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Peace Corps life defining leadership experience. Volunteers live, learn, and work
with the community overseas for 27 months, providing grassroots
assistance in six program areas.
I am one of more than 200,000 Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who has
answered the call the serve,
and it's an incredible feeling to be part of this vibrant program.
Since 1961,
Peace Corps Volunteers have improved the lives of millions of people around the
world. Their work represents a legacy of public service that has remained true to
Peace Corps' mission spanning over five decades.
Peace Corps promotes world peace and friendship by providing trained
Volunteers to countries that request assistance,
promoting a better understanding of Americans,
and sharing a global perspective here at home.
Peace Corps places Volunteers with a community where their skills and
experience are most needed, based on host country requests for assistance.
Peace Corps service begins with training in the country in which Volunteers are invited to serve.
Volunteers study together and receive intensive
training in the local language.
They also receive technical training related to their job assignments
and learn more about the country through cross-cultural training.
The training here was pretty intense - intense language classes four or five hours a day.
And we were living in villages during the training. So the training never really ends. (speaking in Wolof)
Peace Corps training did help a lot
and then being here at school
watching other teachers teach and
have those teachers watch me teach and give me pointers
what to do, what not to do. Those things helped.
Shafiq is mainly helping us with teaching
He is also helping our staff teachers with the computers,
because most of us do not know how to use a computer.
Pre-service training, or before you get to site is about a three-month long process and you go through a
lot of language training in the local language. You also go through safety and
security training, medical training,
things to look out for both on both of those fronts.
With training, they teach you a lot of things but is like when you go out there and
first get in your community.
That's really when,
what they say,
"rubber meets the road."
Volunteers are assigned to work in a community in one of six program areas:
Education
Youth and Community Development
Health, Agriculture
Environment
and Business and Information and Communications Technology.
I work in the primary school here. I teach grades one and two.
My main objectives are literacy and numeracy.
The bakery program was first started as a workshop.
For the baking project, the kids participate by making the dough. They make the dough, and then they make the
bread and they participate from start to finish. A lot of these children are from
some of the poorest areas in Ecuador. They don't really know about sharing
or working in teams, so that was something that I try to implement in their daily lives.
I'm a health Volunteer assigned to a health center.
My job is education. I primarily have worked with
people living with AIDS support groups.
I'm working with a non-governmental organization
we're trying to create sustainable projects and implement them in our community.
I'm working with coffee farmers. We're talking about how to market our coffee
and how we can maximize our profits
from the crops that we have.
The goal of this fish project
is to ensure better food security and a better source of protein through fish.
I do urban agricultural work. I work at the Hospital Fann and we have a huge
garden that we use
to feed the patients that are in the infectious diseases ward.
Education is the largest area of need and that specifically with English
as such a growing language.
It's a field constantly looking for people.
So regardless of what you're doing in the Peace Corps it always comes back to education.
I love the work that I do outside of my primary placement.
The secondary projects - I love them. We started playing basketball and I saw that
a lot of kids had an interest. It's great.
The students who might not listen so much in class
always listen
in the gym playing basketball, and that's translated into a better rapport in the classroom.
Peace Corps is special because Volunteers get to work first-hand
with community members. We build personal relationships.
We are in the homes. We are in the community centers. We are in the organizations.
We are just amongst the people, making decisions with them, interacting with them on a daily basis.
The health and safety of Volunteers serving overseas is the Peace Corps's highest priority.
Volunteers receive the training, support and information they need to stay healthy and safe.
Volunteers have access to medical care and trained medical professionals.
One thing that was important to me was
hearing the policies of Peace Corps about safety.
They also did an extensive training about how to get around town,
areas we can go into and areas that we shouldn't go into.
It's nice to have a medical officer come in and tell us "hey, this is what it's like here" and these are some
precautions to have, and it's nice also to have them on-call 24/7.
I feel very safe in my community. Peace Corps was very good at preparing
young women for the attention they were going to receive.
The rules that Peace Corps has in place, I understand are put for a reason,
that my safety security is very important to Peace Corps.
Most Volunteers are able to stay in touch with friends, family, and fellow Volunteers by
phone,
text message, internet, or mail. More than 90 percent of all Volunteers have a cell
phone. Access to communication can vary greatly from site to site.
However,
in all cases, Peace Corps has systems in place to contact Volunteers if there is
an emergency in-country or at home.
I don't have internet nor electricity where I live so I have to leave to do that.
And it's quite easy for me to get out, because there is a road
and a good bus system.
So, I can leave my community in the morning.
I could go run errands in town, check the internet, and I can be back up into my community that afternoon.
There's no one typical Peace Corps location or experience. Accommodations very greatly
from a rural hut
to an urban apartment. In all cases housing must meet Peace Corps' standards
for safety and suitability.
Volunteers receive an allowance that covers the cost of housing and other necessities.
A lot of houses are made of wood. They have
thatched roofs made of a plant found in the rain forest called troli. There's no
power, no running water.
I have to bathe in the creek every morning.
My apartment is
nothing like I expected a Peace Corps living situation to be. I live in a
post-Soviet bloc-style apartment--I have two rooms and have most amenities
that I had in America.
Welcome to Lithabaneng. I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer
This would be my
kitchen area
right here.
I study here, read here.
To be eligible to serve in Peace Corps, you must be at least 18 years old and a
U.S. citizen.
Here are a few of the qualities that make for a successful Volunteer.
The successful Volunteer is somebody who adapts quickly to their environment
but who also pays attention because
it's not what you want for your community, it's what your community wants for themselves.
It's up to you to really kind of work towards that.
The best Volunteer is the flexible Volunteer. Being open and interested
and
having a passion
to learn more. It's understanding that
sometimes
their tradition is going to throw you for a complete loop. But
being able to grasp that and have fun with it and make it part of who you are,
while still staying an American, is really
going to make you the
best possible Volunteer.
You're coming into a place where you're going to have a lot of new experiences. It's very different from home,
so you need to be willing to try new things, try new foods, talk to people
who may be very different from yourself. If you go into it willing to
do that
and really just
open your heart and open your mind, it's going to be a much better experience.
Understanding is the key to peace, I believe.
Just taking that time out to understand who
a person is or what that person was or what that person wants to become. And once you make that exchange
you're building personal relationships, and that's how you begin to foster peace is by understanding.
One of the things about Peace Corps is I get paid basically the same as any
other teachers here. It's humbling in some ways because you see other people working
with the same amount of money
and oftentimes with more burdens than you have and they can make it work. It's part of the experience really.
Many Volunteers say that they got much more out of their experience than they gave.
Some of the tangible benefits of Peace Corps service include:
language and technical training, a monthly stipend to cover housing and living expenses,
full dental and medical care, and vacation time.
Plus, travel to and from your country of service is paid for.
Additionally, deferment or partial cancellation is possible for some student loans.
After completing service, Volunteers receive approximately $7,400
in transition funds.
Returned Volunteers have access to job placement services and a career center.
If you're considering graduate school and Peace Corps service,
you can do both together through the Master's International program.
Or, complete Peace Corps service, then and use the lifetime eligibility for graduate degree benefits
like reduced tuition, assistantships and stipends--
all available through the Paul D. Coverdell Fellows Program.
For Master's International, I applied to
my grad school, then started the application process for a Peace Corps. I needed to give back
the world, to the country I grew up in,
to the community that I call home, and just the world in general,
and the Peace Corps was
one way to do that on a global scale.
Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is definitely a significant life accomplishment and I'm
so glad that I did it!
I always liked public health, and then
being able to go to Guyana and working at the Ministry of Health was so amazing.
It just really solidified what I want to do.
My Peace Corps experience really helped enhance my interest in agriculture and
led me towards position vacancies at U.S. Department of Agriculture.
I used the non-competitive eligibility benefit when I applied for my federal
position. When you can bring that worldview perspective to your job, I feel like it helps make me more effective
at what I do because I've got a broader perspective than most, and I owe that to Peace Corps.
Peace Corps Volunteers are a valuable resource for IRD because they bring to
our organization shared values. They have cultural sensitivities, they have worked in developing
countries, and they have language skills which are useful to us.
Former Peace Corps Volunteers are the single
best resource in terms of talent for IRD.
The Peace Corps offers a
a unique experience to make a difference around the world and bring the benefits
of that experience back home. The personal and professional rewards of
Peace Corps service last a lifetime.
It's been an incredible experience.
Being able to realize that yes, I can completely integrate into a new culture.
I wanted to give back to my community,
I wanted to experience a different culture,
and I wanted to see if I had what it takes to make it somewhere different and be
appreciative of what we have in the United States.
I would not trade my experience here for anything. It's everything that I wanted it to be and hoped it would be.
So after two years of serving in the Peace Corps, I
feel like I have brought something to the table.
But, looking back and seeing what I have given, I can honestly say that I have received ten times as much back.
Live, learn, and work with a community overseas.
Be a Volunteer.
Take the next step
and explore how the Peace Corps can fit into your future.
Speak with your local recruiter
or visit peacecorps.gov