It's not your grandparents' Peace Corps anymore.
Volunteers still work on community and business development, and agricultural, environmental, and health programs, with a dash of information technology in the mix. They use people skills and shovels, paper and pens.
But these 21st century do-gooders are using today's technology in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when President John F. Kennedy spoke to University of Michigan students about the international service program in 1960.
"How many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? . . . on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete," Kennedy said.
Nearly 50 years later, there are fewer volunteers - about 7,900 today compared to the 1966 peak of 15,000. They are finding ways to do their jobs with less federal funding.
Volunteers blog. They build computer databases. They get cell phones for fun and work.
In fact, more than 90 percent of all volunteers use cell phones at their site, according to a 2008 Peace Corps survey. About 94 percent connect weekly to the Internet and 43 percent write a blog.
"Right now, I'm sitting in my house. I don't have electricity or running water but, yeah, I have a cell phone," said 23-year-old Gwen Kehr, speaking over that phone from her Peace Corps post in Lesotho, in southern Africa.
The Chalfont native also has a laptop computer and a newly acquired wireless modem, which she uses to post entries on her blog. In it, she is describing her two-year stay in Lesotho and her job teaching biology and English at Mphaki High School in the country's south.
"I wanted to keep in touch with my family and friends at home and let them know what was going on faster than regular mail," Kehr said.
She writes about the food: "Two of the main traditional dishes are papa and moroho. Papa is maize meal and water cooked over the stove (or fire) until it gets puffy and sticky. . . . Moroho consists of cabbage that is finely chopped and cooked over the stove with oil and, sometimes, a bouillon cube."
She writes about work: "Our school's computer lab is connected to the principal's and secretary's offices and it is powered by a generator that they turn on and off as needed for classes and administration stuff."
Before Kehr got the wireless modem, she would travel six hours to use an Internet connection in the capital city of Maseru. Now, she posts the entries from her circular, cinderblock and thatched-roof abode.
Married volunteers Kaitlyn Fitzpatrick and Alex Fuller-Young, who met at the Hill School in Pottstown, write a blog on their service as environmental educators in Nicaragua. Fuller-Young, 26, grew up in Kimberton and Fitzpatrick, 24, in Royersford.
The couple now live in the town of Nagarote, in a home that is a short walk from an Internet cafe, said Fuller-Young over his cell phone as he rode his bicycle home from work. Using Peace Corps stipends, they each spent the equivalent of $20 on a phone. A minute of airtime costs about 33 cents.
The phone came in handy in March, when Fitzpatrick got a call from home that her grandfather was gravely ill. She not only got the news faster because of the phone, she also was able to quickly arrange a trip back.
Like Kehr, Fuller-Young and Fitzpatrick use their blog to give friends and family a taste of the local culture.
"It's not only what my experience is like and what I'm taking away from it, but about Nicaraguans," Fuller-Young said.
That kind of thinking, said Peace Corps acting director Jody K. Olsen, fits with one of the agency's goals of helping Americans understand foreign cultures.
"I really embrace blogging," Olsen said. "I think it helps them think through the technical work they're doing and understand what they are experiencing."
Volunteers also have used blogs to raise money for projects, such as one to pay for construction of a farmers' market in Moldova.
There were a few problems initially: Some volunteers griped on their blogs about people in their host country. Olsen said the agency now makes sure volunteers understand that what they write can get back to people and officials they are working with locally. Blogs must have a disclaimer that the opinions expressed are only those of the blogger.
When volunteers go home, they use blogs, along with text messaging and Skype, the Internet phone service, to keep in touch with people in their host countries and check on their projects.
There's also a Web site, PeaceCorpsJournals.com, that serves as a portal to the blogs volunteers write. Mike Sheppard, 29, returned from serving in Gambia in 2005 and began looking for volunteer blogs, said Sheppard. He eventually started the portal.
In 2007, Sheppard, who lives in Washington, D.C., was joined in his work by Will Dickinson, 29, who served in Armenia and now lives in Fishtown.
In Armenia, Dickinson researched whether any Peace Corps volunteers had used global positioning systems, or GPS, to map their countries and mark access to clean water, health clinics, and other vital points. He found nothing, so he made the map - only to learn that a previous volunteer in Armenia had done something similar. When Dickinson's stint was done, he began building an independent database he calls Peace Corps Wiki (http://www.peacecorpswiki.org), and makes it accessible to all volunteers.
The Peace Corps is trying to use technology more effectively, and one of the top projects is assembling a database, director Olsen said. But government regulations the agency must follow slow the pace of cyber initiatives.
It's good that volunteers are leading the way for the agency, Olsen said.
The Peace Corps boasts about some of those innovations, including one by a public health volunteer in Namibia. He developed software to respond to Namibians' health questions via cell-phone text messaging.
The software forwards the questions to Peace Corps volunteers trained to answer them and advise whether medical attention is needed, said Peace Corps spokesperson Allison Price.
"This resource is meeting a need for advice," Price said, "and people are comfortable with text messaging as a medium - especially youth."
For more information, go to www.peacecorps.gov.
Contact staff writer Carolyn Davis at 215-854-4214 or cdavis@phillynews.com.
|
|
|
|
|
|
MOST POPULAR PHILLY.COM PHOTOS
Daily Headlines
Subscribe now! Daily Headlines Newsletter
Philly.com news blogs
Philly.com Promotions
