Peace Corps Fellows in Rutgers Program serve in Senegal, Kazakhstan, Tonga, El Salvador, Panama, South Africa, Madagascar and Niger
Students' missions in Peace Corps
Saturday, December 27, 2003
By LAVINIA DeCASTRO
Courier-Post Staff
CAMDEN
All nine students in professor Jainaba Kah's class plan to spend the next two years helping others overseas as Peace Corps volunteers.
And that's no coincidence.
They are working on master's degrees in international public service and development from Rutgers-Camden. Volunteering abroad is part of the curriculum.
"We push for the Peace Corps because it's a very structured program," said Kah, director of the program, which is a concentration within the master's of public administration. "For the students, this is an opportunity to practice what they learned."
Since the program started in 1986, roughly 174 Rutgers graduate students have volunteered abroad.
"A lot of people don't know about this program," Kah said. "It's one of the best-kept secrets in South Jersey, I think."
Before going abroad, students must first volunteer right here in Camden. They learn to assess what kind of projects a neighborhood needs, how to raise funds to make the projects happen, and how to involve the community by volunteering at places like Cooper University Hospital, Big Brother-Big Sister, Volunteers of America and other area nonprofits.
"My students do amazing things," said Kah, who has 26 students in Senegal, Kazakhstan, Tonga, El Salvador, Panama, South Africa, Madagascar and Niger, among others. "By living overseas, that lets them see the level of poverty in developing countries and when they come back, they're better policy makers."
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Students said Kah uses her background - she's a native of Gambia who worked as an urban transportation planner for the World Bank in countries recovering from conflict - to prepare them for the precarious conditions they'll encounter.
"She's from a developing country and she talks to us a lot about the conditions there," said 27-year-old Leigh Hartless.
Hartless still doesn't know where she'll spend the next two years. The Peace Corps gave her two options - she can work with HIV-AIDS somewhere in southern Africa or she can work in small business development in one of the French-speaking countries in West Africa.
"Now I'm really torn because I want to go to a French-speaking country, but I also want to work with HIV/AIDS," said Hartless, who spent one year teaching English in France after graduating from the University of Nebraska in 2000.
Tony Franze didn't want to have to learn a different language to be able to help others.
"I selected Kenya because it was one country that spoke the English language," said Franze, who volunteered at a hospital in Kenya.
Franze, a 62-year-old retired attorney and Princeton resident, took the graduate course because he wanted to volunteer abroad.
"I got to that state in life where I wanted to do something different," Franze said.
Because Franze was a pharmacist before becoming an attorney, he spent the last 11 months volunteering at a hospital in Kenya.
"I found the pharmacy there extremely primitive," said Franze, who did not volunteer through the Peace Corps because it would not have allowed him to stay only a year.
The corps also allows volunteers to pick the region, but not the country, in which they would like to serve.
"I think it's amazing that they're willing to make these sacrifices," Kah said of students like Franze, who abandon their lives for months to help others.
Franze showed the pharmacists in Kenya how to better label their prescriptions and use the computer and found organizations around the world willing to donate hospital equipment like defibrillators and heart monitors.
"It's not only the host country that benefits from having these students," Kah said. "The student also benefits, it's a life-changing opportunity for all of them. These are ambassadors of the United States and that's especially important after 9/11."
Reach Lavinia DeCastro at (856) 486-2652 or ldecastro@courierpostonline.com
