Peace Corps uses a grassroots, bottom up strategy to create sustainable change for the communities we work in. This means as a Peace Corps Volunteer I am absolutely forced to come up with creative solutions to problems I face. We are not able to throw piles of money at a problem, we have none. We live on a very modest stipend, given a settling in allowance to buy household wares like gas cookers and mosquito nets or whatever is relevant to your location. It is just enough to pay for the food we eat and that is all. Some live with host families others are given homes rent free but the rest is up to you. Of course we have health care and an administrative support structure to advise and protect us in our host nations but Peace Corps volunteers are integrated with their communities often becoming fluent in local languages, culture and we become part of the villages we serve in. This is our main advantanges. We learn how the locals think and operate and that gives us inroads to making the changes to advance their communities and ways that they want the most, not in ways that glorifies ours own ego.
There are three missions of a deployed Peace Corps Volunteer:
- To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
- To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
- To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans
Peace Corps officially established: March 1, 1961
Total number of Volunteers and trainees to date: 215,000+
Total number of countries served: 139
Current number of Volunteers and Trainees: 7,209
Gender: 63% female, 37% male
Marital Status: 93% single, 7% married
Minorities: 24% of Volunteers
Average Age: 28.7
Volunteers over age 50: 8%
Current number of countries served: 65 countries
Volunteers by Work Area
- Education: 40%
- Health: 22%
- Environment: 12%
- Community Economic Development: 11%
- Youth in Development: 7%
- Agriculture: 5%
- Other: 3% <---(This is my area Information Technology, the last of my kind, they cut our program)
Where Volunteers Serve
- Africa: 46%
- Latin America: 20%
- Eastern Europe/Central Asia: 13%
- Asia: 10%
- The Caribbean: 4%
- North Africa/Middle East: 4%
- Pacific Islands: 3%
Budget
Fiscal year 2013 budget: $356.25 million
Fiscal year 2014 budget: $379 million
