In September 2013 I finished my term in Southeast Asia and wasn’t quite ready to sit still yet. Thus, I applied to participate in a program called Atlas Corps. Several weeks later, I received word that I would be spending new years in Bogota, Colombia as a ‘fellow’ for the following 11 months. I was fresh off of a spectacularly horrendous Peace Corps experience, and was a bit jaded, yet still excited at the prospect of being able to use my skills to improve conditions for others (and admittedly, get a trip out of the deal). As is the case, what transpired upon my arrival was unlike anything that the vague description of the program could have prepared me for.
Within the first three weeks I had met some of the coolest people from around the world and some of the most powerful political figures in the Republic of Colombia, including President Juan Manuel Santos himself. Evidently, the goal was to bring 200 volunteers (we numbered 145) to work throughout 37 departments (likened to states) nationwide. The eventual goal is to bring 500 volunteers throughout the course of a year to help alleviate this country’s staggeringly large deficit in bilingualism.
While I admire the ambition that these leaders/organizations have, they clearly missed a few key details in the planning department.
For one: Atlas Corps is new, and like any new program there are ‘various’ (and by various I mean multitudinous) gaps in their framework that the staff is not even aware of.
Two: They are-and this is in no way an exaggeration, extremely disorganized. There are vital documents, be they codes of conduct or even housing arrangement forms, that I have had to fill out numerous times simply because they were lost or not saved to begin with.
Three: Our hotel accommodations were inconsistent with the number of volunteers in our cohort; many of us had twin bedrooms with multiple cots sort of shoved in them and the hotel staff was ill equipped to serve us. This included food as well, which sometimes resulted in breakfast consisting of nothing but a piece of bread and some slices of papaya.
Four: Communication is clearly not key here. We all found out that under the heading of Volunteers Colombia existed several other organizations, all acting as recruitment agencies for SENA (you can find a link to their website here (http://www.atlascorps.org/apply-to-english-teaching-fellowship.php). Whereas SENA is a reputable apprenticeship organization that has been doing it’s job for almost 50 years, Atlas Corps seems to be a group of passionate people under the remote leadership of someone in Washington D.C. who actually knows what they’re doing. Email replies take forever and don’t be surprised if a message you sent to one entity never makes it to another, even if said entity claims it’s their responsibility to do so. Everyone will have their ducks in a row when it comes time for you to submit payments and evaluations, but don’t expect this same efficiency to come into play when it comes time for you to receive information regarding insurance and/or financial reimbursement or even your stipend. What does this mean for me? It means I get to spend the first two months of a ‘paid’ fellowship paying for everything out of pocket, something that Peace Corps Cambodia, while painfully incompetent, managed to have under their control.
Needless to say, in many regards its beginning to look like Peace Corps all over again..maybe sans Dengue fever, but let’s not be so quick to make that assumption either. Lets just hope I can afford to get sick here.
Thoughts of a Leo 