Today I began my first day of work. I am no longer just a tourist! Marco met with me and Willy, who is the second in command and the head communicator for the HFPF staff in Guatemala. He writes all of the Spanish manuals, communicates regularly with the villages, organizes the set up in villages and can speak pretty decent English. The three of us spent most of the morning reviewing the schedule for the next two months. They explained HFPF’s general goals and vision as a whole before reviewing my specific responsibilities. Work officially begins at eight every morning. There is an hour lunch break from one to two, and then we are back to work until five. I am to help with a variety of projects. One of my biggest projects is an English manual that states HFPF’s mission, vision, objectives, and history before laying out in detail ways to support the foundation and exactly why their help is needed. This way prospective work teams and supporters have a better sense of the impact different projects have on a community. My other main focus is the surveys. I have already began working on a pretty extensive questionnaire that will provide useful feedback about the work HFPF has done in the communities. It will also be used to tell the stories about the direct impacts of HFPF’s work projects. Willy and I will go to five communities together to gain the villagers perception of HFPF’s work, the effects it had had on their lives, their histories, the effects of the civil war, how they envision their future, and any cultural barriers that are important for intruding organizations to understand. While I hope these surveys will be useful to the HFPF staff, I can only control what I will gain from this experience. In the US, there is lots of controversy over how to go about working with developing nations, especially when religion and indigenous roots are at stake. I would like to hear from the interviewees perspective exactly what they think about and want to change in todays world. I realize that these are loaded questions and may be hard to get results, but hopefully with Marco and Willy’s guidance we can find the responsible way to go about the surveys.
Some other responsibilities of mine are helping with English classes for HFPF staff members and providing assistance for the two work teams coming in July. This can mean acting as a translator, helping Marco’s wife Mimi cook group meals in the kitchen, joining the teams to complete the projects, or collecting information for work team members who want to continue supporting HFPF in one way or another.
At the end of our meeting, Marco made it clear that he hoped this will be a wonderful learning experience for me as well as an important experience for HFPF. He stressed that he wanted to hear my perspective and ideas, for it is a different set of eyes than they are used to. I am so lucky that I have such wonderful mentors around me. I can already tell that this is the ideal environment to grow and learn for an internship. I am excited to see what this summer brings!