Peace Corps
A Post-Graduate Opportunity
Peace Corps offers a one-of-a-kind international experience while providing you with leadership and cross-cultural skills to stand out in today’s global job market.
Opportunities await in more than 70 countries to teach classrooms full of children eager to learn, facilitate community business ventures to support economic development, help families produce food for better nutrition, show villages how to conserve natural resources, educate entire towns about HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention, or introduce resources for local women and youth.
Since 1961, over 200 University of Toledo alumni have served in the Peace Corps.
Learn more about how you can make a difference!
- Check out the work that volunteers do, learn more about positions.
- See available openings, explore positions in the countries where Peace Corps Volunteers serve.
- Learn about the benefits of being a volunteer, discover the financial, professional, educational, and medical benefits of Peace Corps service.
Interested? Talk with University of Toledo Peace Corps recruiter Danny Livengood (614.772.6799).
What have past UToledo Peace Corps volunteers experienced?
Read on to learn what UToledo Alumni who volunteered with the Peace Corps thought about their experience after graduation:
Jeff Gohrband Africa |
Sean Waxman People's Republic of China |
Barbie Allen Jordan |
Jeff Gohrband
UT Alum
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
Malawi 2012-2014
I served in the Peace Corps from 2012-2014 in the Southern African country of Malawi as a Natural Resource Management Volunteer. I first became interested in the Peace Corps as a student at UT. I attended a Peace Corps sponsored presentation at the Student Union. I was nervous about the idea of living overseas for two years, but I ran over to the Carlson Library to fill out an application online; I have since had no regrets!
I was posted in the district of Nkhotakota, in the village of Chinthankhwa where I worked with district forestry counterparts and also community members around the Nyenje Forest Reserve. I found that my two main roles as a Peace Corps Volunteer were best described as a community educator and also as a learner.
My counterparts and I worked to implement tree nurseries with interested groups and
communities as a means of addressing the critical issue of deforestation that is taking
place in rural communities around Malawi. For other primary and secondary projects,
we worked cooperatively with community groups to determine several community needs
that could be addressed with a sustainable approach. These projects included; working
with women's groups to establish small-scale savings and loan schemes, working with
local farmers to implement and adopt a low-input beekeeping program, and working with
a group of students at the local secondary school in after school programs that focused
on HIV/AIDS prevention, life-skills and English grammar.
Apart from technical knowledge, a huge part of the Peace Corps experience comes through cultural exchange. I was surrounded by a new language, Chichewa, and a community of people who were eager to teach it to me. I was also immersed in a completely new culture that I had to learn and adapt to. My presence in Chinthankhwa village taught my Malawian neighbors certain aspects of American culture and finally, a blog that I wrote served as a platform for Americans to learn about Malawi; an otherwise obscure country in Africa that goes unnoticed.
Overall, the two year experience I had in the Peace Corps was well worth it, and something that will be an ever-present influence in my life . Living and working in Malawi has taught me a lot about myself, and has given me broader perspective of the greater world.
Zikomo Kwambiri - thank you very much
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Sean Waxman
UT Alum
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
People's Republic of China 2010-2012
As a Peace Corps Education Volunteer in western China, I was given a broad mission
- to teach others, and to learn something myself. The fact that the Peace Corps gives
you basic training and sends you to off a remote corner of the world may sound unsettling
to some people. But for me, it was the best opportunity that I could ever be given.
The Peace Corps enables you to create something out of nothing. That's the beauty
of the program. You make your experience; whether you choose to teach others your
hobby, start health awareness campaigns, or simply be a friend to those around you-
the world is truly yours to shape. This amount of freedom can make or break you. The
choice is yours.
The skills I acquired in the Peace Corps combined with the education I received at UT helped to start my career with the federal government and are essential to my everyday work at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Our nation needs young people who not only have deep international experience, but who also possess the ability to create and innovate. The Peace Corps is a tool for you to create something positive in another country, develop yourself, and develop your own country all-in-one.