This is part of a series in which I’ll describe our experience applying to the Peace Corps. It took 17 months from our initial contact with a recruiter to when we departed and there was a multitude of tasks involved, from the initial applications to online learning before we left.
A few months after being invited to serve in the Peace Corps, we started receiving additional tasks, online courses, and paperwork to submit. A medical portal exists to complete medical clearance, a HR (Human Resources) portal is for paperwork, and a LMS (Learning Management System) was created to house online courses and quizzes.
The HR portal contained forms to fill out related to personal and financial issues. We selected our next of kin and emergency contacts, filled out bank information for direct deposits, updated our address for W2s, and signed up for life insurance. This was one of the easiest parts of the process to complete!
We had to take a quiz on the Arabic alphabet prior to leaving for Morocco.
The LMS contained a handful of courses and additional tasks for us to complete. We had to submit new resumes in a format designated by the Peace Corps (to me, it wasn’t a true resume but more like bullet points answering a few questions/topics that they listed), an aspiration statement (different from the motivation statement that we submitted during our applications), and a headshot. For the headshots, we each took a picture of the other against a plain background and uploaded from our phones; these didn’t have to be professional headshots. The aspiration statement was a list of five questions that we had to answer:
- Three professional attributes that you plan to use during your Peace Corps service and how these will help you fulfill your aspirations and commitment to service.
- Identify two strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
- Your strategy for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.
- The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training and throughout your service to best serve your future community and project.
- How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.
We also had questionnaires to fill out related to language learning and family homestays, which will be used to match us with a family during our CBT (Community Based Training) and place us into a small group for language classes. Some invitees have experience with Arabic already and will be placed together, while those of us with no Arabic experience will be in beginner groups. We received links with materials to start learning Arabic and had to take a quiz on the alphabet. While we aren’t required to have any previous Arabic experience prior to leaving, they have asked us to become familiar with the alphabet so that we can jump right into learning words and phrases when we arrive.
Two online courses were required: one on core expectations of the Peace Corps and the other on safety and security. These were easy and very broad, giving us an overview of the PC and their safety requirements, but not getting into any specifics for our particular country and program. We will receive additional training on expectations and safety for Youth Development in Morocco during our first week or two of training in-country.
We had to complete these three courses, plus one more that was in progress, before leaving for staging.
I know these past few articles haven’t been very exciting to most of my followers and I don’t blame those who skipped past this series! In researching the Peace Corps, I hadn’t found a lot of information about the application or clearance processes, which is why I wanted to write these articles. I hope that these will help future applicants be prepared for the steps they will face in the process. If anyone is considering applying and would like more details than what I have given or copies of our motivation statements, resumes, aspiration statements, or other items we have submitted, please contact me and I would be more than happy to help! For all my regular readers, the next few articles I write will be much more interesting – describing our staging in Philadelphia, travel from the USA to Morocco, and starting our training.
To learn more about our Peace Corps application process, read the other posts in this series:
Good thing you know a thing or two about Arabic.
Haha, I know!! We had a meeting yesterday at the youth center and it was mostly in Arabic. Reminded me of some meetings I used to have at TW where I can only understand a small fraction of what’s being said!! It was good practice!