– Andrea Wojnar-Diagne, the newly appointed Peace Corps Country Director for Nepal in an interview with The Week.[break]
Born and raised in New York, Andrea Wojnar-Diagne holds Master’s degrees in International Management and African Social Change and Development from McGill University, Montreal (Canada) and Johns Hopkins SAIS, Washington, D.C. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree with Honors in Letters from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
Prior to joining the Peace Corps, Wojnar-Diagne worked for 16 years in the International Red Cross Movement, supporting relief, recovery and development operations throughout Africa, Cambodia, and Nicaragua.
She has also served as Regional Director of the International Federation’s Sahel Office and was a Deputy Director of its 14-country East Africa Office. She enjoyed stints as Program Coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Program Officer at the organization’s Geneva headquarters, and Head of Africa Region for the American Red Cross Society in Washington, D.C.
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin, Andrea worked in a USAID-supported program to eradicate Guinea worm, taught philosophy in a local high school, and designed health education materials for UNICEF.
She recently served as Peace Corps Country Director in Tanzania (2008–2011) and Sahel Sub-Regional Program and Training Coordinator covering seven countries (2006–2008).
Why did you take this appointment?
It’s a very great honor for me to accept the request by Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams to take this job because I knew it was bringing back such an important program to Nepal. I’ve worked mostly in Africa in my 27-year career but I have always heard about Peace Corps Nepal (PCN). It stands out in the history of Peace Corps as one very very special program.
There’s something very very special. It’s like a magic, like a drug somehow people take and then they can’t escape this PCN thing, and we have volunteers who’ve been here for 50 years and they say they don’t want to leave, and you have others who leave but come back. But it’s not just the American side. It’s the Nepali side as well, and I’ll be searching for why this program is so special because I’ve never seen anything like it. So when I was asked to come and take this job, I couldn’t refuse.
Your judgment on the current situation since PCN last packed up their bags seven years ago, citing security issues and budgetary constraints?
The fruit is ripe for eating. It was taking time to ripen. Now, we are at that stage. The conditions are right in Nepal and in our country for this marriage to take place or to continue. I think we’re very happy to continue where we left off doing the same kinds of village-based programs.
Just figuring out where we can best serve, knowing that the needs are many and the needs have slightly evolved over time. This is not the same Nepal as 10 years ago; even so, we want to be relevant. We want to be valued, and working with your government and your villagers, we want to figure how to best be relevant and valued today.
PCN will be working on two major agendas – the Global Health Initiative (GHI) and Feed the Future (FTF). What are the targets, especially in the context of recession back home?
Under GHI, it’s an attempt by the US Government to use all its existing resources more effectively to address the most basic health needs. So, there’s no longer vertical programming but really taking an integrated approach, a holistic approach to all of our health works. So in that sense, PCN as an agency fits nicely because the works that our volunteers will be doing will be complementary to GHI.
Here, the main targets are maternal and child health and nutrition that we’ll be addressing at the village level and try to complement what’s happening at the national, regional and district levels. We’ll be taking it down to the grassroots level and working in collaboration with the Female Community Health Volunteers.
From a Peace Corps perspective, regardless of the budgetary times we live in, food security is food security, and when we live in tougher economic times, we have even less choices. It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity to address food security. That’s why PCN is committed to FTF and that’s why your government has asked us to work in these areas and prioritize them.
What levels of intervention and capacity development are we talking here?
Peace Corps volunteers generally don’t work at national capacity building level. They will mostly be working at village capacity building level. Sometimes, they will work at the district capacity building level. We haven’t had those formal discussions yet with the various operating partners. It can be things as simple as recordkeeping because in many cases, it just doesn’t exist.
The systems don’t exist – how you collect data, how you use the data, and how you feed the data back into your programming. So capacity building can take place even at those basic village levels and that’s where volunteers can intervene. But all this has to be worked out.
How can the aspirations operating within the US become more closely aligned with the interests of Nepal?
The initiative and the idea to address health issues and food security for you and for us are the concepts behind it. Yes, they were developed in the US but the individual country programs were developed here locally.
I assure you that we’ll be on the same train together and we’ll be on the same page together because we aren’t here to work against you or in spite of you. We’re here to complement what you’re doing. We need to work together and we will; and it has to be based on the Nepali ownership.
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