Pre-Service Training

Upon arrival in Uganda, I will be participating in 3 months of Pre-Service Training. There will be 57 other new Peace Corps Volunteers taking part in PST. The training itself is primarily experiential based. I will be learning technical, cross-cultural, language, personal health, and safety training components. Each part of the training will ensure I have the essential skills to send me on my way for the remainder of my 24 month placement in Uganda. I am looking forward to the PST to get to know the other Volunteers as well as the skills I will need for my primary project. In addition to PST, I will be staying with a host family. I will be living with my host family for the duration of the PST. This will be a great time to practice my language aquisition and become a part of the culture.

The program I will be working under is Teacher Training and Community Development. My primary project, or job, while in Uganda will be a Primary School Teacher Trainer. I will be working with a native counterpart in a coordinating center. My counterpart and I will be working to provide school improvement plans, staff development, professional development, strengthening home-school-community connections, and working with school administrators to improve leadership skills and ability to suppor their teachers. Almost all edcuation volunteers work to train youth, teachers, and communities in life skills that will help them lead more productive, positive, and disease free lives.

Outside of my primary project I will creating my own secondary project, which will be a personal project of my own. Although my ideas may change when I arrive in my permanent village I have a couple of ideas that I have been thinking about, including developing an intramurals group for youth or a youth group focusing on service learning. The secondary projects are unique to each volunteer because each is different to their liking.

My 1st Blog Post!

As many of you know, I am joining the Peace Corps and will be departing for Uganda in a little over two weeks (Feb. 10th for staging in Philadephia and Feb. 12th for Uganda). Many friends and family members have asked how I will keep in touch and if I would have a blog page to keep everyone up to date on my experience and adventures. After doing some research on "blogging," which is foreign to me, I came up with this page. It will be an easy way to keep in touch and hopefully hear back from all of you as well. I am still getting use to the ins and outs of the page but feel free to come back and see the updates as they come. I look forward to getting started on the journey as a Peace Corps Volunteer, but will miss all the things I am leaving behind. More blogs to come!