"I was in Georgia, just south of Russia, and I was an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) Development volunteer. I worked with a women’s health, women’s rights organization…The fact that we had such a large Armenian population, there had been tensions between the Georgian and Armenian communities. So one way my organization was tackling that was working through the women within these communities and bringing them together, and just getting them to find common ground. A lot of the Armenian communities weren’t taught Georgian, so we would also bring in some of the middle school, high school age girls to come in and work on Georgian…They also had a free gynecological clinic so that women could come in for health because there is no health care system because there is no insurance, everything is out of the pocket."
Sara Bumsted served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Georgia
Making a Global Difference: Interview with Sara Bumsted
By Kaleigh O'Donnell
Contributing Writer
March 25, 2008
Pictures of exotic lands and maps of the world line the walls of Sara Bumsted’s office. Anyone can decorate a room with these, but Bumsted has a sort of personal connection to these countries.
As the Peace Corps representative for Virginia Tech, in addition to having served in the Peace Corps herself, Bumsted recruits and nominates students to travel and live abroad to do volunteer service projects for many countries in all parts of the world.
In an interview with Bumsted she discussed her amazing experiences in the Peace Corps, the service Virginia Tech student volunteers are doing, and how those interested can get involved.
What follows is a selection of answers Bumsted provided in a recent interview.
Q: Tell me about the background of the Peace Corps.
Bumsted: It was originally way back in the beginning, it was actually introduced on the floor of the House in 1960 when Kennedy was running for president…the Peace Corps is invited to a country, and then they work with the government to figure out what the government is interested in and what the country can sustain in terms of actually having the volunteers on the ground. And then by virtue of that, they formed the three goals. One is sending interested men and women to share their knowledge so that you have some kind of skill set, to share with interested people in other countries. The second is to go and share American culture, heritage, just to give a broader understanding of America to people in other countries, and then to also learn about their culture, and their society, and bring that back here.
Q: How many volunteers has the Peace Corps accumulated since it started?
Bumsted: I’ve seen approximately 170 (thousands), but I know that it’s like 180s 190s around now…
Q: While you were doing your service, where were you stationed?
Bumsted: I was in Georgia, just south of Russia, and I was an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) Development volunteer. I worked with a women’s health, women’s rights organization…The fact that we had such a large Armenian population, there had been tensions between the Georgian and Armenian communities. So one way my organization was tackling that was working through the women within these communities and bringing them together, and just getting them to find common ground. A lot of the Armenian communities weren’t taught Georgian, so we would also bring in some of the middle school, high school age girls to come in and work on Georgian…They also had a free gynecological clinic so that women could come in for health because there is no health care system because there is no insurance, everything is out of the pocket. …They advertise themselves for gynecological care, prenatal, everything that goes along with that…There were a couple of big projects I worked on while I was there. We got a grant with the U.N. to do human trafficking education and awareness raising, just because of being on the boarder, particularly with Turkey. Our town wasn’t one that was necessarily recognized with having a huge problem with that, there were other towns that had more of a problem, that were more on top of the boarder, but for our region we were the one that it was a concern, in a general understanding what human trafficking was...And then we also did a media center. I worked with my counterparts in learning how to type so they could teach it. With the plan being the best student in the class could test to become a teacher herself so that women were generating their own income, and learn a skill they could use outside. And then the more women that became teachers the more classes that we could have because we didn’t have a lot of a computers, because we didn’t have a lot of space.
Q: Do you find there is definite progress with women and their dependence being made within the country?
Bumsted: It’s happening in some ways and not others. It’s hard because a lot of them end up as teachers or in other assistant type rolls, but particularly as teachers outside the capital. Their pay is coming from the government, and the government doesn’t have any money. They don’t really get paid…When you get married you move in with his family. So if you don’t get married, you’re still living with your parents, in some degree you are a drain on your parents. They felt that pressure, but at the same time, as more women went to the capital, you did live on your own, and you had a job and you supported yourself, so that was very common. There is a lot more freedom there to do things. It’s not moving as quickly across the country, that stuff takes time…When you’re looking at an economy with 50, 60, 70 percent unemployment it’s hard to really get out on your own and find someplace you can afford and take care of yourself…
Q: Can you explain a little bit about the living conditions in the Peace Corps?
Bumsted: You have two vacation days a month, so basically 48 days of vacation a year… They don’t guarantee electricity, running water, or heat. If it’s a cold country, they will give you a sleeping bag to help out with that…The amenities will vary. I had one friend in a community where the electricity was extraordinarily sporadic. They hadn’t had it for ten years at one point before she got there. Their switches were still in the on position and small children were freaking out because they had never seen electricity before…The amenities side everybody can get over that one pretty quickly, most people do in about a month or so…About 99 percent of volunteers have a harder time coming back than they do leaving.
Q: I read somewhere that Virginia Tech is in the top 25 schools for number of students going into the Peace Corps.
Bumsted: For Tech in 2007 there were 43 serving volunteers in the field that graduated from Tech. That put us back on the list, we hadn’t been on there since 2003…There has been more of an interest in volunteering in general. I think to some degree, Peace Corps goes through periods of being sort of mainstream, or at least being widely understood, because its easy to lump it into the category that it’s something that hippies do, it’s not a real job or work, you’re just taking a vacation for two years, and that’s all just completely ridiculous. That’s a whole other discussion. For Tech the numbers don’t include any graduate students…
Q: What are some of the current projects being worked on by Virginia Tech students in the Peace Corps?
Bumsted: Agriculture is definitely one that this school is putting out a lot of. There are four different agricultural areas that we have. One is animal husbandry...They also have agricultural extension where they are working with crops. There’s an applied agricultural science and there is an agro-economics business that they have. When I have been nominating in that area it’s been a lot of agricultural-extension, crop work and things like that...I’ve had a couple of master students, come through for engineering, a couple of undergrads. And the big one we have for that is environmental water resource engineering and you have to have a degree in civil or environmental to qualify, unless you have years of experience, which for students they have got to hit on the degree side…
Q: How bout the issue of safety? I know we read a lot about the hostile environments in some of countries volunteers are sent to.
Bumsted: Safety and security is the number one issue with the Peace Corps because if they can’t guarantee safety, then nothing after that really matters. The number one problem that Peace Corps volunteers face in terms of safety and security is pick pocketing…When you go through safety and security during training, with your language and cross-cultural teacher, they go over a safety and security plan with you if something happens. Every country has a way of alerting the volunteers if there is a problem and getting them to meet up depending on the level of the problem…if you’re living with a family, or you’re in an apartment, they have to have all that contact information, all your boss’s contact information. If you live with your family, there is an entire background check done by that country’s government on that family to make sure its safe to have a volunteer there…
Q: Did you have any life-threatening experiences?
Bumsted: Your definition changes a little bit…Really, it was just a matter of the drivers would drive fast…In the beginning we were like “Oh, dear lord!” But then it got to the point when we were like “Why aren’t you going faster!”
Q: You seem really satisfied with your Peace Corps experience. What would you tell students that are really eager to enter the program? What are they going to get out of it?
Bumsted: Part of it is the satisfaction of knowing you did it. It’s not for everybody, or something that everybody can do. You also have this community and this family that you will always have regardless of how long you are away. You will always have that connection in the world. In terms of job prospects or what you may want to do in the future, it will either confirm that this is what you want to do, it will open up things you didn’t know existed and if you had any interest in doing international development work, this is one of the best ways to get experience abroad. You did something very real for two years…Immediately you are wired into the other return volunteers. It doesn’t matter where they served, when they served or what they did, it’s that immediate connection that you did Peace Corps so you separated yourself out already. You do get a year of non competitive eligibility with the government right out of Peace Corps so that elevates you in the job pool…
Q: Do you have any advice for students looking to get involved?
Bumsted: It’s always good to have volunteer experience. The Peace Corps does have a minimum standard for that. They are at least looking for 30 hours of service or three months of service. The more you have the better. If there is something you know you want to do I would definitely recommend getting as much experience as you can in that. I would also encourage people to check out the main Peace Corps website at peacecorps.gov because that is going to have a lot of volunteer information, volunteer stories, getting into the program information. They have all the countries on there, what they are doing in the countries, how many volunteers they have, the languages they use in the countries just to get a feel for what’s really going on out there. I have information sessions where I try to pull in people from the Virginia Tech community to come in to speak. I’m also pulling people who have been nominated or invited to talk about their experience because those are actual students at the graduate or undergraduate level who have just gone through it…
Q: Do you think you can sum up your experience in one word?
Bumsted: Wow…
Q: Well after talking to you, I’d say wow is pretty accurate.
Bumsted: You could use challenging as one. It’s life changing. Knowing that not everyone can do it, but there is a group of us that did. For a lot of us, it was another family within the volunteers. But yeah, challenging is a good word.
