The Role of JOCVs in the School Health Education Program in Ghana: From the Perspective of Host Organizations

This chapter analyzes the roles that Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCVs) play in development cooperation by focusing on the viewpoints of the counterparts (C/Ps) who host them. One of the characteristics of the JOCV program as state-managed international voluntary service (SMIVS) is that JOCVs are basically assigned to public institutions, and therefore many of their C/Ps are civil servants in the host countries. While C/Ps’ duties as civil servants are to implement the policies and programs of their organizations and to contribute to the formulation of new policies, JOCVs are expected to work with C/Ps as their companions. A few questions arise from this working structure of JOCVs: what kind of roles do volunteers play in relations with C/Ps and those who are targets of policies? How do volunteers help their assigned organization and its superior organizations to implement and plan policies? What are the resources and capacities for those activities and what do C/Ps expect volunteers to do for their jobs? To address these research questions, this study adopts policy network theory and uses the school health education program in Ghana as a case study to illustrate this situation.