important. I believe this experience will provide me with the personal experience and sense of passion to become a highly motivated and effective environmental educator. I hope that my experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer will help me to make informed decisions on a globally conscious level, that I will be able to share my experiences with family and friends to help create a more accurate picture of life around the world, and perhaps most of all I hope that it will affect me in ways that I cannot currently predict.
No comments:
Post a Comment