The Assignment

I’ll be partnered with Homeland Handicrafts, an NGO “dedicated to creating jobs through the development of a new generation of Armenian hand-made products using traditional materials and techniques. The focus will be on women in rural areas. Focus will also be on creating marketing channels for these products,” per the Peace Corps Response position description.

Homeland Handicrafts was founded by an American who is also the Honorary Consul of Norway and Finland to Armenia; you can check out its web site using the link to the left. I looked at it before the interview and was impressed with the variety and quality of the items, though they’re not all to my taste. I had RPCV Sabrina, who has an art background, check it out, and she thought the products looked nice too! I looked at the web site again last weekend with Rose and Amelia – there are a lot more products than there were when I looked, meaning that new things are being added all the time. Not all of them look like winners, but I’ll wait until I get there and see for myself.

Peace Corps Response, you may recall, places Returned Peace Corps Volunteers in short-term assignments. The emphasis is on the work assignment and not as much on the cultural exchange, but you do have the experience of living in another country and have a chance to share American culture. This assignment is for eight months – which somehow seems so much longer than the six I spent in the Philippines – and my COS date is scheduled for September 30, which somehow seems a week longer than eight months.

In Peace Corps Response, the partner agency and the job assignment are developed before the volunteer gets there, whereas the “regular” volunteers spend a great portion of their first year in community integration and identifying their project. The objectives of this one are:

o Develop a minimum of 200 new market-oriented products within the first six months of the project.
o Through sales, create 50 new fulltime jobs within the first six months of the project.
o Maximize the use of traditional materials and techniques in products.
o As far as possible, draw on local history and patterns to inspire design.
o Foster a market-oriented approach to product development in the artisans themselves.

I’ve been brainstorming about this and I have a long list of ideas written down; I’m sure more ideas will come when I get there and meet the people. Still, 200 products and work for 50 people seems like a lot!