UCLA was awarded a plaque by the volunteer group Peace Corps last week for being one of the universities with the largest number of former students joining the organization.
Ron Tschetter, the world-wide director of the Peace Corps, presented the award at the small gathering in the Physics and Astronomy Building.
Associate Vice Chancellor Thomas Lifkan received the award on behalf of the university, which is ranked eighth among other universities, including UC Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Washington in the Peace Corps’ annual report, “Top Peace Corps Volunteer Producing Colleges and Universities.”
The event consisted of a small group of professors who were former Peace Corps volunteers and a few recent alumni who are waiting to embark on their volunteer experiences abroad.
“We’re here to say “˜thank you,’ to the university. You are our lifeline; without you, Peace Corps wouldn’t do very well,” Tschetter said.
Since the program’s inception in 1960 under President John F. Kennedy, more than 190,000 Peace Corps volunteers have participated in the program, serving in more than 139 host countries. Overall, 1,664 UCLA alumni have volunteered, with 44 Bruins currently serving in 33 different countries.
Unlike other volunteer abroad programs, Peace Corps is the only one that pays a stipend to volunteers who go abroad, said Kate Kuykendall, a public relations specialist for the Peace Corps.
She said that her own experience changed her perceptions of the world.
“(The program) challenged me as a person; my whole world was changed,” Kuykendall said.
The reception also included a small surprise for one alumna. Courtney Alev, a graduate from the class of 2008, was handed a small white envelope at the reception, much to her surprise.
Hands trembling, she opened it to find out her destination for this fall: Mozambique, Africa.
Alev was smiling from ear to ear. Traveling to Africa had been a goal of hers for a long time.
After studying international development studies and political science, Alev said she found herself studying the effects of AIDS in Africa in many of her classes, and turning away was not something that she could do. She soon became involved with Dance Marathon on campus, a student-run philanthropic event in which students dance for 26 hours to raise funds for pediatric HIV/AIDS research.
She said that her experiences on the committee for Dance Marathon helped her become more aware of the situation in Africa, and she found that the best time for her to join the Peace Corps was now.
The 27-month-long program was one of the things she liked the most of the program since she felt that it offered her enough time to make a lasting impact in the country, Alev said.
It’s that same attitude that can be found in Molly Chen, an alumna from the class of 2007, who will be leaving for a country in Latin America sometime in May. The communications studies student said she always knew she would join the Peace Corps, she just didn’t know at what point in her life.
“It’s always been sort of a seed in my life. I knew I was going to do it; I just didn’t know when,” Chen said.
It was only after she visited her older sister during her stay in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer that Chen said she felt there was no better time for her to volunteer.
“She was giving them tools to utilize themselves, to get themselves out of their situation,” she said, adding that it was a powerful image for her to see. After that, Chen said, she felt she had to go:
“I needed to be out there now.”
Still, the drastically different living conditions that volunteers must encounter during their stay causes as much excitement as concern.
“I’m worried about being without my safety net. … I’m nervous about that. In the same way, I’m excited,” Chen said.
She said that though she hasn’t been assigned to a country yet, she’s excited to be traveling to a region she’s never traveled to before and learning about a culture she knows little about.
Alev shares that same excitement, where traveling as a Peace Corps Volunteer means traveling to a foreign land, learning a new culture and helping it survive.
“I’m looking forward to having an experience that is unlike any experience I’ve ever imagined,” Alev said.
As exciting and anxious the experience may be, Chen said that from what others tell her, “At the end of the two years, it’s never long enough.”