Training skills have also turned out to be critical. At Geekcorps headquarters in North Adams, Massachusetts volunteers review adult learning cycles and learning styles and follow up with a hands-on training that involves teaching basic computer skills. While their counterparts in Ghana are beyond the basics, their understanding of technology is often piecemeal or weighted in one specific topic. Volunteers need to transfer their skills thoroughly enough so as to be sustainable, and dynamically enough to keep people excited about the practical applications that will improve their businesses. After they arrive in Ghana, training is taken up by our country director, Stophe Landis.
Volunteers are no longer in their comfort zone and begin to understand what they have gotten into.
This portion of the training focuses on concrete work and culture issues. An example is the scavenger hunt volunteers play on their second or third day in-country. Thus the training has to address the needs of this particular subset of traits. The exercise is used to clarify what behaviors can be categorized under the above headings. I found myself entering into an argument that threatened to escalate into a screaming match because several volunteers claimed that eating on a regular basis can be construed as a cultural, not a universal trait.