New year, new life for Peace Corps volunteer Meghan Lee Butler in Guinea
New year, new life for Peace Corps volunteer
Jan 1, 2004
Chicago Daily Herald
Garrett Ordower
Happy New Year to you all, and good luck with those resolutions.
While most of us have a choice of whether we're going to keep ours, Geneva resident Meghan Lee Butler does not.
Butler will be shipping out to Guinea, Africa, in two days to serve as a health educator with the Peace Corps. That means the 2003 Northern Illinois graduate will be talking to people in a foreign, rural land about topics like the spread of HIV and AIDS - which has decimated much of Africa - in addition to pregnancy and personal hygiene.
While there are 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers serving nationwide, Butler will be the seventh from the Tri-Cities area.
"There are a million reasons that I have decided to become a Peace Corps volunteer," Butler said. "The most important reason would be the inner drive that I have to help people."
But the decision to help others through the Peace Corps was not one Butler made long ago. In fact, it happened quite recently after she spent a year studying in Aix-en-Provence, France.
She soon fell in love with traveling, spending nine months crisscrossing Europe. But travel is not cheap.
"I discovered that I am great at traveling, meeting new people and dealing with the unexpected. However this became an expensive hobby," Butler said. "Peace Corps represents all those exciting aspects of life that I crave, allows me to invest myself in a new culture, and also (provides) a financial means to this experience through working abroad."
Of course, helping others is not something that needs to be done in another country or on a near-conscription basis. Just look back to the piece this newspaper ran on local heroes Saturday, and you can see ways to help others range from ringing a bell to collecting items for the troops to donating funds to a well-thought-out cause.
So if your New Year's resolution involves doing for others, please don't be discouraged because the season has passed you by or the opportunities don't sound as exciting as a trip to Africa. Keep looking for the many ways to contribute during this year.
