Jake Cinnamon spent his Peace Corps experience living in a small town called Omurtag in Bulgaria, and working as an environmental consultant
Making an impact in Bulgaria
Caption: Jake Cinnamon lectures ninth-grade students in Panagyurishte, Bulgaria, on structural geology during his recent Peace Corps service. Courtesy of Jake Cinnamon.
Jake Cinnamon spent his Peace Corps experience living in a small town called Omurtag in Bulgaria, and working as an environmental consultant. Cinnamon, age 27, has a degree in geology from the University of Colorado, but he “never used it much,” he says. “I went directly into the Peace Corps.”
Starting in the summer of 2001, Cinnamon worked on a variety of basic environmental programs, including energy efficiency and choosing new street lights for the town. He had the opportunity to discuss environmental impacts of mining with local geologists who were exploring sites in the region, and he says he also worked on issues for a cheese factory that “spit out enzymes into the river — one of my jobs was to figure out how to clean it up.”
Cinnamon also worked on non-geology-related projects. He wrote grants for a local school, capturing $15,000 to buy three new computers and a digital camera, and he arranged for Internet access. “These kids had never seen the Internet before,” he says.
Since Cinnamon returned to the United States last August, he has been unsure if he wants to pursue geology as a career — a common challenge facing returning volunteers. Instead, he is looking into working with geographic information systems and government relations, or what he calls “the business side of geology.”
