peru???

February 21, 2008 7:02 PM

what should i know about a peruvian ngo before i volunteer for them for a summer?

i'm a first year medical student looking to spend my last summer of freedom in the andes. i found a small, local ngo that looks interesting to me, and they're very enthusiastic to have me come. so far they're given me a general description of where i'll be working and staying, and i've checked out most of what's been written about them online. what should i be sure to find out from them before i actually commit and buy the plane tickets??

posted by genmonster to travel & transportation (3 comments total)

Ask for the name and contact info for someone who's done the same program who lives in the USA (assuming that's where you live). Hopefully you can personally talk or email to them and ask them questions about their personal experience with the NGO. In fact, ask for a couple of references.

When you do get a chance to talk to them, ask a lot of questions including how to get prepared, what daily life is like, accommodations, the good, the bad, the ugly. The only downside to this is that most likely they will only give you the names of people who did have a mostly positive experience, so you might not hear about any negative aspects.

Buena suerte!
posted by HeyAllie at 8:09 PM on February 21, 2008

I had similar worries when I worked for a small (actually, it was tiny: two people!) NGO in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in 2003, but they were mostly unfounded. I don't know if you'll be in an urban setting or not, but here are my observations about working in a large developing-world city.

The biggest difference was that in general, life there was (mostly) a lot less formal or organized than it was in the States; there weren't the same warning labels or pedestrian crossing lights, for example, so I had to learn to be a little more responsible for knowing where I was. I was well-protected against the vagaries of life, though: I took antimalarials (Malarone, which was expensive but fantastic), had good travel/health insurance, and my accomodations were secure. I also made sure I had a great map of the city in my bag every day so if I followed the scent of some fried plantains down an alley to a little chop bar (a local eating establishment), I'd be able to get back to where I was before.

Some things I didn't even think to anticipate but turned into kind of a hassle:

- that the relatively poor condition of the roads and infrastructure meant being stuck in insane traffic jams (this might not be a problem if you're outside of Lima or another big city);

- that the heat and the dust would make everything I wore look like I'd been rolling around in the dirt all day, which necessitated doing a lot more laundry than I thought I'd have to do;

- that my host family wasn't really cool with me going to some areas or places I wanted to go to and see because they (in the wealthiest 5% of Ghanaians) thought I'd be kidnapped or murdered or something else equally unlikely, which meant that I had to be a little, shall we say, obtuse about my plans for the day;

- that the place I lived was a significant (30-40 minute) walk from public transport or internet access, which wasn't nice during power cuts or rainstorms.

Feel free to send me an e-mail/MeFiMail if you'd like to know more! You sound like you've done your homework - have a great time!
posted by mdonley at 2:27 AM on February 22, 2008

Hah. mdonley, for all the growth they're seeing in the economy, Accra's just getting more intense in all of those aspects you mentioned above (except the internet/public transport, those are both more available, as long as you consider a tro-tro public and transportation).

Anyway, I used to run projects between Brazil and a US university. Some things to do ahead of time or on the ground:

* NGO people network a lot, and know who's doing what. Consider emailing people in the same field in the region, and get their impressions. While living in Ghana I had some people contact me just to go by and see if addresses and such were legit.
* Building on that, if there's a registry for NGOs in Peru, check it out. If you see partners listed, or funding agencies, give them a call. Whether your search is for "legitimacy" or not, this could be a good survey of what kind of work is being done, and how much impact is being made at what costs.


* Make sure to give all of the organization's contact information to people in your home country when you leave. Best, have a specific human contact they can make (rather than just the office number).
* When you're going, do bring some emergency information for yourself (local police numbers, your national embassy address and emergency number, etc).
* Try to get your first meeting somewhere you feel comfortable in if something goes wrong. When moving to Ghana, I met my boss and his family at the airport.
posted by whatzit at 5:17 PM on February 22, 2008