Her "call" to the Peace Corps came from a story in The Grand Rapids Press in November. The story focused on the Peace Corps recruiting people 50 and older. "From that, I called and asked 'How about lovely old farts in their 70s?', and was encouraged to apply. "It all flowed from there and has been a very slow, thorough process." She has been medically approved and is waiting her final invitation. She expects to go out in the field in early 2009. "I'm taking this the way we all live -- a day at a time."
Judy Mate expects to head for the Caribbean and her two-year assignment as a business advisor for the Peace Corps
Peace Corps appeals to older travelers
by Sue Schroder | Booth Michigan Travel Editor
Sunday July 06, 2008, 2:47 AM
Caption: Judy Mate' and her daughter, Julie Peck, right, stand in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, in July 2007. Peck and her family live in Shangri-La, China, and mother and daughter were touring.
Judy Mate' is something of an accidental tourist.
One example: She's in Jerusalem to teach fourth-graders for two years and ends up in Prague for Christmas 2002 -- and also travels to Turkey, Rhodes and Egypt. All because she had to leave Israel, where she was an unpaid volunteer, every three or four months to qualify to have her visa renewed.
It was a different story last year when she spent a month in China visiting her daughter, who lives there, but the phenomenon will kick in again next year when she expects to head for the Caribbean and her two-year assignment as a business advisor for the Peace Corps.
The travel is primarily a byproduct of her heart wanting to "go out and pour out what God has poured into my life, and I don't mean finances," she says. At 75, Mate' lives in Jenison on her Social Security and what she earns through a part-time job.
Her passion doesn't have a price tag.
Her "call" to the Peace Corps came from a story in The Grand Rapids Press in November. The story focused on the Peace Corps recruiting people 50 and older. "From that, I called and asked 'How about lovely old farts in their 70s?', and was encouraged to apply.
"It all flowed from there and has been a very slow, thorough process." She has been medically approved and is waiting her final invitation. She expects to go out in the field in early 2009. "I'm taking this the way we all live -- a day at a time."
The Peace Corps has 8,079 volunteers, 6 percent of whom are 50 or older.
The number of age 50-plus volunteers has increased by 6 percent since last year, and applications among that group have increased by 65 percent, according to information from the Chicago Regional office.The countries hosting the most 50+ volunteers are (in order): Ukraine, South Africa, Mexico, Jamaica and the Philippines.
Where did Mate' ask to be assigned? Africa, she told a recruiter.
"Do you know there are over 11 million AIDS orphans in the continent of Africa?"
Instead, the woman who once worked in sales for Telecheck and as an assistant to the CEO of the Dove Foundation will work in the Caribbean promoting local economic development.
Her passion doesn't have a pricetag: It grew from the heart of an 11-year-old growing up in the Grand Rapids Garfield Park neighborhood, "when daddies went to work and mommies stayed at home." Her dad had fought in WWI, her brother was in the service in Guam during WWII.
"We took Look and Life magazines, and I remember when Life came after the war ended. I was 11 and I saw those pictures, the liberation of concentration camps with bodies stacked like cordwood and walking skeletons.
"A sense of outrage arose in my 11-year-old heart, and I remember looking up at my mother saying, 'Why didn't somebody do something?'
"I have gone to Israel and I have done something. I just finished my fifth year as a reading tutor at Henry School, now Martin Luther King Leadership Academy. You see a need and you act on it."
