First Annual Leadership Summit of Dupax del Norte, 2011

As I said I would, here is the rundown of the leadership summit I helped organize and run, my first major project at site. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the obscure.

Where it All Began

Some time ago there was a law written where the youth took charge of the government for a week. Unfortunately it wasn’t implemented. The last time it was done according to my supervisor was 1993, roughly 18 years ago. The leadership summit was not my brainchild, but that of my supervisor and of the Mayor who wanted to get the youth more active again. When I met my supervisor for the first time during pre-service training where we found out our permanent sites, he brought it up to me as something I would be doing. So although it was the will of my site to have it done, I was put in charge of creating the module for it, and organizing it.

One of the hardest things to do for a project like this is to actually build enough interest to get it started, to talk to the community leaders and your supervisor and convince them it’s a good idea. I was really fortunate to not only have a site that was more than willing to be active, but who already had a project ready for me when I started.

First Step: I Don’t Know What to Do

One of the challenges of the Peace Corps is going to a foreign country and a foreign culture and figuring out how I can help. Heck, what do I know about the Philippines or Dupax del Norte? What do I even know about what’s working and what’s not? Well, that’s part of what the two year is for, to figure that out. However, with the leadership summit in December, I didn’t have much time. I tried to talk to one of the youth leaders to get a feel of the leadership capabilities of the local youth, and from that conversation decided the best course of action was to write a questionnaire and distribute it across the different schools. Rather than ask the youth “Are you a good leader?” or “What do you think leadership is?” I went for more round about questions. They were…

·         Think of one or two people you believe are good leaders. What makes that person or persons a good leader?

·         Considering your answer to question 1, what leadership skills do you share with your chosen person or persons?

·         Considering your answer to question 1, what leadership skills do you wish to learn?

·         Do you intend to participate in the Youth Leadership Summit this December? Why or why not?

·         Are there any topics you would like covered in the youth leadership summit? Why?

·         Why are you interested in leadership?

With those questions I was hoping to get some insights into the youth. I also wanted to give them at least some input as to what would go on during the summit. I was ready to send it out first thing October. Then came the typhoons…

Pedring, Quiel, and a Long, Long Wait

Pedring was the first of two major typhoons that hit the greater region. Schools closed down, there was flooding, and things just all came to a halt. When things finally started to get back to normal, Typhoon Quiel came and rocked the area even harder. Though the rain was as hard, the flooding was significantly worse. Flooding got up to six feet or more in some places, there was a landslide on the road that cut off most the mountainous, rural areas, and there was mud everywhere. This led to more school cancellations, and my time was busy helping the relief efforts of putting together bags of food for people, and for being present when we distributed them.

Then came a weeklong break.

Then came one more week of setting it up to give the questionnaires to the school.

Then we finally got them passed out.

By then we were into November, the time I wanted to have the module of the summit finished by. Under my original timeframe, I’d be done with the module by early November, and have the free time to plan ahead into 2012, and would have a lot of time to tweak the summit as need be. That plan fell through. I got about half the questionnaires back around November 20^th or so, and from those created the module.

The Module Itself

                From reading the questionnaires I came to the conclusion that most of the youth had zero experience with leadership, even those who had leadership positions within the schools. There seemed to be a lack of confidence, and an overemphasis on discipline being synonymous to leadership. I made the decision to keep the camp to the basics. The original summit went something like thus…

Day 1

·         Teamwork: There was an activity I ran in late October where I had two set teams and told them to build me the highest tower. When they finished, I asked them why they built me two towers, when I wanted the highest one, which could only be accomplished if the teams worked together. The purpose was to open the youth’s eyes and show them that just because they belonged to a team/school/province/etc didn’t mean they couldn’t work together. It was a success before, so I included it in the summit as well

·         What is leadership: Seeing how some youth didn’t have a solid grasp on the concept I let the first session be a basic coverage on leadership. Who are leaders? What are skills leaders have? Basically the same stuff in the questionnaires.

·         Understanding Yourself, Each Other, and Community: Next I included another simple session where youth wrote to themselves about leadership, learned about and recognized each other, and drew a mural to understand what their community meant to them

·         Self Confidence, Expressing Oneself: Knowing confidence was an issue, I tried to include a session with lots of compliments and getting the kids to shout out their name with pride

·         Roleplaying challenges facing youth: I wanted to get the youth thinking about what challenges they faced and to act it out

Day 2

·         Discipline, Having Fun, Observation, Communication: These four sessions were what came out of the questionnaires, mostly. They wanted Discipline. I added one Having Fun because the youth did not seem to appreciate that aspect of leadership. Observation and communication were also basics to touch upon. I tried to make each session active, but with some downtime in each so that the youth could have breaks during the day

·         Obstacle Course: It was a camp, so why not have an obstacle course to get the youth to do some critical thinking?

·         Videoke: Knowing the second day would have a lot, I wanted the youth to be able to sit down, relax, and socialize with each other

Day 3

·         Evaluation: Both handing out evaluations, and going over the importance of evaluating one’s actions

·         Tree Planting: Something my site wanted, so I included it

·         The How: How to plan step by step to achieve one’s goal. Goal setting is not a strength of the Filipinos.

·         Service Project Packets: My brainchild within the summit, I created a packet to lead the youth step by step to running their own service project. It’s my belief that leadership is gained through practical experience, and I want the youth active in the community, so I set some time to explain it. More on this later

·         Elections: Going back to the purpose of this summit, to get youth ready to get junior leadership positions within the government for a week, we needed elections to pick who the leaders would be.

Recruitment and Challenges

                For the number of youth, I settled on trying to get 100. I decided that I wanted eight groups to do the sessions at most, about 12 youth per group at most. Rounded up it came to 100. So, I asked for eight volunteers, one for each group. For this camp, I tried to keep it to the nearby region. One problem I came across was that I wanted to get some of the veteran volunteers who had been in the Philippines a year or more, but the ones I asked all had Christmas plans with family either in America or the Philippines which interfered with my December 16-18 camp. So, it was exclusively my Batch of volunteers who were recruited. I facebook messaged them to original copy, and all the edits. Speaking of edits…

                Nothing ever goes exactly how you want. The first thing to go was overnight staying. I wanted the youth to stay overnight to avoid Filipino’s infamous problems with punctuality, and so we could stuff at night. Sadly, it was not to be, so I had to drop the roleplaying. I also discovered they wanted to end the summit earlier on Day 3, so away went the session of the “How”.

                Another challenge came when we were starting to expect well over 100 youth. The schools were promising to send a lot more youth than we had allotted. I had designed the sessions with a certain amount of youth in mind.

                Probably the biggest challenge was stress. Boy howdy did I get stressed. I didn’t miss any meals for it, but my portions were about half.

The Summit Comes and Goes

                I won’t go into every detail, but here are highlights of the summit

·         One of the eight volunteers was late due to her obligations at her site, making so I was both trying to facilitate one of the groups, and keep track of the big picture. It went okay… but I don’t recommend it.

·         Belance, a school and barangay (local government unit) from the mountains had the most youth present despite being an hour’s ride away

·         Losing almost half our youth during lunch the first day

·         Combining the eight groups into four for Day 2

·         It turning out that my session I wrote for Discipline went a lot faster than the others, making the two volunteers running those have the improve a lot

·         Losing not a single youth the second day, even during the lunch break

·         Though wanting to start at 8:00 each morning, not getting started until 9:00

·         The youth actually enjoying themselves

·         Overall some good feedback from the youth

·         A girl telling us that we were the first people to sing her happy birthday. She turned fifteen that day.

·         Not having two of the five high schools because we had thought no one had school on the Friday, but it turns out only three of five had the day off

·         Also not having the SK (local government youth leaders) because of yet another schedule conflict I did not know about

·         About 60-70 youth who showed up for at least part of the summit, about 40-50 who were there throughout the whole summit

·         My stress level dropping step by step as the summit went on

Goals for the Summit

                I am a perfectionist, and I set the bar really, really high. I am always trying to think how I can get the most out of something, how I can accomplish the most with what I’m doing when it comes to work. I achieved quite a bit, but other objectives I had fell short.

                One thing that fell short was the numbers. Throughout the summit it was about half of what I wanted, however, it was fine. I told people even getting half of what I wanted would be a success, and I stand by that. Giving a summit for about 40-50 youth is still not bad.

                One major success was the sustainability of the leadership summit. Sustainability is big in the Peace Corps, to make sure our assistance lasts even after we’ve left. The youth, as Junior Elected Officials, passed a resolution to institutionalize the leadership summit as an annual event. The next challenge will be to work with people to get them to be able to create, organize and coordinate the summit, but I have time for it.

                Which bring me up to another goal that fell short, that to have my coworkers work as counterparts to the Peace Corps Volunteers to get more experience facilitating. In the end my coworkers helped with logistics such as cooking, cleaning, doing sign in, helping fix the microphone, and some even had work they had to do during the summit. It was in part my fault because I did not keep my office mates in the loop throughout the process of making the summit, and in part because I underestimated how much manpower the work behind the scenes would take. I’ll work towards getting my coworkers at my office to take the lead for later projects.

                I did get at least some of the youth to learn something. After the elections, the young lady who was elected as Junior Mayor gave a thanks to us Peace Corps Volunteers for helping, and had said that although the different groups of youth didn’t know each other well, maybe after a week as Junior Leaders with the government they would get to know each other better. It was a call back to the Teamwork exercise. From what I heard, the youth lived up to that, and the teenagers who never knew each other (cause they live an hour away) are keeping in touch via texting now, bringing the community closer together. Also, the youth opened up so much from the start of the summit to the end.

                Things did not fall apart. That was also a goal that was met.

                Probably the biggest goal I hit was this being a gateway into more projects for the community. The biggest cause of my stress (other than me getting overly worked up over stuff) was that the success of lack thereof would be a big determination as to how my site saw me. I really wanted this summit to go well to prove I could help, and get more people involved. The Monday after (the 19^th) saw a few more projects land on my desk. They want another similar summit in April or May for the SK who could not make it and for the out of school youth. The teacher from Belance who went with the youth to the summit each day wants me to help them get grants and to get started up on their own school volunteer projects. This is exactly what I wanted, for the summit to drag out opportunities.

Service Project Packets!

                As I said earlier, I handed the youth service project packets near the end. I explained to them that although the summit was “free” they still needed to pay us back. For being given three days of lessons learned, for food, for having the opportunity to be elected as Junior Officials, they needed to utilize the experience we gave them, and give it back to their community. Speaking maybe 70% in Ilokano, the rest in English, I walked through the service project step by step. Whether they absorbed it all, and whether they do it remains to be seen, but I think it’ll work out. Here’s a list of lofty goals I have for these service projects

·         40-50 community projects: Why should I do one service project for my community when I can empower the youth to do scores of them?

·         Leadership experience: As I said, the best way to get leadership is through practical experience

·         Making the youth believe in themselves: I want the youth to know what they are capable of doing

·         Making the adults believe in the youth: Showing the adults of the community what the youth can do given the opportunity

·         Have tangible evidence of youth accomplishments in the form of the filled out packets to show my supervisor, the Mayor, Peace Corps, the Governor, etc

·         Discovering further projects I can help with by seeing what the youth accomplish

·         Make it about the youth, not me: I keep getting congratulated on for MY youth summit. Hopefully the service projects shift the focus to the youth, and away from me

Thanks, and What’s on the Horizon

                Want to give a shout out to the eight volunteers who came: Alex, Amber, Austin, Becky, Chelsea, Ebonee, Kelsey, and Munya! You guys were rock stars!

                So what’s next? I’m nearing the half year mark of my time in the Philippines. Among what I mentioned above, I may do some more on leadership with a nearby university. I’ll be talking to and working with the out-of-school youth. I may also start working with the local government unit I’m with and run a few programs for them to help deal with stress management, marketing, goal setting, and a couple others.

                Next post I plan to get a bunch of the best pictures from my first six months and post them, including many from the summit.

‘Til next time!

Five Months Done... How Many to Go?

So I’ve been in the Philippines for five months now. Once again no pictures. I’ll try to deliver with a bunch for a Matt Hirschinger Blog Christmas special or something. Just need to get all the pictures from my coworkers and pick the best ones. I’ll aim for about twenty-thirty of the best. In my defense, I’d also like to point out that a buddy from mine from college also in the Peace Corps has no pictures on his blog, yet unlike me, doesn’t give false promises to put some up. Just saying…

Hot Stuff?

So, let’s start with the juicy part. I have come to accept that I’m apparently a catch here in the Philippines. Coworkers keep asking me if I have a girlfriend or not. Nagwapo (handsome in Ilokano) is often said. Yesterday I met some high school girls who literally screamed when I stepped outside like I was a five member boy band. However, as much as I’d like to think I’m the [insert attractive male Western celebrity here] of the Philippines, I’ve been self imposing a reality check. Being an American is a major, major part of it. The assumption is I’m rich, or at least going to be rich later on in life. I’m 24 years old now, and the screaming girls were like… sixteen? Yeah, just smile awkwardly and maintain professionalism. Also to note I’m in a rural community where I’m probably looking like an easy ticket to see the world. Plus there’s my rocking bod and glistening eyes. So, though I’d like to think I’m hot stuff… I’m inclined to take it with some salt.

Unfortunately though, this attention has been a distraction professionally. Since arriving in Dupax mid-September, I have fought hard for the focus to turn from ‘look it’s an American’ to ‘look at the WORK the American is doing’. I have no intention of getting married while in the Philippines, so as flattering as the attention is, it’s also chika chika waiting to happen (chika chika is the Filipino term for gossip, gossip being a staple in Filipino society). Also, I can’t help but think that when I return to America, it’ll be a letdown if I get too used to the attention here.

The Grand Kanyaw

At the end of November, we held the annual town fiesta that marked the anniversary of Dupax del Norte’s founding. It was a week of late nights, early mornings, and lots and lots of traditional dances. The first night was Barangay night. (Although I’m pretty sure I’ve covered it, a Barangay is the smallest form of government in the Philippines, usually with a few thousand people). There are fifteen Barangays in del Norte and each had their own time to take a picture and shake the Mayor’s hand, their own performance, their own intermission. It was great, but I left at 1PM with a lot still to go.

The next night was a spiritual night. A guest speaker who had studied leadership and religion in America gave a half hour sermon. It also included a little bit of the new age style of a rock band and a singer doing modern Christian songs.

The morning after was the parade with kids from most of the schools in marching bands, government officials, local organizations, the Jolly Bee mascot (Jolly Bee is the McDonald’s of the Philippines). There were more people in the parade than on the streets. That night was the Talent Contest. Unfortunately I had reached my limit at that point and slept in early.

Fourth morning was the official Grand Kanyaw. Now only did they sacrifice over ten pigs, but a caribou as well. A little note about sacrifice pigs though: as culturally interesting as it is, pigs are not quiet in their death throws. I don’t consider myself squeamish, but I was not 1000% comfortable. The other Peace Corps volunteer who has been in Dupax for a year and I were adopted as a son and daughter of the town. We were given a basket, a vest, and a spear. Yes, a legit spear. I don’t know what to do with it. Then we did a traditional dance in front of a couple hundred people, while taking sips of rice wine (rice wine is strong stuff). That night the Mayor gave her address to the people about what she had accomplished, and what her plans were for the next year. Without the awful and annoying clapping every half minute that our State of the Union address has, she covered a lot of ground in fairly short order.

Then came the fifth night. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great week, but I was tired, and the final night was the beauty contest. Part of my work is trying to emphasize things other than beauty contest with the youth. So, I was right depressed when the beauty contest (for girls ages 15-19) got a larger audience than any of the other events. I mean, only the parade came even close, and that’s just because we had so many people told they had to partake in the parade. I’ll touch on this at the end of this post.

Challenges at Site

Disclaimer: I am doing just fine. I am very happy here. However, I do want to share that my time here is not just some fun and whacky adventure, and that there are serious challenges to living abroad. That is why I’m including some of the challenges I’ve been facing.

Probably the biggest challenge at site has been the hospitality. Filipinos bend over backwards to treat their guests, and I am a guest of guests, an outsider of outsiders. So, wherever I go, they want to stuff me with food. Wherever I go, I’m doted upon. Wherever I go, even mentioning trying to help with clean up is stopped and thwarted immediately. The challenge with this is twofold. One, it’s in direct contradiction to me trying to integrate into the community. The second is that it’s making me way too comfortable and complacent.

Another challenge has been the pace. I’ve talked to people, including my Dad, who has worked with foreigners at length, and for the most part we Americans are just about the most hurried people in the world, for the most part. That includes me. So, when I wrote a questionnaire to give to the youth about the leadership summit I’ll be running, to better understand what they want to learn about, and their current capabilities in early October, I was surprised when I finally got them out, and got half back mid-November.

Also, there is the language barrier. Although my Ilokano is improving, there’s still so much I don’t know. Although I’m lucky to live in a country with exceptional English skills, I’m still dealing with a foreign language being the most commonly spoken. It’ll come eventually.

The last challenge I’ll mention right now has been trying to stay in the loop. Once in La Trinidad, and once here I’ve been asked to ride along for something I didn’t know what it was… until I saw the deceased lying in a casket. Although those two incidents have been rare (well, twice since I’ve been here), I’ve constantly been asked to just come along, not sure about the destination, the purpose, or what I would be doing. Luckily the adventurer in me has said, “Why not?” I know this is something I should work on, at least trying to be more prepared and in the know.

I’ll keep you all updated on how I solve (or don’t solve) these issues.

Product Review

Product Review! This is where I advertise for free, things that I think are helping me a lot in the Philippines. I suppose I could also bash a product, but I won’t be doing that today.

The first tip of my hat goes to quick-dry products. Towels, shirts, shorts. They are so much easier to wash, get dry very quick, and are generally made of higher quality material. After I get home, probably all my workout clothes and towels will eventually be quick-dry.

The second nod goes to FitDeck, which you can only get online at www.fitdeck .com. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the end all of workouts, but considering I’m in the rural Philippines without a gym, the fitdeck cards have been invaluable in staying in shape. I recommend them for anyone looking to add a convenient workout they can do at home, or just want more ideas for workouts. I plan on buying a few pieces of equipment like a resistance band, and a pull up bar, and hopefully starting in January I can get on a more consistent workout schedule then ‘how about this fitdeck today!’

The last shout out is for Prezi. Although I haven’t actually made one yet, I’ve gone over all the instructional video, and it looks amazing. I will definitely be using it in the future. It is free (though you need the internet). It is exponentially better than PowerPoint as a presentational tool, and it looks so simple to use. After having to endure so many PowerPoint presentations during training, and seeing this shining beacon of light that is Prezi, I don’t know if I can go back again. Check it out.

What’s to Come?

Well, the leadership summit is December 16-18. I’ll have a large piece on that once it’s finished. I have several things on the horizon for next year included working with a nearby university’s program for extracurricular clubs and activities, I’ll start working with the out of school youth, probably try to start up some weekly leadership courses for youth as I can’t get all of them to the summit (nor can I cover everything I want). Hopefully I will also start working with the local government unit I’m at with a few small, but hopefully impactful ways to improve the office (such as using Prezi!). Perhaps more, but we’ll see.

A Note on Society: Cheap Entertainment

So, back onto the beauty contest for girls getting more of a crowd than the Mayor’s speech, the official Grand Kanyaw, and the spiritual night combined. This isn’t something different from America. More people in America probably know about the Cardashian’s (sp?) weekly drama than about the Euro crisis. And you know what? That’s all right by me. We all have our guilty pleasures, forms of entertainment that serve little more than to entertain us. Not everything we listen to or watch should make us wiser, smarter, or more physically fit. However, what worries me is when all of our entertainment turns into that.

You don’t have to listen to classical music, read thought provoking novels, do yoga, and keep up with international economic news. However, I personally think it’s important to pick at least one or two of them, or something else more enlightening. Perhaps I am overreacting, but what I’m worried about is not that so many people saw the beauty contest, but that many of those people didn’t attend anything else but that. Don’t know what I’ll do with this yet at site. However, with the Mayor’s “Character First” program, I think I might put my two cents in about this, and see the reactions I get. See what we can do about not knocking down the beauty contest necessarily, but promoting the more culturally enriched events as well.

‘Til next time!   

First Session, Street Children, 50 Years, and The How

First Session

I finally held my first leadership trying here at site Saturday October 29^th. My supervisor’s wife is a Professor at a nearby university, and asked if I would participate in a leadership/teamwork building camp that was being run on two levels, with adults training the college students, and the college students helping out younger children. I was asked to give a two hour lecture on leadership. By “lecture” I naturally interpreted as two hours worth of activities that involved making sure the students were as active as possible.

Not really having enough time to develop something in depth,, and chose four general categories that I thought might be useful, that being Teamwork, Self Reflection, Appreciation of Others, and Self Confidence/Expression. Overall it was a pretty successful (though I need to revise my Appreciation of Others part) and it appears that I will be involved more with the college in the future. I’ll share two of the highlights.

The first activity I ran I dubbed “Breaking Boundaries: Building a Tower”. I split the 20 students into two teams of ten and asked them to build me the highest tower they could. I had two separate piles of paper, glue, and scissors, and gave them ten minutes. Afterwards, I asked questions such as “who made the decisions” and “who had the scissors” and “how did you strategize?” Once the group was getting confident in responding to my question I asked them why they built me two towers. After all, I wanted the highest tower they could make, so why waste time making two of them. The catch was that just because I split them into two teams didn’t mean they had to only work with their team. Just like in real life we are told we belong to certain teams from our school to our city to our political party, doesn’t mean we can’t work with people on the “other team”, that there can be one team. After we discussed it I gave them the opportunity to try again. This second time I only gave them five minutes, heh.

The other highlight was after my session was over. The youth were in turn running teambuilding exercises with the younger kids. They asked me to try out one of their activities which involved crawling through the dirt under some ropes tied to chair legs. I’ve done it before in the Boy Scouts, I was wearing a nice (and light colored) shirt, and I frankly didn’t feel like getting dirty. However, I went ahead and did it. Got a mild rash on my arms which last a few hours, scraped my elbow, and got my shirt very dirty (though luckily it came off when washed). So why did I do it? It’s about respect and setting an example. I could have easily flaunted my age/nationality/and position as their instructor to say no. However, part o being a leader is doing what is asked of you in turn by the people around you, and I really wanted to have a good standing with the youth, and did it. Crawling through the ground was in no way crossing any professional boundary between them and me and it wasn’t that bad.

50 Years

I went to Manila between the 2^nd and 5^th of November to celebrate the Peace Corps/USAID’s 50^th anniversary at the Mall of Asia. I introduced myself along with twenty or so others to the World Director (big honcho) of the Peace Corps Aaron Williams. Also went to a cocktail party and briefly met the US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas. He was chatting to five of us for about a minute of the normal “thanks for your work” when two ladies dropped by to say “goodbye”. Naturally that goodbye dragged on for fifteen minutes or so.

One thing I’m going to need to get over is my disdain for networking. Frankly, I don’t like it. I feel cheap when doing it. As much as I like to flaunt my great features to those around me (and to the ladies *wink*) when it actually comes time to be serious and to try to make an impression on the movers and pushers out there, I take a half step back. I feel it comes across as fake to introduce yourself to try to get ahead. Still, networking is an important part of most fields of industry, and as long as I’m aware of myself it might not be so bad. I’ll talk to a few of the staff to get some pointers on it.

The celebration itself took place on that Friday. Once again I danced in the traditional G String. Just can’t seem to keep out of it. I picked up a bunch of information from USAID for some inspiration and possible collaboration in the future. Saw a lot of the friends I had made during pre-service training. I talked to some of our staff at length. Ate a lot of American food using the money I haven’t been needing to spend at sight. Then there was the street children…

Street Children

First off my stance is not to give anything to any beggars while I am here. It’s my job to help development, not encourage handoffs. My job is to teach people to fish more than give people fish (take it as a metaphor given my province is landlocked). This is also a stance shared by my Sector Manager through the Peace Corps, Ambet, who is such a BA that he’s just getting back from a month in Washington DC training other staff and such.

So when I was in a taxi leaving the Mall of Asia, I did not pay the two street children that did a dance routine when we had to stop at the intersection. I also did not pay the street child that approached me when I was walking back to the hotel after running an errand.

In the latter case, I had to stick my hands in my pockets because after I declined, his friends came up on both sides of me. I doubt any of them were older than eleven, and I just kept walking as they tugged at my arms, trying to dislodge them from my pockets so they could grab at my phone and wallet. Suffice to say I was stronger than the street children ages from about six to eleven, and after less than a minute (I’m guessing about 40 or so seconds) they gave up, and I proceeded. Afterwards, I need to clean my arms which had streaks of dirt on them.

At this point I’m not sure what the point of this story was other than it happened, and that it happens in the world. It’s not easy to swallow callously ignoring the little girl pressing her face against the window of the taxi, or just walking and ignoring half a dozen kids trying to steal from you, but part of the job (and just general living) requires the ability to be professional about the issues in the Philippines and not let my emotions (whether pity, anger, sorrow, etc) get the better of me.

Manila is a city I’d recommend to anyone who wants their eyes opened. It’s what happens when city planners don’t separate the rich from the poor, and almost everywhere you go you are faced with both. It makes for a stunning visual for a Westerner like me.

The How

This may end up being the best thing I do for my site during my stay. After talking to other volunteers and the staff, it seems a pandemic of not being able to ask “how are we going to do this” or “how can we get what we need” when developing projects. The people know what they want, they know why they want it, but figuring out how seems to be an afterthought, if a thought at all. Please do not mistake me to say nothing is being done. During the first week here in Dupax I sat in on a project that will move around 50 families into more Typhoon-proofed housing away from the river that floods every year. It’s just one example of things being carried out.

However, I also have some examples of great ideas that have hit a brick wall here. Therefore over the next couple weeks I’ll be talking to a few of the local leaders and trying to address that issue of The How, and see what comes of it.

What’s to Come?

Hopefully more pictures. I’ll admit it already that I’m bad at taking them. It’ll be a process but I swear I’ll get better. More projects. More thoughts about development and things in general.

As a parting note, I’ll address a question that I heard in Manila of “Why hasn’t the Peace Corps been able to help the Philippines solve its problems in 50 years?” To me, that is a poor question. First of all, it puts all the pressure on the Peace Corps to solve all of a country’s problems which isn’t exactly our role. We’re to help, not carry the entire burden. Secondly, it is too busy pointing the finger at the problems, and not the accomplishments. I can point my finger to anyone trying to do anything and ask “why aren’t things fixed yet?” True merit lies in what has been done and to what extent. It’s like trying to rate a wine with the space between the cork and where the wine starts.  

Dupax del Norte (My site!)

But first…

One last thing before we get into the first month at my site, there are two very special people who I haven’t mentioned yet, and who deserve the spotlight before I go forward. In the Peace Corps, there are several positions for permanent staff from the medical officers, to security, to administration, to sector and regional managers. However, there are also positions just for training. My cluster group of five had a Language and Cultural Facilitator (LCF) and a Technical and Cultural Facilitator. Their job was to train us and get us ready in three months (and by three months I mean two-and-a-half due to budget cuts).

Ester

Ester was our LCF, and has been teaching different Filipino dialects to Peace Corps Trainees for the better part of a decade. She gave us a lot of room to practice and internalize what we learned, and she constantly asked us what we wanted to learn. Although she ignored my request for such translations as ‘your red lips are as two crimson angels beckoning for my embrace’ and ‘I dream of an age where all street children have castles atop of candy mountains’, she helped with everything else.

Ester was sharp, and knew what she was doing. It was thanks to her that I had the opportunity to give the Ilokano part of the volunteers’ speech during our swearing in ceremony. Thank you Ester.

Annie

Oh Annie. Nicknamed by the others as ‘our little monster’, she ruled us with an iron fist. When we would come requesting more time, or to suggest an alternative she would just laugh and say ‘Okaaay’. Translation=NO. However, she did this because she wanted to prepare for our sites where we would have to do things last minute, where we would have to sometimes do things in a way other than what we wanted. She was always on the ball, and helped us when it counted.

Full of laughs, and caring, she helped me understand conducting community service in the Philippines, and the differences and similarities to home. Thank you Annie.

Dupax del Norte

Dupax del Norte is a third class municipality in the province of Nueva Viscaya. Third class essentially means it’s certainly a lot more poor than a 1^st Class Municipality, but it does go down to 7^th Class. It is an agricultural based municipality with rice fields in the lower part of the area, and vegetables up in the mountains. Tricycles are the main form of transportation. Caribou can be seen everywhere, and wild dogs roam the streets.

There are chain stores of any sorts, all the businesses I have found family owned. There are just under 28,000 people spread across the lowlands and the mountains, belonging to eight ethnic tribes.

When Rain Stops Smiles

I’m a bit of a ham. Actually, I’m a big ham. This not only speaks to my humor, but to other facets in my life. I love drinking tea because a hot drink relaxes my shoulders… AND it makes me feel intellectual. I love speaking another language because it makes communication easier and more fulfilling… AND I feel all worldly and stuff. I love listening to the rain outside and reading a book because it’s a picturesque moment, and knowing that I can be that person in that moment makes me all right with me. However, I come from a place where the rain seldom comes, and when it’s gone, the grass turns a little greener. If only that was the case here.

Dupax has been hit hard by two typhoons straight now, the second of which caused the worst flooding in seven years. Luckily our municipality suffered no casualties, but I’ve heard further north in the neighboring province could not boast the same. Houses were lost, bridges collapsed. Mud covered everything in the aftermath. My host family and I even left the house to go higher ground in the event of a flash flood. The river did not reach that high, but flash floods are not something you wait to happen.

I found myself helping with the relief efforts. Taking part in the assembly line making food packs, riding in a dump truck to deliver the goods, observing the aftermath as my coworkers assessed the damage, it was an eye opening experience seeing as the rain which I took for granted, used to calm myself and listen to like a melody, cause so much damage.

What am I Doing Here?

Imagine you are in a field, and you pluck a single blade of grass. The single blade of grass has suddenly become the most important blade of grass not because it was special, and certainly not that it has more potential now that it has been plucked and will soon turn brown. No, it’s the most important blade of grass because that is the one you are focusing on, the one you are touching with your fingertips. It is the most important one because you make it so.

To anyone with the sentiment that I am ‘in the middle of nowhere’ or ‘on the other side of the world’ consider it may because you are holding up a different blade of grass than me right now. To anyone with the sentiment that I won’t be able to accomplish much, consider that just because the mainstream media may not cover my leadership camp in December, doesn’t mean that it is less impactful than which party Paris Hilton went to (back in La Trinidad, it was all over the news when she visited the Philippines). In America, we have become so obsessed with our eyes, what we see in front of us, that it’s so easy to overlook that there’s a field around us.

My role at site will be changing minds. It will be convincing adults that the youth are fully capable of running events, projects, having a voice in the community. I will also be convincing the youth of the same.

My role at site will be multiplication. If I can run a youth camp between 50 and 100 youth, and if they can each teach two to three others, and if each of them can impact a score, suddenly a difference is being made.

My role at site will be empowerment. Sure, I can run a bunch of projects, and I am more than capable of doing things myself, but what does that leave Dupax with when I leave? No, it’s more important that I have others take the lead so that when I leave the people here, the people who live here will continue on. I’ll just wave my arms around yelling ‘Look at me, I’m an American!” to get everyone’s attention to begin with.

I could name a few other things, but I think the point has come across. This place I’ve come to is important, there are people just like you and me there, and that I will be helping them realize their own potential.

Upcoming Projects

I have a few things going on now. Everything will take time, but here’s a taste of what will (hopefully) come to fruition.

The big project is a leadership summit coming around the second week of December. Right now I’m trying to distribute a questionnaire to the potential candidates. The first reason for this is to let them have a voice in what they want to learn before I make the module for the summit for them. The second reason is I want a better understanding of what the youth know and don’t know. I don’t want to assume they know certain aspects of leadership and skip it, nor do I want to regurgitate what they already know. From there, I’ll design the summit based on their responses and the suggestion from my superiors and coworkers. From there, it will be training the staff for the camp to make sure they are all on the same page, and can run the same session as one another when the youth break down into small groups. I may also build an obstacle course.

I’m also fiddling around with a stress management project for the entire LGU of give or take 150 employees. A tool that I learned during training is a 24 hour schedule, where people write their typical daily schedule. This can help me learn more about the culture. It can point out differences between men and women’s daily lives, youth and senior’s, etc. In this case, I want to use it to pinpoint particular issues which may lead to stress (such as always being busy, everyday) and generate thoughts from that. Maybe all that will come of it is the suggestion of some basic yoga for ten minutes at the office, but we’ll see if anything more profound is revealed.

What may end up becoming my primary project is on the horizon, that being working with the Out of School Youth (OSY [by the way, let me know if it’s okay to use the acronyms, or if I should just spell it out for the sake of readability]). I’ll be meeting them sometime later this month, and will begin running activities sometime in January once I’ve had time to get to know them, and have finished the leadership summit.

The provincial youth leaders are also running their own summit and have asked for my help. Not sure what they have in mind (wave my arms around and shout ‘Look at me, I’m an American’?), but that may be interesting.

Also just finished with a ‘children’s rights packet’ to be given to one of the committees who requested it. Since they are already familiar with all the rights they have in the Philippines as far as I can tell, I included information about UNICEF, assets that lead children being successful and well rounded, and a tool that describes how much youth are participating in any given project or group. The first two work well with the theme, the last goes more along with my own goal. Besides, three things looks so much better than two.  

That being said, I actually do have more free time than during pre-service training. I get some off time to relax, read, workout, etc. My schedule’s been go to bed at 8:30, wake up at 5:30

In Sum

In sum, things are going well for me. There’s been some tough days, but that goes with the job, and just life in general. If you have any questions, shoot them my way. There’s been a lot going on this past month, but I think the above covers what I think the majority would be interested in. There rest is just flavoring (like hierarchy of toilets in the Philippines!).

I’ll try to post more often than once a month. Also, pics will be added later when I have the time to let the pictures load.

Training Ends, Service Begins

The People I Worked With

Pre-Service training was far from an individual experience. Everyone had cluster maters who they trained, studied, and became close to for the entire two-and-a-half months. So, here’s my tip of the hat to my four cluster mates.

Kelsey 

Free spirited and adventurous, Kelsey is going to the mountain province. Her favorite hobby is the hoola hoop, and during PST she fulfilled a long lived dream of getting dreadlocks for her hair. It was a process that was long, and grueling, but I think it was well worth it to her. I will have to show some pics once her hair grows into them and turns into the final product. Of the group, she was the artist, and was also the first one to take a bold step into the unknown.

Sam

She was all sunshine and smiles. The joy of the group and the one to turn frowns upside down, she was a well rounded person who complemented all of us. During PST she was the team heart, the one who could put a smile on the rest of our faces. Her favorite lines to me were ‘You’re out of control!’ and ‘What am I going to do with you Matt?’, yet her nickname for me was ‘Papa Bear’. Maybe one time I’ll get her laugh on recording and post it on this blog, all the better for you readers to get a better idea of the group’s ‘fabulous’ member.   

Ebonee

We once played an activity called essence words, an essence word being one word to describe who you are, to sum up your character. Ebonee’s chosen word was ‘Queen’, and I have to agree. Dignity and charm with everything she did, even when off day (we all had our share of them), she still managed to keep a collected grace about her. I’ll have to try to work on that myself.

Alex

The man with the tat. The New York scoundrel. The big… I dunno, put something cool sounding. Alex was the other guy in the group, and reminded me a lot of myself. He was the most punctual and task oriented of all of us, and helped keep us all on track. He was the one who I shared confidence in with the daily troubles of the day, and I’d like to think I was the same for him. Oh, and he actually does have a tat(oo), an amazing one of a oceanic scene.

Wrapping Up My Thoughts on PST

Life has had an incredible amount of depth these past two-and-a-half months. What I mean by this is that there have been so many, so enlightening moments that one of the challenges I faced was being able to internalize it all. From street immersion, to learning a new language, to shifting between roles of enabler, facilitator, mentor, etc each with their own subtle difference that made all the difference, I have been stretching myself a lot (I have also been stretching a lot).

Funny enough, the way I handled it all was to do even more. Reading, writing, exercising, socializing, and exploring all helped me deal with the stress, and make myself keep going. Simply sitting at my host family’s house doing nothing was a quick ticket to getting overwhelmed, I know from experience.

Here’s the trick though. I’ve had a few comments by friends and family back home of how wonderful and how great of a thing I’m doing, but it’s more than possible to do many of the same things in America. Maybe some of the cultural quirks won’t be there, but there are plenty of volunteer and learning opportunities out there. I have the fortune to have a job that demands me to grow and experience many new challenges, but that doesn’t mean you the reader can’t do some of the same things as a hobby.

Only got tears out of me once during PST, and that was our final technical session, after reading the most wonderful compliments ever told to me by my four cluster mates, and then stanind in a circle locking arms giving our final two cents. I’ve been working on being more and more concise with my words (though chances are my blog posts won’t get too much shorter), and the thing that came to mind was ‘The best time of my life’.    

Swearing In

I did well during PST and was chosen as the representative of my language group to speak the Ilokano portion of a volunteer-created speech. Three other volunteers from the group that came in this year (Batch 270) and I wrote up a speech, has our respective parts translated, and spoke it to everyone. Next blog I will have the English translation of my part of the speech, and hopefully a video of the event.

After my speech, I went into the back, changed into a G String (in the Philippines a G String is a traditional loincloth) and with nothing else on did a cultural dance pointing my almost exposed butt at everyone in the audience, people watching the livestream online, and while the local news stations were getting clips for the news. I got killed during the war dance section (which is absolute crap cause I was wearing the colors of the warrior-cultured Bontoks, and my opponent was wearing the colors of the farmer-cultured Benguets).

We celebrated into the night, and when the morning came we all split up. I leave for my permanent site in the town of Dupax del Norte in the province of Nueva Viskaya tomorrow (as I type this, I may not post this until after I am there). However, as I spoke in front of the audience in a language I never knew existed until this last July, and as I danced freely feeling every draft, and as I made deep connections with some truly caring and talented people, I kept thinking of what I could do to top it.

Where to Now?

Now I start the actual work. Now I will work directly with my host agency, with the Peace Corps mainly a resource now. Cross my fingers and all that.