Non-formal education

A very large part of my work as a Peace Corps volunteer takes the form of me giving training sessions to groups of adults or youth on any and all topics related to economic development. No matter the theme of the day, what all the trainings have in common is the method of teaching: non-formal education. Powerpoint, the staple of almost all presentations stateside, is a tool I will hardly, if ever, use here. This is due to a few factors: 1) the frequent lack of electricity in meeting environments - the farmhouse backyard of one of my socias who makes cows' milk is not exactly computer-equipped; 2) unlike the expectations of presentation audiences in the U.S., Powerpoint is not known or desirable among the general population of Cajabamba - it is not the automatic go-to teaching tool; 3) many of my trainees cannot read and/or have little experience with any formal education system (i.e. only attended a couple years of elementary school), so it's important to think outside the box for ways to really get them to connect with the information presented; 4) trainings where the presenter is the main talker are, at least in this context, not the most effective way to make the material stick with the trainees.

Consequently, Peace Corps is all about the dinámicas (interactive activities) that get people participating actively in learning, contributing their own knowledge and ideas, and making the material much more accessible and memorable than just me talking could ever possibly do. Our pre-service training helped expose us to non-formal methodology and give us an idea of the type of work we'd be doing, but it's still a bit of a figure-it-out-as-I-go process. For each of my trainings, I use the slightly overwhelming and very unwieldy bank of Peace Corps materials and examples available to us to prepare a session plan, draw up my papelotes (posterboards), stuff all my markers and tape and props into my backpack, and trek out to whichever backyard classroom is scheduled for that day's adventure.

As an example, here's some photos from a training I led on Tuesday to help a milk-producers' association learn about and create their organization's mission and vision statements. We started off with a "river of fire" dinámica, where the team has to work together to cross the river - this introduces the theme of planning in advance and communication:

Then, after I talked briefly about the concept of a mission statement, two participants acted out a miniature play that helped them identify what they already knew about the work, clients, and purpose of their association:

Once we had drafted a mission statement as a group, it was time to move to the vision. To give each participant the chance to think about their hopes for the future of the association, they each drew a picture representing what they'd want the association to be like in five years:

As a result, we got some beautiful pictures of healthy cows, prospering alfalfa pastures, cars delivering milk to new markets, and improved irrigation systems. Everyone was so proud of their drawings that when we took them down, one participant wrote the name of each artist on their paper and said they should save the drawings :)

Based on the ideas from the art project, we wrote out a vision statement as a group, and talked about the importance of thinking ahead to future goals so that we can start the planning needed to achieve them. Training complete!