By KELLY K.
SPORS Staff Reporter of
THE WALL
STREET JOURNAL NORFOLK, Va. -- In an auditorium at historically black Norfolk
State University, recruiter Nikki Maxwell tries to dispel some old Peace Corps
myths. No, she tells a group of two dozen students, it's not true that
everybody takes cold-water baths, that there's no TV -- or that the Peace Corps
is the realm of white kids.
Ms.
Maxwell, a 26-year-old African American who served two years in the Peace Corps
in South Africa in the late 1990s, is facing a tough audience. "The idea of working after you graduate
without any pay is really hard to sell" to anyone, she says. But, she
adds, the pitch is even tougher among minority youth who often struggled to get
into college, are the first in their families to graduate and now have family
dreams to fulfill.
A
recruiting poster for the Peace Corps
Among her best prospects this morning is 22-year-old Elliott Horton, a
graduate of nearby historically black Hampton University who is thinking about
joining the Peace Corps to learn about international business. But Mr. Horton
concedes that "some of my friends kind of question why I would want to do
this when I could just be starting my own business." For years, the Peace Corps focused its
recruiting on idealistic white students who were eager to go on a goodwill
mission after graduation and for whom the promise of an overseas experience was
all the inducement they needed to join. About 86% of the group's 7,000-some
volunteers are white. Now, concerned
that the corps doesn't truly represent the increasingly multiethnic face of
America, the 41-year-old organization is trying to recruit more minorities. But
it isn't easy. Many new graduates face big college loans that need repayment,
and being able to defer them by joining the corps doesn't make them go away.
They also fret about the tiny cost-of-living stipends the Peace Corps offers,
about deferred career plans and about what their parents will think. "They may feel pressure to start
working [and] pay off their college loans," says Wilfredo Sauri, the Peace
Corps' diversity recruitment director. But equally important, he adds, new
graduates "may feel pressure to be back with their community."
Valencia
James, who taught health education in Madagascar after graduating from
historically black Morgan State University in Baltimore a few years ago,
recalls that "A lot of people asked me: 'How much do you get paid?' "
as a Peace Corp volunteer. "When I said, 'I volunteer,' they said, 'You're
crazy.' " The Peace Corps gave Ms. James her first chance to travel, but
as the first woman in her family to graduate, she adds, she was pestered about
her decision by friends and family.
Similarly,
Jody Brooks, who is setting up a training program for basketball coaches as
part of a Peace Corp program in Jamaica, says there is a lot of pressure from
the African-American community to plunge into a career after graduation. After
getting his master's degree in sports medicine from Oregon State University,
Mr. Brooks decided he wanted to extend his community service abroad but faced
some resistance from friends. "A lot of times, they don't feel they have
the luxury to go explore the world after school," he says.
To pitch
itself to minorities, the Peace Corps is tailoring its message to stress
benefits like foreign-language and skills training, a payment of about $6,000
at the end of a stint, international experience, full medical coverage and the
seven weeks of vacation that volunteers can use for travel abroad. Volunteers
also receive a no-fee passport and a monthly stipend of a few hundred dollars
to pay for food, housing and local transportation. The stipend is adjusted to
account for local living costs, so that volunteers in South Africa get about
$250 a month, while those on the Caribbean island of Antigua get about $600 a
month. Recruiters also talk up long-term benefits like a leg up in landing a
government job (about 25% of the staff in the federal government's
international development program are former volunteers). Since June, a diversity task force has
focused on sculpting a message that will attract minority recruits and their
families. "Recruiters need to talk about the professional opportunities
beneficial to parents that have invested a lot of money in their
children," says Gaddi Vasquez, the new director of the Peace Corps . And
increasingly, recruiters are visiting schools with big black and Hispanic
enrollments, placing ads – sometimes in foreign languages -- in ethnic newspapers,
and sending speakers to minority conferences.
At the
meeting at Norfolk State, students pepper Ms. Maxwell with questions. They want
to know how the Peace Corps works, what their odds of being accepted are (only
about one-third of applicants win spots), whether they will be placed in
primitive conditions -- and particularly, what will two years in the corps do
for them. "Has anybody gotten over there and decided they want to
leave?" one female student inquires. It happens quite frequently, Ms. Maxwell
replies, though the Peace Corps tries to weed out those applicants before they
actually get overseas. President Bush has called on the Peace Corps to double
in size by 2007 to 14,000 volunteers. But the new campaign is not just about
increasing the Peace Corps' numbers, Mr. Vasquez says. It's also about
representing America as a multiethnic country.
As she
launches into her pitch, Ms. Maxwell makes that point by telling her listeners
about the confusion in a classroom of black South African children when the
students first realized that she, a black woman, was American. They all watched "Bay watch" with
its story line of beach-front intrigue, she says, and "didn't know people
like me existed in this country."
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