Has anyone been in the Peace Corps?

Question

I am considering the options for my young son. (18) He has a wonderful and giving heart but almost no ambition. He isn't quite ready for college. Would the Peace Corps be a good place for him to grow up a little and get some experience while making a difference? Tell me all you know about it please. Is it ever a dangerous experience? Do they go into volitile areas? Do they take 18 year olds?

Answer 1

The age limit actually begins at 18 years old, but few volunteers are ever accepted at that age unless they have a special skill.

In order to be a volunteer without a degree, your son would have to be skilled in the environmental sector. That means experience in agriculture or health or sanitation, which can cover a wide range. There was a volunteer in my training group that was barely 19 years old, and he had been working with an agricultural company during summers.

Peace Corps can be a good place to grow up for some people, and it can be a little too much freedom for others -- it all depends on how much self-discipline your son has, as there is little overt supervision.

However, the Peace Corps is for US citizens only and is therefore more careful with its volunteers than many organizations. As a fellow volunteer stated, the organization is perfect for someone who has never left the country before. There are many weeks of training, and the volunteers are assigned "homestay families" who are also coached in the safety and teaching of their volunteer. Some of our volunteers who had experience outside the country found their extra care tiresome, but it does mean that the volunteers are safe.

Peace Corps does not have an active program in any country that is volitile, and if an area becomes volitile they will evacuate the volunteers. There are drills and plans to follow for each volunteer so that they know their role in such a situation.

Peace Corps is one of the safer routes to see another country, as they are ostentatiously non-political. That is part of the training also; to avoid anything that will involve a volunteer in something political which may become dangerous. When there is anything related, like a campaign rally, we are actually warned to avoid the town or be careful in it -- so that the volunteers know to be on the lookout for trouble to avoid it.

If you have other questions, or your son would be interested in such things, let me know! If he has experience with the Spanish language, there is a very good chance that they would accept him for the Western Hemisphere assignments, as there are many more environmental needs there. Depending on what his abilities are with other areas, fluency in Spanish alone can be a useful qualification. Just FYI!

Answer 2

Short answer: They wouldn't take him. He'd be a waste of time and money.

Long answer:
I was a volunteer for two years. "All I know" would take 200,000 words. ANYTHING can be dangerous. I was safer in the jungle than I would have been in any big city in the USA. They don't go into volitile areas. They take 18-years olds, on occasion, but the 18-year old has to be stellar; one in ten million.

Much longer answer:

An unpleasant truth; The Peace Corps (USA), CUSO (Canada), VSO (UK) and Kiwi Volunteers (NZ) all get lots and lots of inquiries from young people with good intentions and no particular skill. It takes the volunteer organizations a certain amount of time, energy and money to teach their volunteers the language, customs and history of their host country, then fly them over there. It takes a certain amount of time, energy and money to keep the volunteers there. If all they wanted were people with good intentions and no skills, they could recruit likely young high school graduates in those countries, young people who already spoke the language like a native (because they were natives) and didn't need to be taught the culture, and didn't need air fare.

What they all want are people with skills that the host countries have asked for. 99% of the time this involves a university degree. If someone has a degree in civil engineering with an emphasis in water and sanitary systems, he could travel the world, installing clean drinking water and sewage systems (septic tanks and concrete privies, probably.) He/she would save hundreds of lives and save the eldest daughter of each village two to three hours a day of labor; fetching water from the river, chopping trees, boiling the water.

You will note that requires a Bachelor of Science in a tough subject. A lot of volunteers teach English; I did. Their students go on to go to University somewhere, then come back and start installing water systems. (Or they become lawyers, or real estate developers.)

The 1% who don't have a university degree have an amazing amount of hard experience in something the host country wants to learn; fish farming, chicken farming, vegetable farming, native craft exports, co-op financing . . . 99% of the non-degree volunteers are over 50.

He should go to college and major in something useful, if he is serious about volunteering. That means taking several courses in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, if he isn't on a track that will lead to a nursing, engineering or other degree that requires a lot of math and science.

If your teen is a 4-H leader and has managed a 30,000-bird chicken farm independently, or has worked with Heifer International for the last 6 years, he might get a spot.

Addendum, after reading Wielder:
She thought there was hope. I didn't. You said he had no ambition. Can you imagine him taking 4 hours of language lessons, 5 or 6 days a week? (Plus 4 more hours of culture, history, customs?) Can you imagine him trying to organize 50 - 100 people into teams to construct concrete privys?