Peace Corps Approach to Training

My training in Morocco is 11 weeks long and is a combination of traditional training on topics such as Peace Corps policies, how to treat our water and clean our veggies, and technical topics such as learning about the flora and fauna of Morocco. This training period is called stage.

We spent the first week in Rabat, and the training was for both the environment volunteers and health volunteers. After that first week, we traveled to Ouarzazate to begin our focused, sector-specific training. The health volunteers are staying at one hotel, while the environment volunteers are at another. While here, we are in “class” from 8am until 6pm. We have 4 sessions per day and each lasts 1.5 to 2 hours. 2 sessions are usually dedicated to language training, while the other 2 are dedicated to either technical or PC policy-related topics such as safety and security.

Our remaining time in training will be split between this kind of group-based training in Ouarzazate and Community Based Training (CBT). For CBT, the 26 environment trainees are split into 5 groups – each group has 5 or 6 trainees, plus a Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF). We have 3 groups learning Tamazight, 1 group learning Tashlheet and 1 group learning Darija. Each CBT group is assigned to a village that speaks the language the group is learning. We will spend the next week, Sunday – Sunday in our CBT villages each living with a host family and continuing our training. We'll go to class 8am -6pm and spend half of that time learning language and the other half working on projects and assignments similar to the types of activities we'll be doing over the next two years.