Whereabouts

[u/Adventurous_Fun_7080]

Can Whereabouts be used against you? If you take an overnight trip without approval but report it in Whereabouts, does Peace Corps actually go through the system looking for people who may have violated travel rules, or is it just used for locating volunteers in an emergency?

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[u/Wild-Attempt9758]

Officially, it can't be used against you. However, there are rumours at my own post that previous cohorts were "caught" via Whereabouts. The CD (about 2 years after that cohort) maintained that whereabouts is not punitive but used to inform how many nights away from your community are allowed, as well as where you are in case of emergency.

[u/Adventurous_Fun_7080 → u/Wild-Attempt9758]

So if someone takes an unsanctioned overnight but report it to Whereabouts, they can't get in trouble via Whereabouts?

[u/Wild-Attempt9758 → u/Adventurous_Fun_7080]

As far as I know at my post, no. The phone that has our Whereabouts is kept in a drawer and only checked in an emergency or quarterly to check usage numbers.

[u/Chinacat_Sunflower72]

Does this mean PC knows where you are 24/7? I had no idea that was a thing now...

[u/Anuh_Mooruhdoon → u/Chinacat_Sunflower72]

They're supposed to know where you are spending the night, at least

[u/TheQuiet_American → u/Chinacat_Sunflower72]

its been a system of self-reporting for at least over 15 years to varying degrees. As far as I know, it is a post 9/11 policy. Mainly instituted so that PC knows where PCVs are in case of emergency (evac, consolidation) or where to start looking if one goes missing.

[u/Chinacat_Sunflower72 → u/TheQuiet_American]

I can imagine after 9/11 there were lots of changes. I was in PC in the 70s so no one knew where anyone was. A friend of mine during PC went missing in Dhorpatan, Nepal and it took PC 4 months to find his body.

[u/Ordinary_Worth_383 → u/Chinacat_Sunflower72]

I mean, I joined two years after 9/11 and they didn't even issue us cell phones even though the country had a cell system already. We had to buy our own burner phones. There would have been no way to implement such a system because PC didn't even consider cell phones essential yet.   The surveillance state has grown gradually. 

[u/Blide → u/TheQuiet_American]

Believe a lot of this stuff actually pre-dates 9/11 by a few years. As we were told, a lot of the current safety policies were brought on by the evacuation of Albania in 97. If I recall, four volunteers couldn't make it out of the country and marine helicopters had to be deployed to get them out.

[u/TheQuiet_American → u/Blide]

Knowing how PC works, I'm sure it was a local policy shared on a case by case basis and then became regional then global policy gradually.

[u/Ok-Pin6704 → u/TheQuiet_American]

I served 15 years ago and this is true. We had PC issued cell phones and we were supposed to text any time we left site. I think what’s different is that we texted our PM and it seems like current volunteers have a central text/email/whatsapp that they all use. We did have one person who was adsepped because she was in a restricted area and had obviously also not texted where she was (I assume that she did text out of site, since she was on vacation with family). Staff saw her Facebook post showing she was in a restricted area (standing in front of a distinctive statue located in that city) but part of the problem was also that her text out was not accurate. Technically, because the text was going to our PM, we either needed to have a vacation request submitted or have approval from our PM to be out of site for a business reason. I did a lot of work with other volunteers and my host org also had an office in the capital that I went to pretty often with my counterpart, so I never really had a problem with a good justification for my out of site times.

[u/TheQuiet_American → u/Ok-Pin6704]

Back in 2010 era Kyrgyzstan, we had to buy our own cell phones and sim cards(which we kvetched about and PC later started issuing them). We had to text a Duty Officer cell with Whereabouts updates. Went on a hike with a current serving PCV in Kyrgyzstan and they now have to fill out some godawful form in a hideous Microsoft web app thing. During my service I never really saw people punished with Whereabouts info, but like you, when PCVs were just publicly dumb and overly online they tended to draw the ire and NOT using Wherabouts was used against them more often than Whereabouts data.

[u/thattogoguy → u/Chinacat_Sunflower72]

Ideally, they want to know your general location in the event of an emergency.

[u/RiverB0nes]

At our post it was absolutely used against us, and monitored by the country director.

[u/WorldyWaffles]

I used to bring this up at my post all the time - in the Peace Corps Global Policy Handbook on page 25, it says:

“You are required to adhere to global Whereabouts policies and your Post’s Whereabouts
Reporting processes. Posts are not authorized to use Whereabouts Reporting as a measurement
of your performance, to check your location in non-emergency situations, to determine how
frequently or how long you are away from your site overnight, or to confirm violation of other
global and Post policies.”

The whole purpose of the system is emergency preparedness, so they know where to find you if there’s an evacuation or other emergency, and it’s not supposed to be used to monitor your every move which if you catch them doing is a problem. Of course, that doesn’t mean separate leave or attendance rules don’t apply, but the policy is pretty clear about what whereabouts reporting is actually supposed to be used for.

[u/Space_rangeer → u/WorldyWaffles]

This right here. Whereabouts it’s just an emergency precaution. Now does this stop staff from checking maybe not, but at least at my post it’s just a WhatsApp message and the read receipts are on and it’s hardly read unless they are sending a reminder to text whereabouts

[u/JulesButNotVerne]

Our CD had a special whereabouts phone that was turned off in his desk. That's where we texted our actual whereabouts for safety purposes, which differed from our vacations on paper. That phone would only be turned on during an emergency to find out where people were. I had a friend who went to India for 2 months because his school was closed for testing.

[u/thattogoguy]

Officially, no.

Unofficially, it totally is.

[u/Ordinary_Worth_383 → u/thattogoguy]

Yeah, I can't imagine why you would report your own unsanctioned travel. That makes no sense. Either follow the rules or don't but don't travel without approval and then be surprised when they use your own reporting of it against you. 

[u/SandDCurves]

Nearly 1/3rd of my cohort got kicked out of country for taking unsanctioned leave, all together. I don’t think whereabouts is what keyed them off but whereabouts was an easy confirmation once they knew.

[u/jimbagsh]

You're asking us to see if you can get away with it. Of course you can, unless you're caught. You're an adult and make your own decisions. And sometimes those decisions have consequences- just part of being an adult. But if it already happened, you're wasting energy worrying about it. And try to follow the rules. :)

Jim

[u/Investigator516]

The (2024) policy was “head to bed,” meaning wherever you’re laying your head down to sleep or crashing for the night, and it’s not your PC Housing, then it must be called or emailed to Whereabouts.

They don’t care if you’ve slept with a local. Or maybe visiting a fellow Volunteer for a festival or an early AM start for a hike. The point is in case of emergency, they know where you are or have a record heaven forbid something happens.

For the Education sector we had the occasional 2–3 day retreat with our nonprofit and the ministry of education. We called or emailed it in.

[u/Optimal_Tadpole1]

staff constantly told us it was not being used to monitor us and was only for emergency purposes but that was not true whatsoever. everyone took their own risks in terms of whereabouts reporting, sometimes it could help in getting a slightly lesser punishment if you were caught somewhere but had properly reported, but it was just as often (if not more) used to catch volunteers on unsanctioned leave. sometimes old records would also be pulled up if a pcv got in trouble for something else.

[u/shawn131871]

depends on the country. you definitely shouldn't be getting approval for a overnight trip that you took previously. that can get you adsepped super quick. for any overnight trip you gotta get those signatures for approvals. if you get stuck unexpectedly, call your vss and be like hey im stuck in town all weekend unexpectedly. they will understand as it happens. however, you definitely should not be going on a planned trip and getting approval after the fact. thats a huge no no.

[u/Jarboner69]

We had a problem with this at our post, whereabouts was going in and responding to messages (not automated), which resulted in volunteers stopping sending their messages to the whereabouts number after Pc was at more than one place magically.

If this is a problem at your site tell them that happened in another post, also afaik per PC policy the whereabouts phone is only supposed to be accessed for emergencies, and if you just don’t want to use it at least message your warden or someone chill.

[u/Plastic-Avocado-395]

When in doubt don’t report. It will be worst if you get caught. A ton of us took lowkey trips out of country with staff none the wiser.