The majority of my time spent in Indy after my trip to El Salvador so far has been focusing in on what project I want to work on for the remainder of the summer. After some deliberating with my supervisor, we decided that I would work on researching ultraviolet (UV) water purification processes and their potential compatibility with water system projects that CoCoDA has been implementing in Central America. I didn’t have many, but one of the concerns that I had going into this internship process was that I would end up just doing busy work for the summer. This is work that could potentially be useful, but in the end is just a made up task to keep me busy. In this scenario I still would have done all the wonderful learning and reflecting that I knew would come with the CAPS style internship, but without really contributing to […]

Companion Community Development Alternatives (CoCoDA) is a small organization with far reaching effects. CoCoDA partners with local organizations and communities in El Salvador and Nicaragua to accomplish community building projects. To do this, communities dictate which projects to work on and CoCoDA facilitates the project process and provides resources for the project’s completion. They occasionally plan trips with external organizations (many of these being universities) to help in the implementation. The organization originally peaked my interest because of it’s thoughtful approach to volunteering in a world where international volunteering has been somewhat sensationalized in the form of short term volunteer trips. I wanted to learn more about the effects of crossing cultural boundaries with good intentions, and how to minimize any possible negative effects. Spending two weeks in El Salvador with CoCoDA showed me that CoCoDA is among the unfortunately small ranks of organizations that realize that good intentions are […]