In my previous post I mentioned that as part of our three month training (PST), in addition to language and cultural training, we must plan and implementation small projects within the community where we live. During the first weeks here in our training community all of the Community Development (CD) trainees visited a number of schools, organizations, and government offices to access the needs of the community and to develop ideas for projects. The community projects serve as an opportunity to learn the unique challenges and pitfalls of attempting to put together projects in Ukraine. The projects also serve as a small thank you to the community for putting up with a bunch of Americans invading the Internet cafes and grocery stores.
Of the six possible community projects I decided to help out with the so called ‘Sister School’ project. I’ll admit that I didn’t have any special urge towards any of the projects but this one had the fewest people so I signed up for it. The idea behind this project came from a random meeting with the director (principal) of one of the schools in the community. She had commented that her students had little opportunity to practice their English with native speakers. From that came the idea of attempting to setup a sort of pen-pal relationship with an American school. Peace Corps is big on ’sustainability’, so the fact that the communication between a Ukrainian school and an American school could continue after we leave our training city was a big plus. It also seemed like a feasible project to implement in about a month.
The planning and implementation I’m finding is actually turning out to be a bit more complex. In America, meetings usually have a goal and the meeting participants usually attend to some sort of non-written rules. We are learning that those rules don’t apply to Ukrainian meetings. Our first meeting was with just the director of the school and she was big on one thing: she wanted a certificate. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter what kind of certificate, but it has to be something she can hang out her wall. Well, if nothing else, I can make up some sort of certificate. I get a good (internal) laugh whenever she mentions the certificate because she’ll mention it at really random times in our meetings. But then again one of our group members is dead set on finding a store that sells disposable cameras to take pictures for the project, despite my protests that taking pictures we the digital cameras we already have and printing those out would be much easier. Sometimes people just get certain ideas stuck in their head (myself included I suppose, hence why I’m writing blog entries from Ukraine).
Today we had our second meeting, this time with the English teachers of the school. We scheduled the meeting for 5pm and had a list of questions and action points for the meeting. We arrived a few minutes before 5pm, sat in awkward silence in the principal’s office (it’s never good to be sent to the principal’s office no matter how old you are) while we waited for ‘the performance’. What performance? No, you don’t understand, we came for a meeting. Umm… okay… how long is the performance? Umm, one hour? What is going on? Cinderella? I don’t remember a talking cat in Cinderella? Is that kid really wearing white tights or is he just really pale? Cinderella? Huh? WTF?
So, we soon found ourselves watching a Ukrainian rendition of Cinderella, in Russian of course. And, in case you were wondering, yes, the slipper fit Cinderella and she lived happily ever after with her prince. But, would our project come to the same fate or would it be poached off like Bambi’s mom?
We eventually got into our roundtable meeting with the English teachers and the director. Instead of discussing the project the director tried to turn the meeting into more of a ‘what is it like in America?’ Q &A session. As soon as I caught onto her ploy I decided to steer the conversation back to what I wanted to do with the meeting. And the meeting went back and forth like that until she got tired and started taking telephone calls. By this time I could tell that the poor teachers were bored and just wanted to go home. Also by this time I had a few more ideas of what to put on her ‘certificate’. Oh yea, we haven’t found an interested American school yet, so I’m still putting my BS (bachelor of science of course!) skills to work when the director asks me about that.
But, as for the real purpose of these community projects, we are learning much about the perils of planning in Ukraine. Things just don’t work out how you expect. But, come to think of it, this project seems strangely familiar to the projects I worked on in my previous life as a web developer. Maybe Ukraine isn’t so different after all…