Country Welcome for Guatemala

Dear Friend,

On behalf of all staff at Peace Corps Guatemala: ¡Bienvenido!

More than 5,400 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in villages and communities in Guatemala since 1963. Peace Corps Volunteers live and work in towns and villages throughout six departments (equivalent to U.S. states) in the Western Highlands: Chimaltenango, El Quiché, Quetzaltenango, Sacatepéquez, Sololá, and Totonicapán.

Our work is focused on Guatemalan community members and Volunteers collaborating on locally defined priorities and, together, achieving measurable impact. This includes strengthening the capacity of local people and supporting their vision for their community’s future.

You will be assigned to one of three programs. Although you will receive extensive training and collaborate with a vetted work partner, your success will depend on your own efforts, professionalism, and commitment to service.

Here’s a brief summary of each program:

Maternal and Child Health: Volunteers work through the Ministry of Health and are assigned to health centers, clinics, hospitals, or NGOs focusing on improving health education and promotion to improve child nutrition and women’s and family health. The MCH Program promotes interactive health education for mothers and household members by training health workers on experiential learning-based methodology as a means to effectively promote healthy practices for mothers and children. Volunteers also engage with community leaders to support them to enhance their actions to address health issues, enable behavioral change and improve health outcomes for mothers and children.

Rural Extension: Volunteers are assigned to the National Rural Extension System (SNER in Spanish), a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture. They work with and support a team of two to five technical specialists, known as extension agents, and community promoters through strengthening capacity on methodologies for inclusive planning, organization, management, and effective delivery of rural extension services. Volunteer efforts at collaboration and coordination with community and municipal extension agents make them active partners in the process of development. The primary goal is to increase food security among rural households in Guatemala through the strengthening of the delivery of national rural extension services.

Youth in Development: This program is dedicated to empowering youth to lead healthy lives and to assume positive and active leadership roles in their communities. Volunteers facilitate topics focused on life skills and how to use them as a base to make healthy decisions for their life. Topics include self-esteem, decision making, creating goals, effective communication and more. Additionally, youth are trained on service-learning and leading a participatory project. Volunteers are assigned mainly to middle schools but may also collaborate with Municipal Youth offices and other local organizations working with youth in the community.

You will find there are limitless opportunities for Volunteers to work collaboratively with their communities, both as community development workers and as engaged members of their communities. We ask you to approach this work with curiosity, with a willingness to learn from others’ life experiences and with cultural humility. You will be challenged to integrate into a culture that is quite different than your own. It will require you to be open, to leave assumptions behind and to allow yourself to adapt and be changed by this new cultural experience.

We look forward to welcoming you to Peace Corps Guatemala.

Warmly,

Country Director Caryl García