Peace Corps

Service in the Peace Corps involves a commitment of two years overseas, helping others. Most Peace Corps jobs involve teaching English, but if you have six months experience in something like home gardening, or six months experience in life guarding and know CPR, you may qualify to be trained by the Peace Corps in agricultural methods or basic medical care, and have that kind of job instead. If you value helping others, the Peace Corps may be for you.

Spanish and French majors will find good use for their language skills in the Peace Corps. Russian majors are also in demand now. Italian majors may be in demand in Romania and Moldava, where the romance language spoken is much like Italian.

Students who can communicate in French and Spanish, but are not native or near-native in fluency can become so by spending two years in the Peace Corps.

Often Peace Corps volunteers find excellent post-Peace-Corps jobs in the country they serve -- in NGO’s (non-governmental organizations), for USAID, or in American businesses which are doing business in that country and are looking for employees who are fluent in the language and have an in-depth knowledge of the culture.

If you want to travel around a country, the Peace Corps offers two travel days a month (in addition to weekends). Travel days can be saved up, so there are 48 in a two year period, which can be used for your own travel.

The Peace Corps has an excellent and informative web site. To contact that site, click on:
Peace Corps. This will connect you with the Peace Corps' homepage.

Why join the Peace Corps?

The Peace Corps not only allows you a chance to serve others and to learn how most people on the planet live, but it also allows you to develop a number of transferable skills and traits which will be highly valued in work settings you'll encounter later:

Self-management skills:

	optimism,
	high energy,
	flexibility,
	empathy,
	punctuality,
	sincerity,
	sense of humor, and
	tolerance.

Transferable management skills:

	dealing effectively with diverse types of people,
	solving problems,
	mediating conflicts,
	coordinating a project,
	supervising others,
	compiling and analyzing data, and
	managing a budget.

Technical skills are acquired through personal initiative, practical experience, and/or on-the-job training. Examples are:

	speaking Quechua,
	operating machinery.
	motorcycle repair,
	diagnosing an illness through symptom identification, and
	determining which seedlings to plant through soil analysis.

What does two years in the Peace Corps lead to?

Click on: Career Track , and you will be in the subsection of the Peace Corps web page which gives information on how returning volunteers can turn their experiences to best career advantage; how they can identify the transferable skills acquired and translate these into skills useful in a job in the U.S.

One can become a "Peace Corps Fellow," and there are perks related to this. For example, there are a number of graduate schools with programs in Education, Nursing, Public Health, Social Work, Business Administration, Urban/Regional Planning, and Public Administration, that are eager to have returning Peace Corp volunteers, and will offer fellowships, reduced tuition, or other financial assistance. To find out complete information, click on: Fellows for the appropriate subsection of the Peace Corps web page.

If you have student loans which need to be repaid, it may be possible to defer payment or have partial cancellation of the debt through service in the Peace Corps.