Sunday, January 9, 2011

“What exactly do you do over there?” Well, I’m glad you asked…a Peace Corps Résumé, Fall 2010:

Environmental Clean-up: taught students project planning, helped them organize and hold disco-fundraiser, secured materials, transport, and volunteers for the cleanup, wrote article for local newspaper
*** School began with the usual flurry of chaos signaled by double-booked rooms, students and teachers with different versions of the schedule, no books or workbooks, etc., but things settled down into somewhat of a routine after the first few weeks. That’s the day job: teaching English for 18 hours a week, plus lesson planning. Everything else is extra. Incredible Ira administered her needs assessment that she had called me in Crimea to ask about, so I taught the basics of project design and management in English club, and the students organized and held a disco-fundraiser to support their environmental project. The actual cleanup was marred by the fact that all my students who had promised to come, save Awesome Ira, failed to show up. This was embarrassing, considering I had sweet-talked the mayor of Komsomolsk into providing a bus to transport 20 people from Kozyatyn, but it ended up being only 8 of my friends. But I still get to tell the story of when I took a marshrutka one Wednesday night to rendez-vous with the mayor of a village 30 minutes away (a man I had never met), near the reservoir that supplies our town’s water. I got to the café where he said to meet, but it was empty. When I asked for Anatoliy Heyorheyovitch, the waiter raised her eyes but told me to go down the hall to a back room. I knocked on the door, reflecting that this was a strange place for a mayor’s office, but it opened to reveal instead a table groaning under the weight of a traditional Ukrainian feast, with 8-9 revelers seated around it, celebrating the mayor’s birthday. They were all the important people in town, and without hesitation, I was entreated to join them. So that is how the meeting with the mayor went. After several more shots of samahon (keep in mind they’d already been celebrating before I arrived), I had regaled them with stories of America, they had informed me of the different industries the village is known for, and the major had agreed to send a bus to transport us and a tractor to remove the trash we collected. A few hours later, he paid for my taxi home. Mission, accomplished. Later I heard that the people of Komsomolsk were asking about the American. With another visit, this time to one of the candidates running for mayor of Kozyatyn (he had also been mayor before), I secured gloves and trash bags for the clean up. Even with only had a handful of volunteers, we still collected a mountain of trash in a few hours, drank some tea, and called it a good day’s work. I really appreciate that my Ukrainian friends came out to support me.

Kozyatyn Leadership Camp INCITE Vinnytsia:
27 kids, 8 PCVs, 6 Ukrainian teachers; directed and managed all aspects of two-day camp: food, lodging, transport, budget, materials, supplies, advertising, community contribution, lesson plans, schedule, time and resource management, overall concept and design, evaluation, newspaper article
***Professional highlight of my service to date!!! It was a great success, the kids didn’t want to go home, we had freakishly fabulous weather in mid-November, plus I think they learned something ; ) Lessons were on leadership, teamwork, and project planning, they had activities and games to reinforce the concepts presented, I showed “School of Rock” on Saturday night (with homemade cookies, plus brownies later for the counselors!) and led yoga on Sunday morning; the students had to plan and present a project idea in groups to pull it all together.

Counter-Trafficking project in conjunction with Ukraine-wide effort for December 2nd World Day to Abolish Human Trafficking:
conducted a 3-part training seminar for 5 girls in 10th-11th grade, mentored peer educators through the teaching process as they prepared and then taught their classmates the same lessons
*** Sympathized with the girls as they learned how difficult their classmates are to teach.

10th grade American culture course: designed semester curriculum and created materials
***Earned a standing ovation for my sneak attack and capture of Ruslan’s phone.

Weekly Adult English Club:
helped friend with TOEFL and grad school application; group discussions on everything including feminism, violence, the environment, education, politics, history, culture, and current events
***This also counts as my social hour, since we have tea and cookies and really it’s just a chance to hang out with my friends and have some fun conversation.

Weekly English Clubs for students: topics covered include domestic violence and self-defense, anti-smoking, HIV/AIDS, counter-trafficking, special needs, American holidays and culture, etc.
***Don’t worry, we do fun stuff too, like decorate cookies, play games, and sing songs! Five 10th and 11th grade girls meet on Fridays at my house for the older club; they are the ones I did the CT project with, but we also watch movies and bake or cook American foods.

The GADFly: editor and writer, moved to paperless printing and archiving through pcukraine.org, expanded to include Ukrainian contributions and readership, facilitated by discussions with my Adult English Club
***Check it out online! Search www.pcukraine.org for past issues.

PC Collaborative Vinnytska Oblast Facilitator: organize the exchange of skills and information between volunteers at regular meetings; pioneered region-wide weekend camp program based on successful model
***This is just a structured way for volunteers to problem-solve, bounce ideas off each other, and collaborate, hence the name. In September we went camping by a river in a village outside Vinnytsia. It rained, we cooked rice and beans, and we woke up surrounded by cows.

One of the things I’m most proud of and satisfied with is knowing that my friend Kamilia will keep doing awesome work even when I’m gone, fulfilling the dream of any volunteer that her work is sustainable. She wrote a PEPFAR grant for an HIV/AIDS peer educator program involving a two-day training for students from local schools, who will then teach the same lessons to their classmates, which I merely translated into English, and now we are getting ready to implement. She also inspired her 7th graders at the village school to complete a project that raised money through bake sales and donations to buy art supplies and fairy tales for HIV positive orphans in Vinnytsia. They were skeptical that they could have an impact, but she showed them how they could and they did!

To toot my horn just a little more, but really to explain what else I do besides teach English, I will be the Gender and Development Council’s Camp GLOW 2011 director for a Ukraine-wide girls’ leadership camp, which means I am personally responsible for the smooth sailing of this year’s girls’ camp in Kolomiya, but will write the grant for all three camps that GAD will host this year (look for it online soon, or check out last year’s camps at http://globeukraine.blogspot.com/ )!

I also recently started work as a SPA coach and reviewer, which means I read and peer-edit PCV applications for USAID Small Project Assistance grants, and then meet in Kiev with the group to make funding decisions.

Finally, I am writing a grant to start a journalism club and student newspaper at my school, and all the details will soon be posted online, but I would like to ask in advance that anyone who can contribute, please support this project. It’s something that’s never be done before at my school, and the students are really excited to participate.

PS Some of my students are now pen pals with my cousin Katie, brother Jack, and their friends, so I can add fostering cross-cultural understanding through student correspondence to my list! Ivanna asked for an American boy, and I said I knew just the one—now Jack is a celebrity!

1 comment:

  1. Kathleen, that's amazing! And thanks so much for this break-down of everything you do. I honestly wasn't sure how you were spending your time these days, but it sounds like you're really rockin' out over there. Congratulations on your appointment on the Camp GLOW team! That sounds like an awesome opportunity - way to rock socks =)

    I'm glad that you're doing so well! And I'm gonna go brag about you now, hope that's ok.

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