A Peaceful Pursuit

By Mary Oakley

A post-graduation option that has sent SVSU alumni around the world is continuing to attract hopefuls with the desire to provide service in distant cultures.

The Peace Corps currently has 7,876 volunteers and trainees serving in 76 countries. Volunteers work in one of five programs: education, health, environment, business, or agriculture.

According to Kristin Wegner, the Peace Corps Recruitment Representative for the Chicago region, 21 SVSU alumni have served in the Peace Corps. The Chicago region includes Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan, and Ohio.

Serving in the Peace Corps is a 27 month commitment. Participants spend three months in-country with other volunteers receiving training for the duties they will perform abroad.

“Volunteers spend the first three months in language, cross-cultural, technical, and health and safety skills training,” Wegner said.

SVSU business graduate Rollin Johnson served in the Peace Corps from 2003-2005 in Nepal and Burkina Faso, West Africa. “Part of your service is a proficiency of the language of the country you are working in,” he said.

During his service, Johnson learned two languages: Nepali in three months and function French in one month. “Peace Corps probably has some of the best language training in the world with the way it is done.”

To be eligible for the Peace Corps, volunteers must have attained a bachelor’s degree from any discipline before completing the application process.

“You have to go through a fairly lengthy application process,” Assistant Director of Career Planning & Placement Mike Major said. “In fact, the Peace Corps recommends that if you want to go into the Peace Corps upon graduation, either start the application process at the end of your junior year or at the beginning of your senior year, just because you go through a fairly extensive background check.”

The background check is a part of a six-step application process. SVSU nursing senior Darryn Crocker is currently completing this process.

The first step involves filling out an online application, requesting recommendations, and writing essays.

The second step requires potential volunteers to complete a background check.

“If nothing is red-flagged, you get sent a packet with instructions to get fingerprinted and to get a background check done,” Crocker said.

Major says that during the second step, applicants fill out a form called the SF-86, which is a 14 page security document. “It’s not too different from somebody getting top secret clearance in the military,” he said. “They basically want to know where you have lived for the past 10 years, the name of someone who knew you well at each address, and it can’t be the same person.”

Applicants are interviewed for the third step, either in person or over the phone. At this point in the process, Crocker traveled to Chicago for her interview.

By the fourth step, Peace Corps recruiters nominate applicants for their prospective positions.

“How and where Peace Corps assigns volunteers to work is based largely on matching the educational and work experience with the kinds of projects for which countries have requested assistance,” Wegner said.

Crocker has been nominated for Sub-Sahara Africa for June 2009. The nursing major plans to participate in health field of the Peace Corps.

“My recruiter told me that the programs that fit my time period with health care were Eastern Europe or Sub-Sahara Africa,” Crocker said. “I didn’t want to be in the cold, so I chose Sub-Sahara Africa.”

For the fifth step, applicants undergo a full physical and dental evaluation.

“They want to make sure you are in good health,” Director of SVSU’s English Language Program Diana Vreeland said. Vreeland taught English in the Peace Corps from 1990-1993 in Eastern Europe.

Crocker is currently experiencing the two to three-month waiting period that follows step five.

The sixth step is when the Peace Corps office of placement contacts applicants with their official contracts and locations.

“I’m very anxious to hear back where exactly they want to send me and exactly when I am leaving,” Crocker said. “I just know that it’s going to be an amazing experience, one that I feel God has led me into and I look forward to it.”

Crocker said the Peace Corps has three goals: to heal where needed, to give the country one’s culture, and for the country to give one its culture.

“That’s what made me choose Peace Corps,” she said. “I wanted the cultural exchange, while with Doctors without Borders you don’t learn the language and you don’t become part of the community.”

Reflecting on his Peace Corps experience, Johnson said, “It’s one thing to study something from a distance; it’s another thing to live it day to day. I don’t think it would’ve have been possible to have that experience the way it was provided in the Peace Corps.”

While abroad, Johnson helped with small business and business enterprise development. He worked with fair trade and helped provide loans to those who couldn’t get them from commercial banks.

“It was life-changing; it was an amazing experience,” he said. “It was very humbling as well. People that you go in to ‘help’ are the folks you learn the most from.”

Johnson said he learned more about the local culture by living in Nepal and West Africa then he thought he could any other way. Vreeland agrees. “You give a lot, but what you get in return is 100 times more then what you ever gave,” she said. “You learn a language, you learn a culture, you get such deep friendships, and it’s a wonderful experience.”

Additional information on the Peace Corps is available in the Career Planning & Placement office in Curtiss 111 or at www.peacecorps.gov.