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Peace Corps Info
DISCLAIMER: This website is not an official Peace Corps website or official United States government website. All of the information herein regarding experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer reflects personal opinion and interpretation, not official Peace Corps policy (unless otherwise cited as originating from Peace Corps documentation).
For the official Peace Corps website click here.
What Peace Corps was created to do
The Peace Corps is an organization within the American State Department, created through an executive order made by President Kennedy in 1961, with the overall mission to promote world peace and friendship. It does this through the pursuit of three goals:
1) Helping people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and
women;
2) Helping to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples
served;
3) Helping to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all
Americans.
Those of us so motivated apply for service with the Peace Corps, volunteering to live in another country for two years, with the purpose of sharing our skills with our host communities in a manner that increases their quality of life in a sustainable manner, and ideally leaves them empowered to continue to address local issues.
The Peace Corps is a service organization of a humanitarian nature. In the words of R. Sargent Shriver, its first director, the Peace Corps is a means for Americans to “participate directly, personally, and effectively in this struggle for human dignity.” It is a way to live in respect and solidarity with the world’s poor and powerless, across ethnic, racial, cultural, and national lines.
Peace Corps in Madagascar
Peace Corps Volunteers here currently number around 135, arriving bright-eyed and eager from the US approximately every four months to work as a volunteer in one of the three sectors that Peace Corps has here: community health, environment, and English teaching in schools. Here as in worldwide, PCVs commit to two years of service in a village or small town, each one living among her or his community, endeavoring to understand its rhythms and issues from the inside and then helping to empower the community to collectively take large and small sustainable steps to address its difficulties. As a life choice and a job, it’s a huge challenge – but with all of the enlightenment and inspiration mixed in with the tough stuff, some of us are crazy enough to take on a third year…!
How I see the PC…
In my experience, the Peace Corps is an invaluable means of deepening one’s understanding of our enormous and diverse human community and our worldwide relationship with its natural surroundings and resources, as well as gaining insight into oneself and one’s small place in the world – and the ways in which we are constantly learning from our world, and can each try to influence it for the better. For me, Peace Corps has also been crucial in deciding how I want to spend my future career-wise, providing the opportunity to explore different small-scale sustainable development approaches and interact with a whole range of development organizations. And of course there’s the exposure to a new culture and a new language, long-term immersion in the both of them, and the possibility to develop both a cultural and linguistic fluency that is found in very few abroad experiences.
A word on working for the US government, politics, etc.
Although the Peace Corps is a part of the US State Department and therefore the executive branch of government, being a Peace Corps volunteer does not equal corroboration with the current US administration. I personally struggled with the implications of going on the government payroll, worried about being associated with the international policies of the administration or risk being identified as a supporter of these. Yet I came to decide that as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I would have the chance to represent a different face of America to the international community, to provide a contrast to what the world generally sees via the airwaves: a belligerent, haughty, dominating government, supported by a greedy and xenophobic society.
In my village, I am a well-integrated member of the community; I even have my own community-given name, Soariziky, which means “good fortune” in our dialect. However, I am still identified as an American, and among my roles as a Volunteer I am, as they say, an “ambassador with a small ‘a’” – but without any political affiliations, and in fact being prohibited from involving politics of any sort in my work and life as a Volunteer. I work within the Peace Corps framework of small-scale development to promote a more nuanced understanding of Americans, possibly the only American with which my community will ever come in touch, showing an interest in and respect for their culture, and a dedication to helping them to find organic solutions to whatever problems they identify in the community – while sharing with them my own culture and character.
And what better way than to work within this great organization, which has managed to preserve a large measure of independence from the imperfect (but inevitable) government which supports it, doing my small part to keep Peace Corps thriving while engaging in the sort of justice-promoting, solidarity-building, community-empowering activity that I find so crucial to cultivating a peaceful and harmonious existence? What the Peace Corps does is unique to the US government, and being a part of it is a very unique experience of promoting bottom-up development with top-down support – but without promoting a particular US interest, or serving any other interest than the greater good of humanity. And if I want Peace Corps to stay there, to continue to put US budget money (albeit a tiny portion) to positive and sustainable ends, then – I decided – it’s best to be involved in the organization myself.
If you are tempted to check out Peace Corps a bit further or to explore the possibility of applying yourself, the please check out www.peacecorps.gov, or send me an email.
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Latest page update: made by lilturns
, May 11 2007, 8:18 AM EDT
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