Peace Corps/Yemen

Collaboration

Most Peace Corps projects were in collaboration with the Local Development Authorities and the Confederation of Yemeni Development Associations and the Ministry of Public Works. Other agencies involved included CRS, OXFAM, Save the Children, and USAID.

In the 1980s an innovative type of project infrastructure began with formal written agreements involving YARG, USAID, Peace Corps, and U.S. private enterprise-one project with the New TransCentury Foundation and one with Chemonics.

Training

Presently Peace Corps/Yemen has a full-time Yemeni training officer. The training officer handles administration and scheduling of training sessions and trains language instructors. A professional trainer is hired for each session. For Project 044, TransCentury provides two months of on-the-job technical training.

The standard pre-service training (PST) consists of five weeks of introductory language training and cross-culture instruction, followed by five or six weeks of technical language training. There are several weeks of site visits when Volunteers work with projects. By the end of training, an FSI 1+ proficiency is expected in Arabic. In-service training (IST), held mid-tour, consists of a one-week workshop with 30 hours of language training related to the PCV's field of work. Conferences are held after three months and at mid service for discussion of problems and project status.

The PST and IST have been opened to other PVOs and to private individuals working in Yemen. To date, British, Swedish, Dutch, German, Irish, and Norwegian volunteers have participated. The fees established for these courses have allowed PC/Yemen to develop new materials, provide more teacher training, hire more qualified staff, and locate a more adequate training site. Participants benefit from improved language skills and understanding of the culture and the development process in Yemen. Volunteers from various agencies become familiar with each others' work, and throughout their stay in Yemen discuss mutual problems and how to overcome them. (CMP FY1982, p. 12.)

PC/Yemen has long hoped to have all its 044 and 045 PCVs benefit from a water/sanitation stateside training program (SST), but generally it has proven difficult either to coordinate training cycles with SST dates or to reserve the required number of slots for recruited PCVs. Unfortunately, PC/Yemen does not recruit Volunteers in sufficient numbers to allow it to schedule its own SST through the assistance of PC/Washington. In 1981-82, PC/Yemen examined the possibility of recruiting someone from the Indian Health Service to do joint incountry technical training for 044-045 Volunteers, but the idea was not pursued very far because costs in Yemen are very high, government permits can be time-consuming and difficult to acquire, and the kinds of activities pursued by the two projects do not overlap entirely. In the summer cycle (1983), PC/Yemen will, however, experiment with incountry technical training for the 044 PCTs and a new project, Earthquake Reconstruction. PC/Yemen is to hire two COSing 044 PCVs on Personal Service Contracts (PSCs) to conduct a four-week technical training. New TransCentury Foundation offered to provide facilities and a project site for the technical training. (Carter, May 1983, p. 8.)

The Executive Council of Earthquake Reconstruction will participate in the designing and implementation of the technical training. This will be the first time that PC/Y has asked the Yemen government to take an active role in the technical training of PCTs.

Women in Development (WID)

Women are the main beneficiaries of Projects 044 and 045. Since the women do much of the agricultural work as well as the cooking, cleaning, and childtending, the time that the new water distribution systems save them is vital.

Yemeni women have not been involved in the planning or implementation of projects.

Presently, only two female Volunteers-one architect (045) and one sanitary engineer (044)-are involved in water projects in Peace Corps/Yemen, although there were also women involved in the Mahweit project. Considering Yemen's traditional, conservative Islamic culture, and the nature of the work, which, to date, requires traveling, working, and living with male Yemeni counterparts, the presence of these two PCVs represents considerable progress for PC/Yemen.