Thank you so much for your time!

You are not allowed to choose a specific country to volunteer in, but you can tell your interviewer which region (Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, etc) you would prefer. That does not guarantee that you will go to that region but I think they try to take that info into account when they choose your placement. They also place you in a program (teaching English, health, agriculture, youth, etc) that is hopefully related to experience that you’ve had. You get what is called a nomination that includes a country and a program and you can either accept or decline that nomination, though if you decline there is no guarantee that you will get another nomination (or at least another one soon). Once you accept the nomination you become an invitee and they will send you all the info you need for your country and program. Before you leave the United States all of the volunteers that are going to your Peace Corps country at that time will have an orientation and then all fly to your PC country together. Staff in that country will then pick you up at the airport. In my experience (and I cannot guarantee that all PC offices are like this), after they picked us up from the airport we stayed in a hotel for 4 days and went through a short cultural and language orientation. Then we were dropped off with the host families that we’d be living with during training. For 3 months you live with those families and go to language, cultural, and program classes. At the end of the 3 months you are sworn in as volunteers and move to your site placement. Your program manager interviews you during the training period to figure out what kind of place you would prefer to live in (city vs country, near lots of volunteers or not, etc). They also try to take this into account when selecting your site. I was placed in a site about 5 hours by bus from the capital city. For the first 4 months of service (which is different from training) I lived with another host family in my new community. Then I was allowed to move out and live on my own. This varies greatly from country to country. In order for a school or organization to get a PC volunteer they must have a counterpart for the volunteer to work with. My counterpart happened to be an English teacher and he helped me acclimate to my new community and life. When I lived with host families they fed me and by the time I moved out on my own I had enough language skills to find my own food, household supplies, and transportation. Each volunteer receives a stipend that is supposed to be comparable to the living standard of other people in your community. In my case that money was deposited into a bank account and I could access it from the ATM in the center of my town. I found the stipend was enough to live on and did not have problems living within my means. If I needed work related help I could always call my program manager for advice and there was also a library in the main office that had tons of materials that I could use. There was also two doctors that I could call at any time if I had medical questions or needed medicine and there was a safety adviser that I could call if I needed help.

I hope I answered your questions. Please let me know if you have any more.

How did you end up in the town you were in (my impression is that you chose a country and described your interests and someone at the PC office helped match you up with a community that expressed a need?)?

What was its like when you first arrived? How did you get settled there? What resources did you have to help you find a place to live and how did you find the resources you needed (like food, household supplies, transportation, in addition to what you needed for your mission)?

I believe their office is in Maputo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-lau/what-the-peace-corp-taugh_b_1099202.html

I’ll be graduating as a Marketing Major.

What are your thoughts on that? I also speak Russian, but would rather get a Spanish Speaking country, any advise on that?

There are definitely positions in Peace Corps that would be great for your skills and interests. Make sure that you express those interests in your interview and application.

The issue of sexual violence against Peace Corps Volunteers has been in the news a lot lately and is, of course, very concerning. I can point you to the Peace Corps website and their section on Safety and Security, which has a lot of info about volunteer safety, frequently asked questions, and an annual report of incidents. Each country is different and each volunteer’s experience is different so I can only really speak about my service.

I felt very safe in the community that I was placed in. I knew all my neighbors, had a great counterpart that looked out for me, and learned the rules for what women are and are not allowed to do. These social rules are different everywhere; even within the same country there are areas that are more or less conservative. When I say “allowed”, I mean that my reputation (and my work in the community) would have been affected if I had done things that other young women would not. Given that, I did live in a house alone and cook and clean for myself, which was seen as very unusual, but it did not greatly affect my reputation. I did not have male friends stay overnight at my house, buy alcohol in my town, and did not wear revealing clothing. These “rules” did not affect my life much. The thing that I had to do differently was not smile at strangers. Walking down the street I would always look down and not make eye contact with men, in order to not attract attention. In general I felt very safe but I would not have if I walked alone at night or hung out alone with men I didn’t know well. There was one other volunteer (woman) in my town but I was in a small village just outside of town. My second year, a married volunteer couple came to my town.

My goal as youth development facilitator was to develop the youth of my community. There were three months of training in which Peace Corps trained us on what development is and is not and ideas for what we could do in our communities. Azerbaijan is a very young PC country and many people are unfamiliar with what we do. Due to that and the fact that my village had never had a volunteer before, I had to start from scratch. Peace Corps tells you the ideal and then you take that, assess you community, and adjust things to make it fit. For example, my students spoke no English so my training on English conversation clubs would not work for me as it might for other volunteers. That was fine; I just did what I wanted to do. I created English learning, art, and sports clubs. Also, “youth development” for me was anything from talking to one of my students about their life to organizing a summer camp in which they had fun but also learned how to play fair. If I had questions I could always call my program manager and she could help me with logistical and cultural issues. There is a library in the main PC office in the capital city that had tons of resources on how to do conversation clubs, start a community garden, or develop business plans, etc.

I hope I answered your questions properly. Peace Corps and my PC experience is very complicated and sometimes hard to describe. Please let me know if I can answer any more questions or clarify something for you.

I am looking to join Peace Corps next year after I graduate from college with a B.A. in English Lit. I am most interested in youth outreach, especially as it pertains to sexual assault. I have volunteered for four years with an organization in D.C. that aids sexual assault survivors. We have also spoken with Peace Corps volunteers who have talked about problems within the Peace Corps such as rape of female volunteers. Clearly, this is a concern of mine so I’d like to know more details of your experience. I also would like to know of your living conditions, not so much the physical aspect, but the social aspect. Were you the only volunteer in your area? What exactly was your mission operative and what tools did they provide you with to help you meet your goal?