[cdubzzz]

I did Peace Corps (US overseas volunteer program) a few years ago in my mid-20s. I spent three and a half years living and working in Burkina Faso in West Africa. I was teaching basic computing (think kids who have never touched a computer) and training other (Burkinabe) teachers to do the same.

I helped to build two computer labs using funding from various French groups and trained one teacher intensely to the point that he was able to run the curriculum himself. I know that it lasted at least a year after I was gone but unfortunately haven't kept up since then.

Anyway, life in Burkina taught me a hell of a lot about myself, patience, culture, language and communication, community and a whole range of other things. It has deeply defined who I am now and was incredibly valuable for me. I still, however, struggle with the question of whether or not I recommend such programs to others.

[inaglasshouse]

Can you elaborate on why you're not sure on giving the recommendation to programs like the Peace Corps?

[cdubzzz]

Apologies for the delay getting back. I started to respond to this a couple of times yesterday but it's kind of tough to answer and I kept getting sidetracked.

Basically, I feel like my time in Peace Corps did more for me than for the people I was there to help. I struggle with that a bit and it makes me wonder if the PC approach is truly valuable.

On the plus side, I introduced hundreds of kids to computers, provided more advanced training to 50+ adult professors and left at least one person with the necessary tools to run a computer literacy class. I did the most in my third year (an extension of the normal two year stay) largely because I finally had a decent grasp on the culture and understanding of how to do things in a more sustainable way. In fact, my decision to extend was mostly because I felt like I hadn't really done "enough".

But even that felt like so little in the end. I remember at one point discussing with PC leadership in Burkina implementing a program to teach IT to university students training to be teachers and when I think back I really wish we could've worked that out. Unfortunately it never came to fruition and I heard a few years ago that PC Burkina shut down the whole IT program. Likely many of the labs we maintained and lesson plans we built are collecting dust (we were only the second wave of IT volunteers at the time).

PC is very different from country to country and it seems like kind of crap shoot whether or not one can really have a sustainable impact on anything. PC provides a very good structure for the volunteer, but it is ultimately all on the volunteer to figure out how to execute programs. This can be absolutely great for some people and terrible for others. I fell somewhere in the middle and knew volunteers everywhere in between.

Without really knowing a person (and other country PC programs) it's difficult for me to decide how to judge the overall program and mission.