An Interview with Jody Olsen
- An Interview with Jody Olsen
GJIA sat down with Dr. Olsen to discuss the changing roles of women in the Peace Corps and its work, the impact of modern technology, and her goals as a leader.
In February, the Trump administration signed a national security memorandum on women's economic empowerment. Could you elaborate on what role the Peace Corps specifically has to play in that mission and why you think it's important?
For 58 years, Peace Corps has been working with women in economic development; that mission is in fact in our original legislation. What's exciting for us now is that we get to celebrate and honor what we've done, and we have the whole of government see the work we're doing and how it connects to other agencies. What we're doing for the new Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative is essentially more of what we already do, and in a little more of an intentional way. First, we aim continue making training and project development materials available to volunteers to encourage them to work in women's economic empowerment, either as primary or secondary projects. Second, we have monies available, upward of about $2,500, for small project assistance; we're presenting this money to existing projects and considering the ways volunteers could use those monies for purposes like training women and transporting them. Third, across the US, we must talk more about global women's empowerment and the role that Peace Corps plays in that; so, for example, if I go to speak somewhere, I talk about it as one of our key programs and highlight the number of Peace Corps volunteers involved in the mission. When volunteers go to the host country, they are given a primary project—it might be in agriculture, HIV prevention, working with teacher training in English, or they might actually be working directly on women's economic empowerment. Let's say your primary project is working in agriculture, and you notice there are a lot of women in the community involved in agriculture. A volunteer might realize they can work with women specifically on determining how to sell the products and turn that into a small economic enterprise, or how everyone can work together to preserve the veggies from the dry season and sell the dried veggies to other people for the dry season. So there are many ways we approach our mission on a village [End Page 72] level, by enhancing those opportunities for women and girls throughout the world. Last year we influenced about 230,000 women, and that's even before this new government initiative was rolled out; we might be able to influence even more women as a result, but we're already there doing the work, and now other agencies get to see some of what we're doing.
What lessons or best practices do you think the rest of government could learn from the Peace Corps' work?
There are a couple parts to it. One, we work very much at the community level, person to person. For example, imagine you're working with ten women. You sit down with them and have a conversation, and brainstorm about ideas for steps you could take, and the women begin to put something coherent together. That's you and them working together. Then you have an activity—say, getting a drying machine—and then the women organize that; eventually, they will figure out a plan and get themselves the drying machine. As a volunteer, you're a facilitator and a catalyst; you build trust, use the local language, eat the food with members of the community, so that they trust you and you trust them moving a project forward. Volunteers are also documenting what's happening; so, for example, noting that ten ladies came to the meeting the first time, but the second time there were fifteen and one reported selling five tomatoes. The important part vis-à-vis other agencies is that agencies like USAID wanting to have three times as many women doing economic empowerment activities in Ghana...
