The front room of my center.
Great question. I’m going to try and post a little more about my actual job as a Youth Development volunteer, as I learn it a little bit more every day inshallah.
Peace Corps is a firm believer in “experiential learning” which, despite what some snarky PCVs may tell you, is emphatically not the same thing as “making it up as you go along.” It really just means observing things, participating in them, and taking the time afterwards to reflect on what you’ve done, where things might be headed and what action you can take to nudge things in a positive direction.
As I’ve been experientially learning my job these past almost six months, it’s best summed up in the unofficial Peace Corps Jordan credo, “be flexible.”
Peter & Christa have an awesome roof, mashallah.
Anyways, in Peace Corps “youth development” work falls somewhere on the border between the education and community development sectors. YD volunteers work with young people at various levels of the educational system, sometimes all at once (as when local university students volunteer to help put on a program for local middle- and high-school-age students, something we’re hoping to pull off later this summer). But we also work with local people and groups organized to help their neighbors and themselves.
Ideally, a Peace Corps volunteer working in youth development will be helping build the skills of the young beneficiaries of the program as well as the local actors implementing the program. In a country as young as Jordan (70% of the population is under 30), pretty much every development issue (education, jobs, the environment) affects young people. “Youth development” work starts to seem pretty broad.
Worldwide, Peace Corps focuses it by organizing it into three (again, broad) themes: family life, working, and citizenship. I’m paraphrasing a lot of Peace Corps documents and manuals but that’s the gist of it. Family life encompasses things that help young people become healthy adults, including physical health, mental and emotional health, and learning to communicate and make decisions. Basically everything that UNICEF calls “life skills.”
Worldwide, Peace Corps focuses it by organizing it into three (again, broad) themes: family life, working, and citizenship. I’m paraphrasing a lot of Peace Corps documents and manuals but that’s the gist of it. Family life encompasses things that help young people become healthy adults, including physical health, mental and emotional health, and learning to communicate and make decisions. Basically everything that UNICEF calls “life skills.”
I hear you asking, “but Dave, how are you supposed to give good advice to kids about this stuff?” Shut up.
If you click on that life skills link you’ll notice that in the development world these things are often associated with a particular public health issue that Peace Corps doesn’t work on here, but that’s a story for another post.
The second theme, working, is pretty straightforward: programs that build practical skills for participation in economic life. Here in Jordan, that has typically meant doing stuff like teaching English, but this summer we’re also rolling out a pretty impressive program developed by two of our volunteer colleagues for teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. More on that after a successful field run next month, inshallah.
The last theme, citizenship, is stuff like promoting civic engagement and volunteerism, stuff that falls under the category of service learning in the States. Here in Jordan it also covers interesting efforts around girls’ empowerment and brings up a lot of complicated issues related to the heavily youth-involved character of recent events in the region. When young people make up 70% of the population, a society has a vital interest in making sure that they are constructively engaged in community life.
If you click on that life skills link you’ll notice that in the development world these things are often associated with a particular public health issue that Peace Corps doesn’t work on here, but that’s a story for another post.
The second theme, working, is pretty straightforward: programs that build practical skills for participation in economic life. Here in Jordan, that has typically meant doing stuff like teaching English, but this summer we’re also rolling out a pretty impressive program developed by two of our volunteer colleagues for teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. More on that after a successful field run next month, inshallah.
The last theme, citizenship, is stuff like promoting civic engagement and volunteerism, stuff that falls under the category of service learning in the States. Here in Jordan it also covers interesting efforts around girls’ empowerment and brings up a lot of complicated issues related to the heavily youth-involved character of recent events in the region. When young people make up 70% of the population, a society has a vital interest in making sure that they are constructively engaged in community life.
As guests in this country we only touch lightly around the edges of these matters. But the meaning and practice of citizenship is great fodder for the cultural exchange that is the heart of our work here, especially once we have the Arabic skills to talk about it! As always, more on that later.
This is an overview of youth development work in Peace Corps generally, as I understand it. The next post in this series will give more detail about how we go about actually developing these here youths in Jordan. Until then, الله يسلمك !
This is an overview of youth development work in Peace Corps generally, as I understand it. The next post in this series will give more detail about how we go about actually developing these here youths in Jordan. Until then, الله يسلمك !
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