Peace Corps Day 2024 is on Friday, March 1, 2024: Peace Corps alternatives?

Friday, March 1, 2024 is Peace Corps Day 2024. A Day in the Life: Peace Corps Volunteer - Caroline in the City ... The Peace Corps has a long

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Peace Corps alternatives?

You can be a Peace Corps Volunteer and then go into the military, IF you don't go into a specialty that could be considered intelligence gathering.

The Peace Corps does not want to be seen as either a training grounds for spies or a cover job for spies.

People in third world countries have a hard enough time understanding why someone would want to leave a country full of easy living, little red sport cars and buxom women (many of them get their impression of every-day life in the USA from "Baywatch" reruns) to live in a place that didn't have hot water and only had electricity 12 hours a day. PCVs don't need the additional problem of host country nationals thinking they are spies or training to be spies.

If you went into an intelligence job after the Peace Corps, people would think it was a training program for spies. If you went into the Peace Corps after you had an intelligence gathering job, people would think you hadn't really quit spying, and were using the Peace Corps as a cover job.

The Peace Corps, the CIA and the armed services have mutual agreements about not hiring. You could go straight from the Peace Corps into the armed services as a cook, medic, rifleman - or any other specialty that wasn't intelligence gathering - and vice versa.

This is a PDF file with some legalese from the Peace Corps site, if you are interested. It is mostly about the CIA, but the principle is the same for "Intelligence" military specialties.

Peace corps question?

Peace corps question?

Ted and I are the only former Peace Corps volunteers on this board who regularly answer questions. We served at different times and in different places.

That's the norm: Peace Corps is different for EVERYONE. Ted served in 1971 and still keeps contact with people he met. I left in 2009 and hear from previous few, though I LOVED Morocco and still miss it every day. (This is not an exaggeration. How I wish I could call my host mom, but she no longer has the same phone number, and she doesn't comprehend computers.)

Don't base a decision on a couple of videos. You think someone puts up a the video of the bad stuff? Uh, no. And in many cases, they're not allowed to blog about it. (Some posts vet blog posts, but you can read a slew of PCV blogs - they're out there, see www.peacecorpsjournals.com for a non-comprehensive directory. if you want mine, ask me)

Peace Corps won't help you get a good job. It looks good on your resume IF your resume makes it to a real person, but that really doesn't happen in the early stages. But the RPCV network is pretty strong, so if you're considering going into certain fields it can be good.

In others, it's bad. Very bad. No kidding, when I returned home I applied for this awesome job that was perfect for my skill set. The would-be supervisor and I hit it off, too, but he could saw my history in Peace Corps and was incredulous.

He looked from me resume to me, and then back again. He finally said, "I ... just ... don't ... understand. You've been all over the world. Why would you want THIS job?" And he was serious.

Two years later, still struggling, I have taken an AmeriCorps position and while I love it, I don't even make $10k a year. And I made $50k before Peace Corps.

So it's different for everyone. Don't base your decision to apply on videos. Read the book So You Want to Join the Peace Corps - What To Know Before You Go. It's a great reference. There is a TON of other information out there, too.

If you have more specific questions or want my blog address, feel free to email me. Click the L and go from there.

In the "Peace Corps" are you allowed to save up your vacation days?

In the "Peace Corps" are you allowed to save up your vacation days?

You can save as many vacation days as you want. They're yours to spend as you wish. You can get up to fifteen future vacation days to spend before you've earned them as well. Vacation wouldn't be worth much if it was just the two days a month. Here in the Philippines, we get our weekends to ourselves and can choose to travel in-country during them without cutting into our vacation days. I don't know if that's a Peace Corps-wide policy or not, but those two vacation days you earn won't just be random weekends per month that you're somehow forced to take. Save them, take a week or so here and there, have fun. You end up with 48 throughout the two years.

Also on this date Friday, March 1, 2024...