More Northwestern students are answering Uncle Sam’s call to volunteer service, making NU the 13th largest producer of Peace Corps volunteers of all medium-size schools in the United States.
NU jumped four slots from 17th place last year. This year, there are 34 NU alumni serving in the Peace Corps. Those who join the Peace Corps generally work in developing countries for 27 months to help develop education and business.
Courtney Cunningham, director of Peace Corps recruitment for NU, attributed this rise in membership to increased help from University Career Services and from former Peace Corps volunteers in the Evanston area who posted flyers and sent e-mails to student groups urging them to sign up.
She also said the recent tsunami disaster inspired interest in Peace Corps.
“With events like the (tsunami), it gets people thinking, ‘I want to do more for other people,'” Cunningham said.
Cunningham said NU tends to recruit students from business, math and science backgrounds, as well as those involved in community activities, especially Dance Marathon.
Lyn Bell, spokesman for the national Peace Corps headquarters in Washington D.C. said the increase could also be attributed to President Bush’s 2002 directive, in which he urged Peace Corps to double its membership from 7,000 to 14,000.
Currently, Peace Corps has 7,733 volunteers, the highest membership in 29 years. The University of Wisconsin at Madison leads universities with 129 alumni currently in the Peace Corps.
The Peace Corps has volunteers in 71 developing and undeveloped countries, 34 percent of whom work in education, according to Bell. Many volunteers work on HIV and AIDS programs.
Although past Peace Corps initiatives mostly taught farming in underdeveloped nations, Bell said recent projects include teaching business, banking and management to more developed countries.
“We have volunteers overseas who aren’t necessarily out in the middle of the boonies or in the middle of the jungle,” Bell said. “We have people in developed areas who are teaching business development.”
One such volunteer is Betty Yim, Education ’01. Yim spent her two-year commitment setting up a bank in a rural village in Mali, a country in West Africa.
In addition to setting up the bank, Yim learned the local dialect of the roughly 3,000 members of the Bobo tribe with whom she worked.
Yim, who now works as a recruiter for Peace Corps, said she first became interested in the program in high school, when her French teacher brought in a friend to talk about her experience serving in Eastern Europe. Although Yim never thought she actually would join the Peace Corps, she found herself applying during her senior year of college.
“I had always been interested in poverty issues and was a social policy major,” Yim said. “I also wanted to see the world.”
The experience was unforgettable and life-shaping, but not for the feint of heart, she added.
“Your view of the world and your place in it completely changes,” Yim said. “I would recommend this to people who are interested in learning about different cultures, people who are interested in traveling and people who are up to the challenge, because it isn’t all roses.”
Reach Julia Neyman at [email protected].
