Post-graduation Peace Corps

In 2012, I graduated from BYU Hawaii with my degree in Anthropology and certificates in cultural resource management and intercultural peacebuilding. In 2013, my husband and I began service with the U.S. Peace Corps in Morocco. He had graduated the month before. I've been getting questions lately from students deciding what to do after that tassel-toss. This post is for those of you thinking Peace Corps has potential as a post-grad plan for you. It certainly isn't for everyone, but volunteering has been an ideal post-graduate option for us providing a myriad of intrinsic and extrinsic benefits unfailingly matching and exceeding those we are trying to give to our community here. 

The United States Peace Corps was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy as an independent agency funded by the U.S. government. Among other specialized programs, it sends U.S. citizens abroad to one of 65 current countries to volunteer for 27 months in one of six sectors including education, health, youth in development, environment, community economic development, and agriculture. This is to the end of realizing its mission of promoting world peace and friendship and the three corresponding goals: 1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women. 2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served 3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. I use a version of this information frequently when people inquisitively wonder, “why exactly are you here in this town?”

In fact, I didn’t choose it. I was sent here. While volunteers weren't able to choose their country of service, Morocco was on the top of my list, and I feel very lucky to be here. (I say weren't, because it has changed. You can now choose!) It is a diverse country geographically, culturally, and linguistically with a long and rich history full of conquest, conversion, colonization, and anything else students love to wrap their brains around. It is at its origin an Amazigh country with Arab, Andalusian, Jewish, Mediterranean, French and Spanish influence. Official languages are Modern Standard Arabic, French, and the newly recognized Amazigh from the people indigenous to Morocco. Along with most Moroccans, we speak Darija—an amalgamation of those influences into an exclusively spoken language. It is not a religiously diverse country. It is an Islamic state with 99.99 percent of the population identifying as Muslim. As a constitutional monarchy, the King is both the political ruler and the Commander of the Believers. Morocco was the first country to give official support to a fledgling America and has the longest held unbroken friendship treaty with the United States, a fact many Moroccans are quick to share. Consequently, Peace Corps has been in Morocco for over 50 years, one of the first agency partnerships.

As the needs of the country have changed, so have the roles of the volunteers and sectors served. Unlike the common idea of a Peace Corps volunteer living in a remote village in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is a reality, we live in a town of 100,000 and rent an apartment. Experiences vary hugely based on these needs across country and regional lines. Our specific challenges are not hunger or access to water, but gender equality, health, and unemployment among other things. All volunteers in Morocco are now in the youth development sector primarily working out of government establishments called youth houses. Our day-to-day and primary responsibilities are offering classes, institutionalized camps, and clubs surrounding youth and community development. Beyond that, volunteers are given creative license, with community partners, to identify needs and develop secondary projects. These are anything from building bridges or latrines to skateboarding camps and creative writing competitions. In these responsibilities, I almost daily run a gamut of emotions from frustration, to confusion, to satisfaction, and elation surrounding the struggles and successes of navigating intercultural relationships, programs, and projects. However, the most frequent feeling is gratitude and an inability to reciprocate all that this experience and these people give to us. I have no notion that I'm saving the world or even making significant dents in this community, but I am connecting with many, helping a few, and it is gratifying work. 

For those of you excited by this roller coaster, here are some of the extrinsic benefits involved.

• Public student loans may be eligible for deferment
• Perkins loans may be eligible for partial cancellation
• A "readjustment" allowance of $7,425 (pre-tax) upon completion of service. (This is going up this year)
• Language, cross-cultural, and technical training
• Travel to and from country of service
• A monthly living and housing allowance
• Full medical and dental coverage
• 48 paid vacation days
• Unique graduate school opportunities including degree completion programs, scholarships, and fellowships
• Leave for family emergencies
• Transition and job support and social networking after service
• Advantages in federal employment with a non-compete status
• Opportunities for short-term assignments through Peace Corps Response

In addition to these, the intrinsic benefits are what stand out as I reflect on the past year. I am learning a language I love and  hope to use in the future. I am now a part of this group of peers, the great network of diverse volunteers we serve with that are committed to global citizenship. I have friends and people in this country I can call family. Most apparent, however, is experience and all that pertains to it. It is one thing to study something and it is another to use it to survive, but also work, complete successful projects, and build meaningful relationships. There is creative license, space, and time, 27 months of it, to apply and grow in the specialized areas you bring skills whether as a teacher, a researcher, an evaluator, community builder, mediator, etc. Adjusting, adapting, integrating while being productive and flexible with limited knowledge and resources has been trying, but the trials have been giving. When I can teach a class with 50 people in another language with no resources but a pad of paper, I feel confident in the creativity, thriftiness, and grit required to make something a success elsewhere. I use what I learned in my ethnography classes to integrate, analyze community needs, communicate and work with cultural reflexivity. I look for and listen closely to stories, narratives that define people. This informs the projects Moroccan counterparts and I plan and execute. I focused my senior capstone paper on problems with international development, something I critiqued as "inherited political and cultural discourse rooted in power and watered in goodwill,” and this has forced me to immediately and directly answer my own critique and theory with these projects. I see that positive social change comes through a vast series of micro-conflicts and that peace is an indicator; building it means working in any of the sectors it is composed of. The means is the end, and the process is as important as the result. These are observations I can only make after being up to my neck in the process and accountable for the results.

It is these opportunities and more that volunteering in this capacity has provided, and I still have a year to go. In 2015, Incha’allah – God willing, I will return to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies, work that comes with a paycheck, and a bushel of babies. I believe because of this experience in Morocco, I’ll come back feeling more equipped for these goals and more valuable to continue to serve. It was the right decision for us. 

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about our Peace Corps service.