Peace Corps Assignment 144 Description

Peace Corps Assignment 144

Business Development

Creating Sustainable Solutions

As a Peace Corps Volunteer you arrive in your assigned country of service, not with funds or equipment, but with skills and knowledge as well the willingness to adapt them to your community. The primary focus of all volunteer work is building the capacity of local communities to meet their own needs through sustainable activities. A successful project is one that continues to function effectively after the volunteer leaves.

Before starting your two-year assignment, you receive approximately three months of in-country training, focusing on language, cross-cultural, and technical skills as well as on health and safety. The training program is designed to help you become an integral member of the community by giving you an understanding of the country’s governmental system, cultural norms, and interpersonal relations. Technical training enhances your ability to effectively transfer your skills and knowledge to host-country people.

Flexibility is your key to success

It is vital that Volunteers understand not only the myriad of technical problems, but also the cultural views and socio-political context in which they operate. The assignment may have little or no established structure or schedule. You continually define your role in response to the needs of the local people. Your willingness to integrate into your community and help your hosts find appropriate solutions can encourage people to participate. Your creativity, flexibility, self-motivation, and self-discipline may be vigorously challenged as you establish credibility and adapt to your new environment.

The Work of Business Development Volunteers

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, you serve as a combination of planner, coordinator, teacher, facilitator and trainer. You provide technical assistance to enhance host country nationals’ basic understanding of business and free market economies. Depending on your experience and the needs of your country, you may serve in an assignment related to business education, agribusiness, finance, credit and banking, management analysis, cooperative business development, planning, municipal development, policy analysis, or privatization. You may be assigned to a community agency, educational institution organization in a provincial or regional capital, or a business advice center. Responsibilities may include:

Helping establish business resource centers that serve as both clearinghouses for existing information and as centers to generate, analyze and disseminate new information; Teaching basic business subjects such as business English, management, marketing or accounting in a secondary school, local technical institute or university; Building leadership and institutional capacity by training local business leaders to clarify missions, establish goals and objectives, and implement action plans; Surveying local business financial needs and providing hands-on technical assistance in such areas as planning, cash management, and accounting; Developing linkages among businesses to exchange services and information; Conducting marketing surveys, analyzing production costs and product pricing, and instituting quality control systems; Designing an appropriate training package for client businesses including such topics as business philosophy, management principles, recruitment and staffing, accounting, credit, loan management, purchasing, inventory control, marketing, quality control, costing, and raw material supply; Developing marketing strategies to ensure small business clients’ access to domestic, regional, and international markets; Conducting workshops and seminars on business start-up, strategic planning, marketing, costing and pricing, merchandising, business English, or tourism.

You face the challenges of adjusting to a work environment without fax machines, support staff, or expense accounts. Situations can be ambiguous and involve different values, a different sense of time, difficult living conditions, and foreign languages. This is an assignment that stretches your creativity – come with a sense of humor, perseverance, patience, individual

Peace Corps, Assignment 144, Peacecorps.gov (c) 2008 Visited 10/23/09