All-Volunteer Conference

So last week all the volunteers and staff met up in Xela to discuss the recent changes that are being made to Peace Corps Guatemala. The Regional Director, Carlos Torres came from Washington DC to speak to us about his decisions. He said that he believes that the person responsible for the decision should always be present to explain it, back it up, and answer questions, and I think a lot of people appreciated hearing it straight from the source. He showed us about an hour long PowerPoint with charts and grafts and a timeline, so that we were clear as to why and when these decisions were made.

He said that it all started in early 2011, when the 2010 Portfolio Review was assessed. The Portfolio Review is a document that looks at a number of criteria and areas such as goal achievement and safety and security. The 2010 report identified a rising number of crimes against volunteers in several countries, and therefore was an issue that needed to be addressed. So they analyzed the trends in crime, evaluated the effectiveness of their procedures, looked at their training protocol, and gathered recommendations. Then all the Country Directors in the region got together to see how they could work to reduce trends and create new strategies.

From this meeting, seven major recommendations were identified and implemented in select countries with the higher crime rates. They decided that volunteers would now need to live with a host family for the full two years of their service (older volunteers like Carrie, who already were living alone in an apartment were grandfathered in). Secondly, Peace Corps would notify invitees of the risks in an effort to be more transparent. They began to analyze statistics and monitor date more closely. The staff to volunteer ratio was increased, and there was also an effort to improve staff quality along with the quantity. The sixth recommendation was to strengthen site identification and preparation, to ensure that volunteers were not going to be sent to areas that were potentially unsafe. Lastly, the directors decided to strengthen and make similar the policies and the handbooks across the country posts for consistency. As of before, even neighboring countries could have very different policies and this sometimes led to confusion.

Then Carlos Torres showed us lots of graphs and charts about crime rate and statistics, which I won’t get into since I don’t want to excessively worry anyone (Gabby). Things usually look worse on paper. But basically it came down to the fact that the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are some of the more dangerous Peace Corps posts. They are not too dangerous that we cannot be here, but in order to continue with the post, some changes need to be made and put into effect immediately to ensure volunteer safety. I hope that his slide show shut the volunteers up who were saying that we didn’t come here to be safe, and that we already knew about the dangers. There are enough places in need of education and health, etc. in this country and in the world that there is no reason why anyone should have to compromise their personal safety in order to serve as a volunteer. If you want to put yourself in danger, you can come do it on your own time, with your own money, not on the part of the U.S. government.

The next step was to analyze the crime data even more closely; they looked at the time and day of the week, age, sex, motive, location, if it was a repeat victim, was a weapon used, was there an injury, was it in the capital, etc. They also looked at the Volunteer Surveys we filled out in 2011. This data said that in Guatemala, 72% of volunteers feel safe where they live, 63% where they work, and 70% in the location of the PC Headquarters office. Although that is the majority in every case, that still leaves 28% who don’t feel safe where they live and 37% who don’t feel safe where they work, so that needed to be addressed. And what really stood out was that only 15% of volunteers said that they felt safe while they were travelling.

Then, in December, a Peace Corps conference was held due to all this data and the fact that congress was concerned and the director was receiving more and more letters of concern. The 2011 Portfolio Review indicated that drastic measures needed to be taken. The director came up with three options for the three countries that make up the Northern Triangle. Option A was “in country management,” meaning that changes would be implemented while the volunteers were in the country. Option B was “mandatory administrative hold in the U.S.,” meaning that the volunteers would need to temporarily go home while the changes were made. And Option C was “immediate suspension” of the program, meaning the volunteers would need to be pulled out the country while the situation was assessed and they made more serious changes, possibly shutting down the post. Honduras, being the most dangerous post with the most amounts of incidents, got Option B. El Salvador and Guatemala got option A.

But to have this Option A, there was a cost to it. It meant that volunteer numbers had to be reduced. Option A is the best option because it allows volunteers to stay in the country and keep working, but we could not have this option and retain the 220 plus current volunteers. So there was an incoming training class suspension, an early COS (close of service) option for any volunteers who feels unsafe and a forced early COS for the next two groups in line to leave. There was also the new transport system that was put into effect immediately (Peace Corps vans that drive us to and from places). Off-limits areas were extended to rule out travel to unsafe areas. Also, a huge change that is about to go into effect is that all volunteers will be clustered to the Northern Highlands. By clustering us, we can all utilize the new transport system and we will also not be travelling all the way across the country to see our friends. They cannot prohibit us from travelling, so they had to make it more accessible, safer and reduce the distance we were travelling.

Many volunteers are being forced to leave their sites and they have the difficult decision of choosing whether they want to start completely over again in a new site, or take the early COS option. Some volunteers are halfway into their service and already were integrated into their communities and had projects going, so the thought of starting over again seems a bit daunting. Since a lot of people are leaving due to forced early COS (my group and Carrie and Eric’s group) a lot of sites that are already ready for volunteers will open up. I have my hopes up that someone will come to replace Carrie and Eric this month! So there will no longer be far away, very remote sites that volunteers work in. People were mad because due to so many people being made to leave early or relocated, hundreds/thousands of people won’t receive the infrastructure projects that they were going to.

Someone tallied up the numbers and confronted the Regional Director about it, and he said that he had to think long term. Maybe by sending people home early, right now, in this moment, there will be a lot of people who don’t receive infrastructure projects (the work of Health Homes and Health Schools), but it will pave the way for in the future, more volunteers being able to come into Guatemala and work and serve even more people. He said that there is no perfect decision that will make everyone happy, and he did what he thought was right. He had to make a decision, or congress would do it for him if we continued to operate in areas deemed “high risk.” People want exceptions to the decision, to be able to stay and finish up their projects and tie up loose ends, but he stated that he simply can’t get into exceptions, because it leads into judgment calls and would expand into Honduras and El Salvador. He said he really has the long term country impact in mind, and that by making these decisions now, it will hopefully lead to greater volunteer support, with the new rules a better commitment, and a more positive experience overall because it will be safer.

The goal now is to get the number down to 120 volunteers. Once all the changes are made and things settle down, the situation can be reviewed again to see if the post is ready for new volunteers to come in. I think that this will not be until 2013, so in many places like Zaragoza, projects like Youth Development will be put on hold for at least a year. It is kind of a bummer knowing that nobody will be replacing you and carrying on with the work that we have been doing, but such is life. The director vowed that the decision was not budget related, as some people thought, and that he actually received more money to make all these changes. The problem is really just that there are too many of us right now to manage effectively. And by giving people an option to leave without quitting, the volunteers that will be left here in country will hopefully be very dedicated to their work and the new rules and the process of recreating Peace Corps Guatemala.

As I promised before, my next blog will be about me. I just wanted to get all the facts and details out there before I talk about how it all applies to me and how I personally feel about it.