Become a Field Worker in Guatemala

Immere:

The first phase of a Field Director’s two years is what we call the Immersionship. What is it? This is the time when we learn the local language, lend a hand to a few local businesses and get lost in the rhythm of the culture. The Immersionship is our way of establishing that we are in the community, not apart from it, or over it.

Why not just get started on cool projects when we show up? The reason is that the cultural gap between the Field Director and the local community is immense. The initial assumptions we have when we enter a community about its needs and the people we think we can trust aren’t always accurate. It takes a breaking down before we can build up. The main focus of the Immersionship is learning the local language. When we start speaking the language, putting on the words, intonations and gestures of the local community, it’s a sign that we are beginning to see things from the community’s perspective. Apart from language learning, building relationships and learning to live without usual comforts, what does an Immersionship look like?

Here are a few examples of what Immersionship “jobs” might be:

Teaching elementary school kids English in Chuinajtajayub (yeah, that's a town) and learning the ins and outs of education in rural Guatemala, while helping a student’s family with the raising of rabbits and other livestock.
Helping a local community based organization survey rural African widow lending groups during the day and pounding dough in a bakery in the evening.
Working at a few Appalachian food banks, packing boxes and delivering food stuffs to homebound folks.
The Immersionship is sometimes tough, other times unbearable, but always a learning process that extends us beyond our comfort zone. Our motto during the Immersionship is go slow.

Collaborate & Create

The sacrifices that the Field Director makes during the Immersionship fuel the collaboration and creativity during the second phase of service, the thing we call the Creationship. The Immersionship is a natural stepping stone to being a valuable asset to the community we are planted in.

By the time we get to the Creationship we have begun to speak (and think) like the locals, we’ve made friends with people we trust, who trust us too, and we may have even met a few potential Impresarios – people with ideas and motivation for a project or business. Our bet is that every community has Impresarios. The Creationship is about identifying them and collaborating with them on what they need.

We share meals or cups of coffee with Impresarios and use a whiteboard to talk them through their challenges and obstacles. For instance: a community project wants to get water out to a pueblo but doesn't have a way to write a grant for it. Or an entrepreneur is working on setting up beehives in several villages but needs a business model for establishing a supply chain. Or a baker wants to expand his business to a nearby town but needs a local business partner.

We connect the water project to a donor in the US, we map out a business plan with the honey entrepreneur, and help identify potential partners for a baker. Our job is not to run or manage the project. We simply collaborate and fill gaps. Our Impresarios are active agents of their own projects, not useful project implementers of ours. We are a conduit for local ideas to come alive.