Reporting Time

I'm a little confused about what to do with this blog space. Of late, Google is telling me my readers are Mac users, Google Chrome users, and in Moldova. In short, somehow this blog has become more popular with fellow PCVs than with it's intended audience of friends and family back home. And last Saturday, a colleague quoted one of my posts back to me (which was awesome). For now, I'm going to keep providing the same kind of content I have been, keeping Peace Corps' third goal in mind. But I'm open to suggestions.

    

I don't have an original idea for a post this time, but it just so happens that it is the end of the quarter and fiscal year, and I am spending my Monday night completing the beloved "Volunteer Report Form" for my program manager. I'll share here what I came up with for my "lessons learned entry." 

    

Over the past few months I have learned to be a bit more assertive. Now that I have the language abilities to offer new ideas, there is no reason to hold back. Furthermore, my relationship with my youth council is developed enough that they trust my ideas and give them honest consideration. 

     

Often, the youth council decides to have important discussions on the spot, with the goal of making a decision quickly. In the past few months, I have tried to slow down the conversation and help them develop more creative and effective ways of doing things. 

For example, in September we were responsible for advertising an event with another organization, Medicii Lumii, from Balti. The youth started to discuss the advertisment strategy by assigning someone to the task, using the same methods we always use in promoting events. I slowed the conversation and forced the youth to be more creative using a metaphor (like my program manager's use of the grapevine during last summer's PST).

After we brainstormed a list of potential advertising strategies, I assigned each person one of the strategies. I gave the youth a piece  of paper and asked them to draw a flower with the following conditions: the roots needed to represent the support/permission we would need to implement that strategy, the stem needed to represent the strategy itself, and the petals the positive outcomes that strategy could provide. After they presented "the idea garden," we chose a set of fundraising strategies that would lead to different outcomes. For example, we didn't pick two methods that would both be aimed at students, but rather a set of strategies aimed at attracting an audience from a variety of age brackets. 

My ideas work, and the youth council listens. I have learned that I just have to speak up and slow down the snap-decision making the youth council has become accustomed to with tradition.