“Why are you here?” she asked. My Spanish teacher, who is equally perplexed on how I “forget” to pronounce all vowels in each word, asked our group of beginning Spanish speakers why we traveled from Sweden, USA and Ireland to volunteer in Cordoba, Argentina. Maybe, she questi[...]
Archive for the ‘Careers’ Category
December 9th, 2009 - 12:23 pm § in Careers, Tips & Resources
From Volunteering to Paid Work: Development Careers in Latin America
Today’s post is from journalist and researcher Andrew Wainer. Andrew felt a magnetism toward all things international from his early teenage years. There’s really no explanation for it. He was lucky enough to be able to visit the Soviet Union with his father while only a teen and studied Spa[...]
Volunteering 101: Interview Yourself
There’s been a lot of exciting dialogue lately on the blog about how to get started on an altruistic adventure in Latin America. I’d like to take a step back in the process, suggesting a few key questions for volunteers to answer before getting in contact with nonprofit organizations: What are t[...]
Spark Teams: Promoting Innovation
Chispudo refers to a person who is proactive, perceptive, curious and clever. It’s a guatemaltequismo, a word found only in Guatemala, which plays with the word in Spanish for spark, chispa, turning it into a personal attribute for those people capable of generating sparks in the different facet[...]
Back at Home, But Not Really
My volunteer service in Ecuador has ended, and with the completion of 11 months in Cuenca, I now face the challenge of finding opportunities once again. But for the time being, I’m back where I grew up, in Sharon, Massachusetts. This is a small, quiet community in the suburbs, and it’s a[...]
Tropicalizándose: From Temporary Volunteer to Permanent Resident
The term “tropicalizar” graced my ears during my first year in Guatemala when I was working on a research project with a dear former colleague. I’d written up a brief status report about the course of our investigations, evaluating our organization’s impact on education and health measures, [...]
