Global Health Jobs - Peace Corps

When you're considering Peace Corps, you have to remember that it's not an international development organization. It's a US public diplomacy agency, and a powerful opportunity for personal growth and development. But you don't join Peace Corps to do international development work, and the organization will tell you that itself.

The opportunity to experience life as though you were poor can give you powerful insight into development and its obstacles. It's probably the equivalent of a graduate degree in development and what it may or may not mean. But Peace Corps volunteers don't have the resources, support, or often knowledge to have a long-term impact on the problems they are experiencing. Once again, that's not a criticism of the volunteers, or of the Peace Corps - it's just not what the program is designed to do.

I've seen a lot of miserable, bitter Peace Corps volunteers. I have personally talked two separate volunteers into early departure. (If you've woken up every morning and cried for the last six weeks then yes, I think you should go home.) This is in part because of my regional focus - Central Asia is supposed to be one of the hardest parts of the world for Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs).

I have also seen volunteers do some really great stuff. I remember two projects in particular. One was a food recall study, where PCVs talked to people in rural villages about what they ate. It took advantages of the specific skills of PCVs - languages and connections to rural life - and produced a document that was a major reference for everyone in the country who worked on nutrition. The other project was on growth charts. A Peace Corps volunteer trained doctors in his village to use growth charts to track children's height and weight, and make sure they were developing normally. The charts were low-tech - just photocopied paper, but they really helped doctors improve their care for children. The volunteer also arranged for a USAID-funded health project to keep supplying the charts to doctors after he left, so that the effort would not end after two years.