Tag Archives: CoCoDA

Different Sides of the Aisle by Braxton Jenkins

CoCoDA stressed to me and other travelers on the Friends of CoCoDA Tour that we must be culturally humble when we travel to different communities in Central America. We must understand that we are probably not accustomed to how people live in underdeveloped countries. If we are not aware of this, our interactions may have be negative without us actually realizing it. After returning, I have realized it is almost more difficult to be culturally humble in the United States. That is an incomplete conclusion. I was in Central America (El Salvador and Nicaragua) for 2 weeks and have traveled to Haiti and Guatemala with WAVES for 2 weeks total before this summer. Cultural humility is not easy abroad, but it is simple when I only have to be there for a short amount of time. I have spent the rest of my life in the U.S., and cultural humility is still an intense learning process.

The ethics of service are strikingly similar from country to country. Working with Central American employees and serving people in developing countries is almost the exact same. In the last week of my internship, CoCoDA sent me to Bloomington, Indiana to shadow the founder and president of Whole Sun Designs, a solar panel installation company. I participated in 8 site visits between the president and clients that were pre-installation and close-out meetings. The men I worked with were intentional and visionary about the details of installing the next few projects, planning projects four weeks in advance, and directing the company in the direction they want it to go. The president had high, though reasonable expectations for everyone. I knew CoCoDA functioned like this as a non-profit serving under-resourced people in Central America. I watched Whole Sun Designs do this as a for-profit, and it changed how I thought a business could operate and still reap amazing results. Successful businesses do not have to choose which clients to hold in contempt or treat employees with partiality.

I was surprised at how the president and employees wove integrity and fairness to each other and their customers as integral to the company’s operation. Our conversations in the site visits, which were usually at people’s houses, reminded me of when I evaluated solar panel systems in El Cacao, Nicaragua. We were just as respectful to their homes and ensured we understood how they wanted to use their system. For example, the president could recommend taking a tree down to maximize sunlight on one part of the roof. He would not follow through with it if the client did not want it. People also showed us awesome parts of their property that they had developed. They were proud of it just like homeowners in Central America were proud of their home development. The only difference between serving clients of Whole Sun Designs and CoCoDA is who could afford the system and who could not. That single difference introduces a running lists of nuances that lead can lead to poor service in developing countries for those who do not continuously collaborate with their clients.

Indiana itself has flooded me with varying levels of emotions that are common nuances in life in life in this country. I know how Indiana has treated black people in the past, so I had to be mindful of that everywhere I went. The threat was not as serious in Indianapolis or Bloomington, but I could not get it out of my mind. I stayed at the house of the president of Whole Sun Designs for two nights. I could not believe that we drove for 20 minutes through forest to get to his house. I am from Chicago. I have buildings and streetlights, not open land and trees. The hills reminded me of Nicaragua’s landscape more than anything else! The president’s roommates were very welcoming people; so was everyone else I met. I have been to many cities in the U.S., yet cultural humility seems more complicated to exercise here than abroad. That is probably because I live here and encounter different cultures on a regular basis rather than touring other countries for a week at a time.

I have not yet gotten into the nitty-gritty of commitment to community development, or business development. I am thankful for this summer internship because I have been exposed to methods of doing both ethically. I will not have to shift into my career thinking there are only avenues to success that are cut-throat. Pragmatism, realism, and respect will be enough.

Shattering Concepts by Braxton Jenkins

“CoCoDA is a lifestyle,” said one of the Latin American employees in the annual organization board meeting, while I was in El Salvador. Later in the meeting, he said, “CoCoDA is a tool,” for the communities we work with. Those statements essentially wrap up how immersive, transformative, and intentional community development in Central America is for the people who devote their careers to the mission of this organization.

As a person who spends much of the day theorizing how to fight for equality, the CoCoDA Board meeting was an oddly unfamiliar environment. Before traveling to Central American communities, I watched the Board of CoCoDA evaluate its position and discuss next steps in lieu of its past. This resonated with me because I was watching a large team of people brainstorm ideas to actually help real people. Part of CoCoDA’s model is to partner with NGO’s in the countries they work with. Even more impactful than seeing CoCoDA work was seeing an NGO in El Salvador operate. I saw innovative composting bins, iguanas that were being raised to supply supplemental protein, a greenhouse to grow vegetables and fruit, and a private news radio station on the same day that I saw the same organization hosting an event where hundreds of men who fought in the Civil War almost 30 years ago would tell their stories. I thought working on the team that is in the U.S. and has the most power made me the biggest helper. This experience complicated that conception because I realized crafting a direct connection with target communities is not only a suggested and time-consuming activity, but it is imperative to help the communities fulfill their dreams and seriously engage in the continual struggle of community development.

I also consider myself deeply involved in my faith and capable of identifying malice in my own intentions. My experiences in Central America have shown me that I am a privileged fellow who has profited from injustice. The United States funded wars and still funds government corruption. This is no secret in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the U.S., however, our understanding is that Central America is having trouble ousting its systemic corruption. I heard story after story and fact after fact that undermined this fallacy. These truths undermined my foundation of religious understanding and premise for justice. How could I as a person from the U.S. who puts my faith into action excuse myself as someone less than a bystander to these continuing histories and issues?

These experiences move me to feel guilt and pity. Upon reflection, I realize those feelings are meaningless. They turn into a drive to fight for justice. But it’s not just a drive. It’s a commitment. Obstacles surely come. This organization has grinded through the worst of them and expects more in the future. Meanwhile, they also expect to continue working with Central American communities, if CoCoDA is still wanted. If this is the case, the communities decide not only what schools they want to build, water projects they want installed, or how many people they can send to college but also how they want CoCoDA to help. All of this seemed glamorous until I realized successfully completing one project inevitably leads to other problems. For example, building a school does not guarantee having teachers or all the proper materials to teach. Seeing fruit of this organization labor with Central American communities as they develop themselves is a demonstration of struggle and companionship that each experience differently.

The purpose of my internship was to evaluate dysfunctional residential solar panel systems (that a domestic company installed about 10 years ago) in a rural, indigenous community in El Cacao, Nicaragua. When I returned to the U.S. after 16 days in Central America (and 3 days of working with solar panel systems), I researched how components of solar systems work and what causes their failures. I wrote a report and prepared a presentation that CoCoDA will use to explain why their systems are failing and options they can pick from to install a more sustainable plan for their solar systems. This was the easy part because limited human interaction in community development is always the quickest way to complete projects. Thankfully, CoCoDA has spent more than a year collaborating with the community of El Cacao and its elected board to ensure they wanted an intern to evaluate their systems; this is the second project in five years with this community. Therefore, I consider my short-term incomplete service of a couple months complete because it is only one small part in a long-term effort that extends far beyond this one project.

 

Focusing In

One of my boss’s three cats, picture taken from the desk in his house where I usually work

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 the organization. I had no idea that on top of the learning and reflecting I would be doing research for the organization that could change the way that they do water projects in the future. This research could really contribute to providing a more sustainable water system to families, and that is an exciting concept for me.

The current method of purifying the water in the systems that we have helped implement so far is through chlorine tablets, a method that works, but with a couple drawbacks. The first drawback is the upkeep. A trained person has to apply the chlorine to the water in regular monthly or weekly intervals throughout the year. This also comes with the regular purchasing of the chemical to purify the water. The second major drawback is the change in the water’s flavour. After shocking the water with chlorine, the flavour of the water becomes quite bad, providing a motivation for the people to put less chlorine in the water. The potential for a new method of purification that doesn’t change the flavour and only requires UV light bulb changes once a year is quite appealing.

This UV purification leads to a number of questions though. What specific purification device do you use, one that is already manufactured or should you attempt to design a new one? At what point along the journey of the water, from the ground to the home, do you purify it? Should you purify all the water or just the water that will be used for drinking? These questions and more all have many answers and are often dependent on each other. My job this summer is to find potential engineering solutions to these unique problems.

A water collection tank, the beginning of the water’s journey as it makes it way to the families in a community

Besides working on the project, Monday of this past week brought a CoCoDA board meeting. This meeting continued to  help me understand the inner mechanisms of a service based organization. The majority of the meeting centered on keeping the board up to date with what CoCoDA was doing, but seeing the employee interaction with board members showed me how imperative it was to have a governing board. The presence of an objective panel is a way of making sure that CoCoDA stays on the right path and it instills confidence in the employees that CoCoDA is not being run unchecked.

This really cool project paired with the organization I am working for, and the other (really awesome) CAPS fellows that I am living with has so far made my time in Indy an enriching experience. I am so happy with how the summer is going and I’m excited to see where it has yet to go.

Two Weeks in El Salvador

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 not necessarily enough in international volunteer situations.

Judith Lasker, professor of sociology and anthropology at Lehigh University conducted a study researching short term medical volunteer trips (detailed in the book Hoping to Help). In doing so, she creates a list of nine separate criteria that, if met, will lead to the most positive experience for the host community. These nine, while derived specifically for medical trips can be generalized for broader short volunteer trips, like the ones that CoCoDA organizes. The nine criteria are:

· Foster mutuality between sponsor organizations and host-country partners at every stage
· Maintain continuity of programming
· Conduct substantive needs assessment, with host-community involvement
· Evaluate process and outcomes and incorporate the results into improvements
· Focus on prevention (medical trip specific)
· Integrate diverse types of health services (medical trip specific)
· Build local capacity
· Strengthen volunteer preparation
· Have volunteers stay longer

CoCoDA has taken these criteria and thought very carefully about the application of their delegations in host countries. In everything that they do, CoCoDA strives to remain culturally sensitive and provide long-term solutions rather short-term ones, solutions that build capacity and trust between peoples. During my trip I was able to visit projects sites that had been completed, project sites that are currently under construction, and meet to discuss potential new projects. The projects that CoCoDA assists in implementing range from schools to water systems. They have been involved in constructing roads as well as setting up scholarship programs, each of these are projects dictated by the communities that they are benefitting. By giving the communities the autonomy to decide the nature of support, it promotes mutuality, builds capacity, and is usually more sustainable in the long run.

The first week of the trip focused on learning the history of El Salvador and ensuring that the delegation was aware of our responsibilities visiting as USA citizens. This meant visiting sites of massacres, assassinations, listening to the stories of people, and visiting museums. Much of what we learned centered around the Salvadoran civil war in which the USA played an integral role. Throughout the civil war, the people faced brutal oppression from the government, and due to communist ideals promoted among the guerrilla troops, the USA financed the Salvadoran government. This support, however, allowed the country’s government to continue its ironfisted suppression of the peasant class giving way to massacres and assassinations to anyone who spoke out against the government. As a United States citizen, it was sobering to realize that our money supported the Salvadoran government before and throughout the civil war, supporting these heinous acts. This illumination of Salvadoran history as well as United States history played an integral part in our preparation, humbling us as US citizens while we interacted with the people of El Salvador.

CoCoDA’s goal with short-term volunteer trips is to facilitate experiences that could lead to support from visitors later on. Ideally, delegates would come back from trips and champion the image of a more just relationship between US citizens and Central Americans, being more likely to take it upon themselves to contribute meaningfully to the betterment of others.

During our stay in a hostel in Suchitoto (a city located north of San Salvador), I connected with three young men around my age. They were from Nicaragua and patiently helped me through the very rough Spanish that I had accumulated through Duolingo. Hanging out and hearing them speak so fondly about their country’s beauty and hearing the anguish in their voice as they told me how they worry for their family’s safety throughout the current conflict was a powerful experience. It was clear to me that these people loved their roots, that they were proud of who they were, hoping for the best in their countries. In the States, the common stereotype assumes that Central Americans do not like their own countries and want to immigrate to the US, but these three men as well as many others that I met in El Salvador made it clear that this is not a stereotype that holds. Most Central Americans love their country and would only emigrate if their lives were in danger.

The experience I had traveling in El Salvador was a wonderful and focusing experience. I do not know where I will end up in my professional life, but this trip has helped strengthen in me my desire to work for and with organizations like CoCoDA.