Session #17 Ticket Out Responses

What are you curious about?

1. Are there other opportunities similar to Peace Corp?

• AmeriCorps
• AgriCorps

2. Amount of time a peace corp must stay in an assignment before going home?

• Peace Corps service is 27 months.  Volunteers may visit home after serving for 6 months.

3.Peace Corp

• About Peace Corp

4.Where Peace Corp work after service?

• RPCVs work in all sectors.  This link might be helpful.

5.How our guest speaker time in the peace corp affected the choice of path they took career wise afterword?

• Our guest speaker would be happy to speak to students about this in person!

6.How many successful peace corps volunteer enter with almost no language experience at all

• The three months of pre-service language training, while living with a host family, equips most volunteers with intermediate language proficiency (which continues to improve throughout the two years of service).

7.Grad option relating to Ag and Global development

• Talk to your instructors

8.Is there any short term project that we can involve in Peace Corp (less than 2 years)

• There is a program called Peace Corps Response, but this is only open to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers or to those who have at least 10 years of relevant work experience.

What did you learn?
1. Much better understanding of the peace corp program
2.Flexibility and cultural sensitivity are the most important skills to have
3.About the Peace Corp
4.People of all ages,life situations, etc serve in the peace corp
5." You don't need much to teach''
6.The peace corp is very competitive program
7.Peace corp are only allowed in stable countries and countries who requested for peace corp
8.The mission of the peace corp
9.Average age of peace corp volunteer age is 28 years old
10. One in three applicant become volunteer
11.A lot opportunities for agriculture majors
12.Benefit within the organization and the influence of volunteers
13. Information to join peace corp and a recruiting center at Penn State 
14.Amazing peace corp opportunities

What do you want to learn more about?

1.Peace Corp success stories

• Check here for volunteer story archive  

2.How a country is determined to be stable

•  Social , economic and political. This link might provide more explanations

3.Application process for countries to get peace corp volunteer

• This link provide some information on countries involve with Peace Corp.

4.Peace corp projects

•  Peace Corp Passport Blog

5. Living arrangement for peace corp volunteers

• All volunteers live with host families during pre-service training.  During their two years of service, some volunteers live with host families and some live on their own (it varies country to country). Check out this link for some photos.  Also, many volunteers have posted Youtube videos of their housing under 'Peace Corps cribs'.

Nutrition In 2 Minutes

                             

Top 3 Reasons to Invite Guest Speakers

Thank you all for your attention and engagement with our guest speakers in class.  We do have many more coming in during the course of the semester, so the question begs, "Why all these guest speakers?" 


Reason 1: Internationalize
Let's go back to the original idea of the class.  We're trying to learn about global agricultural education in its many forms across the globe.  How can we do that without traveling?  One of the strategies to accomplish our learning goals is to invite in guest speakers, many of them from the Penn State community, to share their global experiences.

Yesterday we heard from a student's perspective about Zamorano University in Honduras.  It's hard to imagine an ag university where you get a demerit for walking on the grass, or where you have to wear a uniform at all times.  By inviting Loren in, we get to glimpse into the world of Zamorano without having to travel there.


Reason 2: Real Life Examples
We spent much of the first part of the semester learning about agriculture, education and agricultural education.  We also looked at diffusion of innovations and many different barriers to receiving an agricultural education - gender, location, literacy, race, language, etc.  The idea behind examining real-life examples is to go from our abstract classroom knowledge and apply it to real-life situations.

For example, we had Blaze Currie here from Agricorps.  Many of you asked poignant questions about the program i.e, "Is a year long enough?" and "Is language a barrier?"  These are great questions that really showcase the decisions that have to be made in real life.  Perhaps a longer time would be better, but then no one would sign up.  And sure, technically the official language is English, but other tribal languages may also be spoken.

It's a long way from the critical world of academia to a small school in rural Liberia.  How does a program such as Agricorps balance what they know in the abstract with what they think will work in real life?


Reason 3: Context
I think it is easy to sit in a classroom at Penn State and say that "culture" is a reason why some programs work and other programs don't work.  It's actually very shaky ground to "blame"culture, especially when talking about underdevelopment.  That's a viewpoint that was very popular in development work in the 1950s and 1960s, and has since been recognized as very damaging.

Bringing in a guest speaker can help us to understand the unique cultural context of different places.  For example, we had Dr. Nicole Webster come in yesterday to talk with us about her Fulbright experience developing a student organization at UNICA in Nicaragua.  After learning about how the lingering effects of the Sandinistas on Nicaragua, it was easy to see why student organizations were not a part of the culture of UNICA or any other university in the country.  This is a fabulous example of why context matters.  It would have been very easy to blame the lack of student organizations on culture, but really there is an underlying historical rationale that makes a lot of sense.

Why is this knowledge useful?  Well, if you wanted to bust into Nicaragua and start an FFA organization or 4-H Club you would certainly want to know about the context before you got started.  Dr. Webster's example provides us with the idea that you might have to dig deep to find the answers - history and politics, in this case.



Let's use the information presented by our guest speakers to our best advantage.  Think about the elements of the programs our speakers talk about in terms of what you've read and learned about in this class. 

Remember that this class is not just about critiquing examples, but it is also about building.  We hope to create positive change agents, so we strive to provide you with some real-life examples of programs that "work".