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My Peace Corps Application Timeline

1 comment By potterzot Filed in application, red tape November 20th, 2008 @ 1:21 pm

I wanted to do a timeline so that if people are looking at this wondering about applying or wondering what the application process is like, they might gain from my experience.  So here is my timeline of my Peace Corps-related life up to the point I actually leave.  I wrote it from memory so I might have missed minor details and the times might be slightly off in a few cases.

You might want to also reference my post on the Peace Corps application process, which talks about the general application procedure but not my specific experience.

Timeline

  • February 2007.  Decide I want to apply and begin researching information on the Peace Corps.
  • April 2007.  Start the application, which includes writing essays, getting recommendations, and gathering a lot of information.
  • June 2007.  Get my application together and send it in.
  • July 2007.  Initial interview with a Peace Corps recruiter.  She was litterally a block away from my office.  Receive more paperwork to fill out and am impressed again with the literal nature of the Peace Corps red tape.  It is a good idea to pay attention to the descriptions of requirements for different programs on the Peace Corps web site.
  • July 2007 (1 week later).  Return fingerprints and other information for background and legal check.
  • August 2007.  Receive a call from a regional placement officer offering me a placement in either english speaking Caribbean or in Africa.  For some reason incomprehensible to me, I choose the Caribbean.  I should have taken the extra few days she offered to think about it.
  • December 2007.  I finally get my medical infomation together and everything else that they want.  My application goes complete.
  • February 2008.  I receive medical clearance, the big hurdle that must be overcome before you can receive an invitation.
  • April 2008.  After scouring the Yahoo peacecorps2 group and various Peace Corps facebook groups for information about trips, I finally receive my invitation for Dominica, Eastern Caribbean, leaving in August.  I get very excited and immediately begin researching everything there is to find on Dominica, which is a lot.  The ‘relatively untouched’ and ecotourism reputation excite me, though it isn’t quite as remote as I had imagined in my head.
  • May 2008.  Send my resume and aspiration statement to the Eastern Caribbean country desk.  Tell my boss that I will almost certainly be leaving in July.  She’s known for almost a year, so it hopefully isn’t too much of a surprise.  Begin to make plans about what to buy and pack, and a million other things.  Discretely overlook the part of the invitation that says that I shouldn’t make permanent plans until my departure is less than 4 weeks away.
  • July 2008.  My last day is July 11th, a Tuesday.  I am six weeks from leaving.  On Wednesday evening I receive a call from the Peace Corps.  My trip has been cancelled!  Something about sudden loss of training staff.  I spend a day wondering what the heck I am going to do and thinking that this is why you should always quit your job on a Friday while the Peace Corps puts together some alternative options for me (I should note that the Peace Corps people were very nice and it obviously wasn’t their fault at all).
  • July 2008 (1 week later).  I was given an option between going to Samoa in October as an Economics Professor, or to Guinea in December as a small business developer.  I choose the later for a variety of reasons, some having to do with not wanting to teach economics in a university and some having to do with the (very) remote location of Samoa (although it looked extremely beautiful).  Since Africa again became an option I accept it rather quickly, much to the surprise of some family and friends who would have chosen Samoa themselves.
  • August 2008.  I get my invitation to Guinea.  While I am again excited, I don’t quite have the patience and enthusiasm that I did when I began researching my first destination.  Also, I don’t quite believe that the Peace Corps won’t cancel this trip also.  Over the next couple of months I read a lot about Guinea and the Peace Corps in Guinea.  There is a lot less information than there was for Dominica.
  • September 2008.  I find my first fellow volunteer through Facebook.
  • October 2008.  Communication between fellow volunteers explodes.  We spend a lot of time talking about the minute details of what we are packing and every other topic I can imagine.  I also get to talk to some current volunteers in Guinea about what they think and get some of their advice, which is great.  Yay internet!
  • November 2008.  I make a trial pack and am doing fine.  Two weeks later I find out I need to bring a bicycle helmet, and, coupled with some other things, I am starting to get nervous about space.  Plus, riots flare up in Guinea over gas prices and I suddenly am nauseous about my trip being cancelled again.  I ponder what I will do if that happens.  Can I wait another 3 or 4 months to leave?  I am basically out of money at this point and I’ve already been waiting nearly 6 months.  I decide against making a second trial pack, telling myself that I will just pack everything and then leave clothes behind if I don’t have space for them.  There is a nagging voice in my head saying this is a bad idea.
  • December 1st, 2008.  I leave, hopefully.  Fingers crossed, prayer candles lit, salt thrown over shoulder, appropriate sacrifices made, random chance of cancellation modeled (hey, I needed a science alternative to the superstition).

Quite the adventure eh?  And I haven’t even left yet.  So if you are reading this and thinking of applying or in the middle of applying, keep in mind that it really can take a year or more, so start early and don’t procrastinate.  A lot depends on how quickly you get all your medical paperwork in.  If you schedule everything right away you can be ready to go a lot sooner, but if you wait then the time just keeps growing.  Anecdotally it seems like invitations are usually for about 6 months after you are medically cleared.

More about the Peace Corps Budget and Currencies

2 comments By potterzot Filed in prejourney, thoughts November 19th, 2008 @ 11:55 am

My post about the Peace Corps budget yesterday got me thinking and so now I’m back to look at the issue in more detail.  I pulled the historical exchange rate between the US dollar and the Guinea Franc[1] and compared that to the estimated inflation rate from two sources: the CIA WorldFact Book and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)[2].

Nearly every time we look at economic numbers we have to take inflation into account, but I’ve rarely dealt with exchange rates so something in my premise might be off.  But it seems to me that if the number of Guinea Francs (GNF) you can buy with a US Dollar (USD) is decreasing at the same time that you have massive inflation in Guinea, you could see costs for the Peace Corps program soar.  On the other hand, if the exchange rate is favorable, that is, USD is buying more GNF, then it alleviates some of the inflation pain.

Enough talk.  The data:

Inflation (CIA) Inflation (IMF) %ch. Exhange Cost to PC (CIA) Cost to PC (IMF) Year
25% 35% 31% -5% 4% 2006
29% 23% -23% 52% 46% 2007
20% 13% 15% 5% -1% 2008

You might first notice that there is a significant discrepancy between the inflation data reported by the CIA and that reported by the IMF.  Ah the difficulties of determining inflation rates in small economies.  Its hard enough in the United States (consider the CPI and various issues with it (pdf link)).  Point is, we should take these numbers with a grain of salt.

But to summarize, the change in costs for the Peace Corps could have been anywhere from -5.6% to 4.1% in 2006.  Those are small changes that we can live with.  But in 2007 we can see that combined inflationary costs with the falling value of the USD relative to GNF results in an increase in costs of 46.1% to 52.2%.  That is a highly disturbing number.  Then in 2008 we have a net decrease in costs of 1.5%, a nice break from 2007.

And it is the 2007 number we should be concerned about.  Imagine that number repeated across many countries, some perhaps with lower inflation pressures, but most facing the same 2007 decline in dollar value as is seen here.  Is it any surprise the Peace Corps is having budget problems?

Worse, the actual cost in 2007 may be substantially higher.  I calculated the percent change in exchange rates by simply taking the first and last rate for the year.  But this disguises a huge drop in the value of the dollar that occurs in the spring and summer of 2007.  By the end of 2007 the dollar has recovered some, and so the percent change slightly masks the full loss.

And according to “Peace Corps Problems,” a post from a returned Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea, the Peace Corps is having trouble keeping staff because they can’t pay on pare with the mining companies.  Its not the first time I’ve heard of staff losses, though I don’t know if the of staff that resulted in my cancelled trip to Dominica is due to staff being hired away or another reason.

Still, the Peace Corps probably does not see its costs increasing in the same way that consumer prices are increasing, especially since living allowances for volunteers are capped at 10% (I have got to find my reference for that).  And the exchange rates I used are the interbank rates, and I don’t know whether the Peace Corps, as an agency of the US government, commands a better or worse rate.

Here is my spreadsheet with the exchange data.

FOOTNOTES
1. Onanda.com. http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory. ↑
2. Obtained from indexmundi.com. http://www.indexmundi.com/guinea/inflation_rate_(consumer_prices).html. ↑

Peace Corps Budget Problems

1 comment By potterzot Filed in prejourney, thoughts November 18th, 2008 @ 2:39 pm

If you haven’t read anything about the budget problems the Peace Corps is facing, you can start here.  President Bush promised to double the Peace Corps but he hasn’t done so.  Obama said he would double it as well, so here’s to hoping without much hope.

Anyway, the budget issues are doing more than limiting the number of volunteers and pushing back accepted volunteers to later dates, its also affecting Peace Corps volunteers who are in the field.  I’ve heard of training times being shortened from twelve to seven weeks, of money for language tutors being eliminated, and of cuts in the equipment that the Peace Corps provides.

A few days ago I received information on the first few days of my training schedule.  It was great to have, and it answered a lot of questions that I had.  But there were a few unexpected things as well.  First off, we are required to bring our own bicycle helmets.  This is a reversal of the Guinea welcome book which stated that bicycles and bicycle helmets will be provided to all volunteers[1].  Second, volunteers used to get French-English dictionaries from the Peace Corps, but we will need to bring our own.

Those are two small things, but I worry that small cuts indicate deeper financial issues.  Especially for volunteers in regions of high inflation (the inflation rate in Guinea was 23% in 2007[2]), inflation can substantially affect the purchasing power of their living allowance.  Living allowances for volunteers are limited to a 10% annual increase, larger increases must be approved by the Peace Corps administration (sorry, no source), something I don’t see as likely in the middle of a budget crunch.

Though I haven’t seen it referenced in articles on the Peace Corp’s budget issues, I suspect part of the reason for the Peace Corps sudden budget shortfall is the dramatic decline of the value of the dollar.  For an organization funded in dollars but operating overseas, this could have some significant impacts.  And that may be a good thing, because the value of the dollar has been on the rise again in the last few months (in fact, since the middle of 2007 relative to the Guinean Franc[3]).

All of this is not meant to frighten anyone (especially the parental units).  I just hope that Obama is willing to do what can be done to support the Peace Corps.

And long story short, now I have to buy some more stuff and I’m dangerously close to running out of money, not to mention packing space.

FOOTNOTES
1. Guinea Welcome Book.  Peace Corps. pg 32.  http://www.peacecorps.gov/welcomebooks/gnwb675.pdf↑
2. CIA World Factbook.  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gv.html. ↑
3. Yahoo! Finance.  http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=USD&to=GNF&amt=1&t=5y. ↑

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