My Hard Corps Life: One track mind

Annnnd I'm back. I hate to neglect my blog, but I've had a one track mind lately and I think it's paid off.

Folks, it's official- I have completed the graduation requirements for my Master's degree in Politics and Government from Illinois State University! I started a Master's International program with the Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development the year before I left for PC and wrote my capstone while I was in El Salvador.

Me and my cousin walked in the same ceremony (she's in SpeechPath) back in May when I visited home.

Unfortunately my capstone is a little disheartening. I conducted a case study that examines just how drastically my community's development organization or ADESCO (Asociaciones de Desarrollo Comunal) has fallen in the past two years that it's partnered with a certain microfinance institution. I had a really unique perspective in all of this because COED PCVs in El Salvador are placed specifically with ADESCOs to do trainings, help them manage projects, etc. I got placed with one that just happened to, well, suck.

The decline of my ADESCO affected me personally in a variety of ways. Remember when the ADESCO was fulfilling their expectations from the microfinance institution, but not really though, and left me to invite a group of women and conduct the meeting alone? Yeah, that's not cool. It's a constant process explaining my role to the community, but you'd think after SIX previous PCVs they'd get the gist. PCVs work with communities, but they don't work for them. This was just an example of how the "opportunities" the MFI brought in weren't actually what the ADESCO wanted, or they didn't want to work for them.

Whereas the actual case study might be repetitive (people are pretty fed up talking about it at this point), the research I do regarding ADESCOs is really informative. There are NO previous resources, not even governmental resources, that fully describe the history of ADESCOs, how to form one, what they do, what are the legal frameworks in place, and what laws protect the rights of ADESCOs. These are legal entities, with legal powers to solicit their own community development projects with the government, NGOs, international orgs, banks, etc. Imagine if Englewood could just be like, "Yeah, thanks for nothing City of Chicago. We're gonna work with the UN now." It's crazy! So interesting! And yet, no one really knows about it.

I also summarize a recent report that basically quantifies the lives of Salvadorans by their income, housing characteristics, education levels, etc. As it could be expected, rural areas of El Salvador are doing FAR WORSE than the urban areas, and living in the capital can nearly double your monthly earnings. A review of El Salvador wouldn't be complete without discussing gang violence and the influx of child immigrants, two things I've experienced very personally here. It felt a little silly trying to sum up all of these things and present the "situation" in full because, as it is anywhere in the world, the statistics don't always capture the real lives of its subjects.

So besides my capstone, what else have I been doing? Let's see.