Glossary of Terms

There are some words that I am using, but I don’t think I have taken the time to explain all of them, so I will do that here.

American Councils (for International Education): This is an international NGO that serves as the implementing organization for NSLI-Y in Tajikistan. Each NSLI-Y cohort has a different implementing organization who the state department contracts out to. American Councils has an office in Dushanbe and provide the staff that supports our program. 

Resident Director: Our resident director is our main point of contact. Our RD is an American Councils employee. The RD is always an American who speaks the host-country language fluently. The RD will take us to the doctor and we have to notify her if we are sick or will miss class or are having problems with our host family or anything like that. The RD is also supposed to be a resource for us if we need advice or need someone to talk to.

Local Coordinator: I am not 100% sure of what this position entails, but our Local Coordinator is an awesome young woman from Tajikistan. She helps our RD plan activities and usually joins us on excursions. She also helps with translating since she is fluent in both English and Tajik (and Russian and probably a few other languages as well, knowing Tajiks).

Country Director: Once again, I am not 100% sure exactly what the position entails, but she is an American Councils employee who I think is responsible for much of the American Councils Dushanbe programming. She is fluent in Tajik and has lived here a long time and is married to a Tajik man.

CLS: This is the college-age version of NSLI-Y. Participants have much more freedom, but also spend their day in class. They all also have Farsi experience. The participants are all undergraduates, graduate students, or recent higher-ed graduates, so there is a much larger age range than NSLI-Y. It stands for Critical Language Scholarships (I think).

ERLP: Truth be told I don’t even really know what this one is, but it is like CLS except I think students pay for it or get government scholarships or scholarships from their universities. I have no idea what it stands for, but I think it also funds “critical language” study.

NSLI-Y: This is the program I am on. It’s a language-learning program funded by the United States Department of State and implemented by American Councils for International Education. It stands for National Security Language Initiative for Youth. Looking at the acronym you can see why they stick to the acronym. There’s something a little intimidating about “National Security Language.”

The opinions expressed on this blog are my own personal opinions. Anything written here is not the position of the NSLI-Y Program, American Councils, nor the Department of State.