Our Role

What is our role as Peace Corps volunteers? I am in Windhoek for a meeting with the HIV Committee, and a conversation with another volunteer got me thinking.

What is our duty towards Peace Corps, and what is Peace Corps’ duty towards us? One older volunteer a few weeks ago commented

to me that Peace Corps does much less than… basically any other employer, in terms of personal development. Most companies send you for trainings, ensure that you develop skills, and assist you with whatever training or development you think is really necessary to improve at your job. These skills are then transferrable if you end up moving to a new company or position – you are a more qualified person by the time you move on.

Peace Corps, on the other hand, tends to do very little of this. But at the same time, most of us do not go into a Peace Corps experience expecting it. I was actually arguing with another volunteer this morning that it is our duty in fact to spend our two years helping with “on the ground” development – and by way of volunteering with Peace Corps, we have also given up our ‘right’ to personal professional development. Is that right? I probably have too idealistic of an outlook on this – we are people too, and we also need to develop skills and be qualified for jobs when we get back home. Additionally, many people use Peace Corps as a turning point in their careers – a way to stop what they are doing and change directions – and if they can use their experience to gain skills that will help them do so, why the heck not? Some volunteers want to use Peace Corps to find positions that will help them personally - for instance, work with an NGO on behalf of Peace Corps, or work within the Peace Corps offices to develop 'management' skills. Is it wrong to desire the formal training that we received in our first 2 months of service, throughout our service??

ON THE OTHER HAND. Maybe I’ll just blame my family for my idealism (thanks Mom and Dad). But It seems to me that if you are willing to give up two years of your home, family, job, income, and friends, you should really invest in what you are doing. Which is helping people on the ground. Not working with big organizations, not networking for the sake of networking (although of course, it happens sometimes), but really doing what you can for the small number of people who you can work with, in person, frequently, individually. Wasn’t that the original purpose of Peace Corps? Can't we get some amount of training and development from our Namibian counterparts?

Or from our day-to-day work and jobs?

Or, have we already left the ‘original purpose’ and, with global development and economic development around the world, are we in a new position to help on a bigger scale. Is there a right or wrong for something like volunteerism? It seems like you can’t blame someone for wanting to take something for themselves at the same time as offering their services to a community, but it also seems a shame to give up the maximum benefit you can deliver to that community for your own self-interests.