As I close out my Georgia Peace Corps Service 2014-2016 I would
like to answer a few questions, and also summarize my service. It seems like a
daunting task, but Peace Corps thrives on qualitative and quantitative
reporting, so I have at least had some practice.
Questions that have surfaced from my supportive readers include:
What were my goals and what did I accomplish?
What was my daily routine?
Am I glad I did it?
Personally what have I gained? and what plans for the future?
What were my
goals and what did I accomplish?
It is most difficult to say what one ‘accomplished’ in
any Peace Corps assignment. The reason is that our job is to assist,
support, enable, and facilitate our Georgian counterparts in what they try
to accomplish. We are not supposed to lead but encourage, not to dictate but
suggest, not to yell, but gently whisper. Personally it has been good training
for me as my children grow and need support, but not by an authoritative mother
figure.
Also, it seems I spent more time on relationship
building, integrating into the local culture, struggling to improve my language
skills, and figuring out what and how to eat - which is all part of the Peace Corps experience. But let me share what I have worked on.
We have
two programs in Georgia: the English education volunteers that support English
teachers in the schools (EE), and the Individual/Organizational Development
(IOD) volunteers. I am in IOD. This concise summary comes from my Description of
Service, a mandatory report required before we leave our post.
"Ms.
Dixon was assigned as an IOD Volunteer in Koda Community Education Center
(CEC), located in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Settlement south of
Tbilisi. The ex-Soviet military base was reconditioned and is home to 400
families displaced from the 2008 War with Russia in South Ossetia. She worked with the director of the Center to
help train the IDPs and village locals for new jobs, new business initiatives,
and programs to support mental, physical, and financial improvements for the
residents.
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| Psychologist held weekly sessions |
Ms. Dixon taught classes in
Employability Skills, beginner English, Leadership, Project Management, and
consulted and advised residents on business plans and ideas, job options, and
simple emotional support. Addressing
gender issues and legal rights of IDPs in Georgia was a big focus of programs,
and a series of trainings was held for these areas. Ms. Dixon co-facilitated a US Democracy Commission Grant for youth
leadership development in the region, in which 20 youth were selected to
obtain training in healthy lifestyles as well as project management, leadership
skills, and other career skills.
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| Volunteering during harvest season with youth |
The youth were then missioned to lead four
campaigns in their individual towns on healthy lifestyle skills. In her second
year she was involved in writing the grant and acted as mentor for the new
coordinator as the project grew to a national level.
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| Selling our wares at festivals |
Art Koda, a nascent social enterprise grew substantially after the first year of Ms. Dixon’s service during
which she helped establish its first growth strategy, goals, financial
objectives, tracking, and formal income statements.
It established two new distribution routes, and supported canceling
unprofitable programs. Nine women
currently have close to a living wage through Art Koda’s training and marketing
initiatives. The profit allowed for and paid for one new full-time staff member,
a Social Enterprise Director.
In Ms. Dixon’s second year the residents of the Koda, having been deeded their apartments by the government, started making more permanent commitments to the area. Agricultural and livestock initiatives became more important. ACWW, an international foundation, supported a new farm co-op initiative as well
as new irrigation opportunities for 44 people which Ms. Dixon spearheaded
throughout the proposal and implementation phases. In a separate initiative she initiated and
supported a crowd funding project resulting in a community garden creation, designed to continue yearly.
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| Ribbon cutting on our new co-op irrigation well |
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| Working on our community garden |
On a smaller scale,
but equally important, Ms. Dixon helped IDP
youth to realize they had control of their future. They could earn money
for their goals, not always depending on charity, as had been the reality of
their young lives. They did this
successfully in the winter of 2015, selling sachets at Christmas bazaars to
fund their Club. She also taught sessions on needs and wants, budgeting,
savings and loans, and tracking expenses.
Ms Dixon supported Georgian
counterparts with management mentoring, business processes, proposal writing, translation, and editing. She supported local high
school and college students in career counseling and with English conversation
which helped one youth receive acceptance at an English speaking college abroad, and one youth with a business opportunity grant which resulted in two
new shops in the settlement, bringing in needed fresh produce and employing
three to four women part-time. As a
secondary project Ms. Dixon joined her English
Conversation Club to volunteer at the European Youth Olympic Festival 2015 hosted
in Tbilisi and attended by 50 countries. It was a wonderful experience and good
practice in English for the club.
It became clear that Georgians
as well as foreigners wanted to learn more about the Georgian IDPs and their
status. Thus Ms. Dixon began engaging
international organizations to come to the Community Education Center for Open
House Days, for Art Koda Georgian Handicraft Workshops, and for international
school field trips. During her service,
two international school students attended days at the Center, with tours, craft making
and traditional Georgian lunches. With the successful completion of workshops
and field trips, the Center set a system in place to continue scheduling these
events."
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| Craft workshops for visitors |
What
was my daily routine?
During the workweek (Tuesday-Saturday) I awoke with the
sunrise and roosters, whenever that was.
It was the first time in a long time I never set my alarm. After calving season, I also awoke to the
cows mooing for their offspring. They
must have been separated, but what a racket!
Since we were in this low flat land with little vegetation, the sunrises and sunsets were awesome. Raleigh has too many trees and Vail has too many
mountains to really see a good sunrise continually.
The next three hours were spent with WATER. Our water turned on from 6:30 to 8ish. In that time, I would wash the preceding
evening dishes, fill buckets for the toilet, wash up, wash any clothes that
needed it, boil water for Turkish coffee, and make breakfast on my gas camp stove,
(that worked great). After work the water turned on again at around 9pm for another hour.
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| A few buildings in our settlement |
The travelling magazias (produce stores, sold out of car
trunks or vans) would come by and the neighbor women would call up to me on my third
floor bina (apartment) if something special was being sold, i.e.” kimi,
pomadoris aris marto ori lar kilo" (Kim, tomatoes are only 2 lari/kilo - $.80 for 2.2 lbs).
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| Our large meeting room |
At 10am I would walk the 100 yards to our Center. I had an office and computer, but usually
preferred to work in the main office with our Director, Art Koda Manager, and
other volunteers. Also, in the very hot and very cold seasons, it was more cost
effective that we only kept one office heated.
A funny
sidebar, a foreign ambassador to Georgia came to visit. She handed me her warm winter coat and I
suggested she keep it on. She looked at
me like I was crazy. A month later I met
her at reception and she asked me if we had fixed the heat yet. Maybe she was new to third world assignments? My education PC peers wore their coats in the classrooms and offices all winter.
All day we worked on proposals, event planning for the
Center, Youth club projects, class planning, reports for donors. We also of course did budgeting reports and
monitoring and evaluation analysis on all our programs. We met with locals who had issues and needed
help, or people that had ideas and wanted business planning advice. We hosted and taught courses most days in the
Center, and also had many visitors – from Tbilisi or other countries – people
that wanted to help the IDPs, or wanted to see the status of their funded
programs.
At about 2pm we would stop for coffee and some sweets. They did not usually eat a real lunch, unless visitors came.
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| Relaxing in the office with Madona & staff after meeting |
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| Neighbors share their bread |
Our day ended at 6pm, where I would sometimes stop at the
local shop downstairs and buy fresh bread, or a frozen kingali or chicken leg
to cook for dinner. I did not have a well-functioning
freezer so it was better to just buy something when I wanted to eat it. It makes for a lot less food waste. Evening time was also when I went to haul drinking
water from an underground spring about a mile away. I would go a few times/week. This water would
then go through our PC issued filter and I could drink it fine.
Evenings were spent with neighbors, or my landlady, Lali, who
insisted I come to dinner as often as I liked.
She was so generous and fun. And
she loved to tutor my Georgian, much to the consternation of my real, trained
tutor. But both instructors helped! I read a
lot of English books from our Peace Corps volunteer library, and took advantage
of the Vail, Colorado library’s OverDrive system, to check out electronic books
remotely. And I did a lot of office work
in the evenings, because I loved what we were doing. How nice to feel good about one’s work.
Sundays and Mondays were my days off, to do wash, visit with friends, or cook American dishes
to share with the neighbors. I was also
invited for hiking or touring with georgian friends, or some wonderful American friends in Tbilisi,
about 45 minutes away. I would also
attend Catholic Mass in Tbilisi about once a month and see a rainbow of nations
represented, including 3-4 Ambassadors.
Other Sundays I would attend the Georgian Orthodox service in Koda, to
be with my local friends and neighbors.
Am I
glad I did it? Was it fun?
Yes, I am glad I did it.
I wouldn’t call it fun most of the time, but gratifying is a better
word… and humbling. I met incredibly
kind, sharing, generous, spirited, hardworking, non-complaining people and I hope I am a better person for
it. Two years is a long time away from
family and friends, but I am pleased all
in all.
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| My PST Host Family - the Best! |
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| Good friends in Tbilisi kept things sane |
Personally
what have I gained?
First of all I have special new friends and learned so much
by their sharing their lives with me. I have an appreciation for how people
handle relationships and conflicts in other regions. I am less judgmental and
more accepting of others' ways of life and views. I hope I am more flexible and have a changed
some priorities. I also should say how
much I learned from all the other countries in the world sharing their money
and expertise to help those less fortunate.
It isn’t just Americans helping. I also learned that war is not the answer. Diplomatic understanding and respecting others is harder but the only way to lasting peace. Who knows what the future will bring, but I hope to take my learnings and apply them to help in the US: new job creation, bringing jobs back to America, and demonstrating the importance of family values and education to a successful democracy.
Finally,
I think Peace Corps says it well:
“While different people join the Peace Corps for different
reasons, most Volunteers hope for what we might call the Peace Corps
experience. That is, they seek a profound encounter with a foreign culture, a
series of experiences that changes forever the way they think about the world,
their own country, and themselves. They expect-and very much want-to be
challenged, to have their patience and their mettle tested, to be pulled,
pushed or otherwise forced into new ways of thinking and behaving. They want, in
a word, to grow. And the Peace Corps itself wouldn’t have it any other way;
this is, in fact, a large part of its mission and raison d’etre.”
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| Celebrating my birthday with neighbors and Lali |
As I leave my service, I hope that I perhaps left people a
little better off, gave enjoyment to a
few, led by example, and maybe touched some of these Georgians in the same way
they have touched me. And maybe we are
all better people for it. We can only
hope. ch’ven shegvidzlia mkholod! Thank you for following me these past two years.
American Friends of Georgia, a US based 501(C)(3) charity, is the primary funding source for this important program. AFG funds support the hospice’s every day needs including nurses’ salaries, medical supplies, bandages, painkillers, ointments and transportation of nurses to visit their patients.
Mercy Center Hospice can really use our help. A donation to AFG for the sole benefit of the Mercy Center Hospice goes a LONG WAY. Here’s where your dollars can help:
