Peace Corps Nicaragua: It's Official!

Country: Nicaragua
Program: Community Environmental Education, Nica 45
Job Title: Environmental Education Promoter
Dates of Service: November 17th, 2007-November 17th, 2009
Orientation Dates: August 27th-August 29th, 2007
Pre-Service Training: September 1-November 16th, 2007


To quote the Peace Corps literature, the project of this assignment is "To facilitate the sustainable management of communities' natural resources through education and community action in order to conserve the local environment and improve people's livelihoods." The focus of this project is elementary schools and local youth groups to help communities "identify and understand local environmental issues, and to empower them to take action to help protect and/or improve their local environment." In such, volunteers are assigned to three elementary schools in a community and teach environmental issues to students while helping teachers infuse environmental education into their curriculum. Volunteers also aid in planting tree nurseries near school grounds and work with NGOs to provide environment focused activities based on community needs. The Peace Corps focuses its efforts on the 5 states on the Pacific side of the country and most environmental education volunteers live in small towns of 500 to 2,000 pepole

A bit of a switch from the Agricultural placement, but interesting nonetheless.

Next up: calling PC to accept this assignment and then completing a new passport application (PCVs receive diplomatic passports), aspiration statement and a revamped resume.

Peace Corps Status Report

There have been a number of questions via email/phone/carrier pigeons about my current location and status in the world. For the curious, I am in North Carolina and waiting Peace Corps assignment. My departure date is August 2007 and will head to Latin/South America

For the average Peace Corps applicant, the average wait from nomination to departure is 9 months. For me, it will be 18 months.

Here is the timeline:
January 06: Application submitted.
February 06: Nominated to Peace Corps service. Legal clearance obtained
March 06: Medical clearance begins. A minor medical snag slows down my clearance
June 06: Medical clearance!!
July 06: An academic snag, this time with my thesis, delays my grad school graduation and delays my departure date from September 06 to February 07.
October 06: With much reservation, I accept a Peace Corps placement to an Early Elementary Education program in Paraguay. There, teachers have few educational resources and the goal of the assignment was to increase didactic teaching methods.
December 06: After heavily thinking, I asked to be removed from the placement. Lacking a teaching degree, credentials or any experience with small children, I felt Early Elementary Education was not the best use of my talents. In addition, Paraguay is a bilingual society with most people relying upon Guarani as their primary language and Spanish as the second. Peace Corps bolded the line "If learning Spanish is your reason for joining Peace Corps, you should reconsider this assignment" three times. Since that is one of my goals, I realized it would be very difficult to master Spanish in Paraguay. I asked for a transfer to an placement on an agricultural program in Latin/South America, but not in Paraguay, but it would not depart for seven months.
August 07: Tenative Peace Corps departure


The request to move to an agricultural assignment surprised a few people, including me. But agriculture is the backbone of many developing economies and, as such, holds an invaluable place in the world. In Peace Corps, agricultural volunteers traditionally serve in the most rural and remote areas (and, it is rumored, have the best language skills). So this should be an interesting learning experience.