CoCoDA

Different Sides of the Aisle by Braxton Jenkins

This entry was tagged CoCoDA Companion Community Development Alternatives Indianapolis and posted on by

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 […]

Shattering Concepts by Braxton Jenkins

This entry was tagged CoCoDA El Salvador Indianapolis Nicaragua and posted on by

“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 […]

Focusing In

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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 […]

Two Weeks in El Salvador

This entry was tagged CoCoDA El Salvador Indianapolis and posted on by

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 […]