Quote:
Originally Posted by London_Calling
One of the good things about Progressio (a UK based agency) is that most of their recruits for projects in the DR are from other Latin American countries. Although Peace Corp and other agencies have some great intentions unless the volunteer speaks the language and understands the culture you can spend a lot of time achieving very little.
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The Peace Corps Volunteers get 3 months of language, cultural and technical training, plus spend 3 months doing a diagnostic before they even start "working" in their project area. Those who don't know the language well learn it pretty fast, because they are on their own and not with a group of foreigners. In this country, many already speak some Spanish or are even fluent because in some cases that is what their family speaks in the U.S. They spend 2 years living where they work at the level of the people they work with, so all-in-all I would say they have a pretty good understanding of language and culture. As far as achievement, the nature of their work allows them to have closer relationships with people in the community and they have done some great work on many levels.
