About a year ago when I visited a Peace Corps Volunteer’s post, two Peace Corps Volunteers who were about to finish their service proudly showed me the new water pump that they just built at a local primary school in their village with the funds that they raised by themselves.  They also built a hand washing station.  I also had the opportunity to watch them teach students at the school about the importance of washing their hands especially before eating.  The purpose of the project was get children to wash their hands before eating.  When seeing the project, I remember thinking, “This is great, but will their behaviors be changed?”

I recently asked a Peace Corps Volunteer who is now living in the village if the water pump is being used.  She told me that both the water pump and hand washing station have been sitting unused and collecting dust.

Even if the water pump and hand washing station were both being used, who would be maintaining them and fixing them when if they become broken?

I have been hearing stories from some volunteers that the locals have been upset with them for refusing to give any items to their communities unlike some volunteers who worked before them and has given communities things such as wells, water pumps and solar lamps.  Many of us including myself have been faced with the situation of constantly being asked for money.  I have had to explained a number of times that my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer is to teach the community about health, not bring in money.  It did get frustrating.

When other volunteers and I are faced with the situation where we are expected to give the community something, I often wonder if the long history of charity and missionary workers who came to developing countries and handed out money and items contributed to the problem.

While Peace Corps has a policy that no volunteer can give any money to any locals, many of us volunteers also choose not to build something for the community such as wells, toilets, and libraries and give them something such as solar lamps and books.  While charity and missionary workers do have good intentions, cases studies have shown that when they give out money and items, the results show that they do not create long lasting effect and there is no happy ending.  A colossal amount of money goes into waste.  Donated hearing aids have ended up in the drawers after two weeks of use.  More than 150,000 water pumps in Africa have been abandoned due to poor maintenance.  Mosquito nets have been used for fishing instead of preventing malaria.

My counterpart, Ruth, said some very powerful words to me one day several months ago that really defines well the role of Peace Corps Volunteers, “When I was growing up, I always saw Peace Corps Volunteers as teachers.”  She is so right.  We, volunteers, are just simply educators, whether we work in health, agriculture, or economic development.  Education creates a much greater lifelong impact than many can realize.  The famous quote, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” does really speak the truth about how international aid development should normally work.  If the locals want a well, we should teach them how to build it so that they can not only continue to build them by themselves when we leave the community but also teach other locals how to build them too.  If the locals ask for solar lamps or mosquito nets, we should teach them various income generating activities so that they can generate their own incomes to be able to pay for the solar lamps and mosquito nets themselves.

If I could give one advice to any new volunteers who are about to start their Peace Corps service, I would like to ask them to be humble and not be so focused on choosing projects that would make their resume look good.  I would instead focus on educating the locals on what they truly need and want to learn to be able to help improve the life of everyone around them.