Serving Locally and Across the World : An Inside View of Peace Corps and AmeriCorps

2/18/2021

By: Kenzley Defler, Shea Brenneman, & Caitlin Rampy

AmeriCorps is sometimes explained as being similar to Peace Corps but located within the United States as opposed to internationally. While this is true in many ways, there are also lots of differences in the application process, training, and service experience for AmeriCorps Members and Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs).

The goal of Peace Corps is to promote world peace and create sustainable change by helping countries meet their needs for professional training and promoting cross-cultural sharing. Peace Corps applicants can choose a specific country and work sector or apply to go wherever they are most needed. Cohorts of selected volunteers spend their first 3 months in country doing intensive language and cross cultural training. Often, this involves living with a local host family and taking language tests to track progress. After training, PCVs are placed at their permanent site where they do hands-on work focused on agriculture, education, health, the environment, community economic development, and youth development. Peace Corps terms are for 27 months, allowing volunteers time to integrate into their community and perform community needs assessments before jumping into projects.

AmeriCorps is similar in its goal to strengthen communities through volunteer work. Applicants can choose from the many programs including VISTA, State and National, NCCC, and FEMA Corps each of which offers service terms of varying length. While all AmeriCorps programs seek to improve lives and foster civic engagement, some programs do this through direct service work and other programs, like VISTA, perform indirect service work.

For some individual insight on Peace Corps and AmeriCrops service, check out the following words from Kenzley, Shea, and Caitlin, all of whom previously served with Peace Corps and are currently serving as AmeriCorps VISTA members in Fairbanks.

Kenzley Defler
Peace Corps Tanzania 2018-2020
AmeriCorps VISTA Leader 2020-2021

Tell us about your Peace Corps service! What was your favorite memory? I served as an education PVC in Tanzania where I taught science classes at a secondary school. I’ll never forget the nerves I felt walking into that crowded classroom for the first time, only hoping I was prepared enough to teach a bunch of teenagers about the human reproductive system using a language I had just learned. The nerves quickly settled as I got to know my students, both in and out of the classroom. One of my strongest memories is writing pen-pal letters to exchange with a high school in Kentucky, my home-state. This was early in my service when students were still very shy about this new teacher who spoke very broken Swahili. We met one evening and over 100 students sat down to write a letter. By the end of the night they were crowded around me, speaking over each other to ask questions about life in America. Our conversation was filled with cultural-sharing, laughter, and learning, for the students and myself. I’ll never forget walking home that night, unable to stop smiling, and filled with inspiration from the student’s curiosity and acceptance of me, not only as a teacher, but as a friend. Never again did I have to worry about my students being too shy to ask me questions. Despite the initial challenges adjusting to a life without electricity, running water or paved roads, I ultimately fell in love with Kidegembye Secondary School, the friends I made in my village, and the entire country of Tanzania.

Describe the transition from serving as a PCV to becoming a VISTA. My Peace Corps service ended abruptly in March 2020 when all 7,000+ volunteers from around the world were evacuated due to rising concerns from COVID-19. I had 24 hours to pack up and leave my village and was out of the country within a few days. This put me back in a pandemic-struck United States with no future plans as I expected to still have several months before leaving Tanzania. However, if I learned one thing from my time with Peace Corps it’s how to be adaptable and go with the flow. After looking into various AmeriCorps programs, it seemed like a natural transition to continue serving despite the challenges of COVID. I applied to several positions across the US, but after talking to the Fairbanks VISTA Leader at that time, her genuine love of Fairbanks and fulfillment from VISTA made the choice an easy one. The natural beauty of Alaska and opportunity for lots of outdoor activities was a big draw as well. In addition to adaptability, while serving with Peace Corps I gained confidence in my ability to conceptualize new projects and got experience working on very diverse teams. These skills have directly translated and prepared me well for my VISTA role. While only halfway through my year in Fairbanks, I couldn’t be happier with the way my service transitioned from an international to local scale.

Shea Brenneman
Peace Corps Togo 2013-2014
AmeriCorps VISTA at United Way of Tanana Valley 2020-2021

Tell us about your Peace Corps service! What was your favorite memory? They have it right when they say Peace Corps is one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever love. Any challenges I encountered were quickly overcome by sweet successes that were largely accomplished not by me, but by my village. As an education and gender equality volunteer, my work mostly involved running various afterschool programs. My favorite was theater club. The most I had to do was show up, discuss with my students what social topics mattered to them, and lightly supervise as they came up with hilarious and strikingly meaningful skits. I remember one skit in particular that addressed gendered work inequalities at home, and these middle schoolers came up with a performance so culturally relevant and funny that they had the whole village in stitches. It was such a beautiful way to tackle a very sensitive topic in a nonthreatening and entertaining way and helped me to realize how much creativity and intelligence exists without me needing to insert or enforce my own specific plans and agendas to make this village a “better” place.

In your own words, what are the similarities and differences between Peace Corps and AmeriCorps? I can see how Peace Corps and AmeriCorps go together. Both programs involve volunteering in a specific community for a set amount of time and hopefully involve a lot of mutual growth for the volunteer and the people they serve! It may be tempting to think that AmeriCorps does not come with its own set of cultural learning and adjustments, but this year has taught me otherwise. Working in Fairbanks, Alaska has revealed how much diversity exists in every pocket of the world, and how important it is to actively dismantle assumptions in favor of listening to the community and their actual needs. I can say that my years in both programs have created my most treasured memories and I would not trade them for anything! One big difference is that AmeriCorps offers assignments with a huge variety of specific organizations and projects whereas Peace Corps tends to assign volunteers to a broader category of work (e.g., education, health, agriculture, etc.). Either way, they are both amazing opportunities to expand your knowledge and skillsets while learning how best to serve others.

Caitlin Rampy
Peace Corps N. Macedonia 2017-2020
AmeriCorps VISTA at the Fairbanks Children’s Museum 2021-2022

Tell us about your Peace Corps service! What was your favorite memory? I served in the beautiful country of North Macedonia as a Special Needs/TEFL PCV in a village primary school a little ways outside the capital of Skopje. As one of the first Special Needs PCVs to serve full-time in a school, I was tasked with supporting the inclusion process by providing direct educational instruction to students, interfacing with parents and grandparents, and supporting the teachers who often lacked resources and training opportunities. One of my favorite memories from service involved a student who struggled with identifying the numbers 1 through 10. Struggling with both attention and retention, the student still happily came to our daily 1-on-1 sessions and worked enthusiastically on the different tasks even though he could usually only identify the number 1 on any given day. Myself and my counterpart were desperate to come up with some way to help him memorize the numbers, and finally in a eureka moment we landed on the idea of using printed images of European soccer players in their numbered jerseys as a way to capture the student’s attention and better secure number retention. I still get a smile on my face when I remember him confidently yelling out “Messi! Ten!” as we played our new matching game.

What skills did you develop during your Peace Corps service that you are excited to use during your time as a VISTA? One of the unique opportunities I had during my Peace Corps service was applying for and being awarded grant funding for my school’s first ever Parent and Teacher Behavioral Training event. I had never written a grant proposal previous to my service, and the insight that the process gave me has been invaluable and has helped me hone other skills such as strategic planning, community organization, and training design. Going through the grant writing process has also taught me the indispensable need for community buy-in and the vital importance of centering community voices and values when embarking on new local projects. I hope to be able to use this set of skills during my AmeriCorps VISTA service as I work with the Fairbanks Children’s Museum to reach more Fairbanks families.

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