Peace Corps volunteers settle at UCLA

Published: Wednesday, February 8, 1995

Bruins credit career goals, life changes to experiences in developing nations

By Jennifer K. Morita

Former volunteers say the Peace Corps changed their lives.

"I changed from an English degree to the public health field and it was definitely because of the health problems I saw when I was volunteering in Yemen," said Ann McMunn, a graduate student in the School of Public Health.

"I changed my whole career around because of the Peace Corps," she said.

Since 1961 some 140,000 Peace Corps volunteers have been serving in developing nations combining educational and occupation skills with volunteer service.

Volunteering for the Peace Corps includes benefits other than experience. Volunteers who have a Perkins Student Loan on or after July 1, 1987, will have 15 percent of their loan cancelled each year of service.

Ranked as having the 14th highest number of Peace Corps volunteers, UCLA boasts 30 alumni who were trained in 1994 and 150 volunteers sent overseas since 1988.

"UCLA is a great pool to choose from because of the huge amount of people," said Peace Corps recruiter Susan Ackerman. "UCLA people make great volunteers. They're interested in the third world concept from the people's perspective, the human side."

UCLA volunteers like McMunn and Elizabeth Ciemins saw the human side in the poverty and disease of the people they were sent to help.

"You see a lot of deformities and a lot of infant mortality," said McMunn, who served as an English teacher in the Middle Eastern country Yemen."You also see maternal death due to childbirth. Women in Yemen average 15 pregnancies in a lifetime so there are a lot of women dying because obviously they don't have the kind of facilities we do."

Being witness to the lives of people in developing nations changes volunteers' lives, Peace Corps officials said.

Ciemins volunteered at a dispensary in Niger, West Africa, where she helped traditional birth attendants, started a health education program and distributed vitamin A tablets and information.

"Dealing with malnutrition, I saw kids die on a weekly basis," said Ciemins, a graduate alumna in African studies and public health. "Then I come back here and see our supermarkets with tons of food and people throwing things away.

"It made me appreciate what I have," she said.

"Volunteers come back and perceive the world totally differently," said Ackerman, who is also a graduate student of the School of Public Health and a former Peace Corps volunteer.

Helping people who are unable to help themselves, teaching people about the United States are two Peace Corps goals.

"The third goal is to bring some of what you learn there back here," said Ciemins. "I think I gained more from it than I gave."

Four years after she finished her service, Ciemins returned to Niger, this time for a visit. When she arrived in the village she discovered that a man she'd hired to take care of her house was still working for the current volunteer.

"He thanked me profusely," Ciemins said. "Ever since I'd hired him his family had seen no hunger. I went there to teach a village about nutrition and while I was there a family ended up prospering because I had given one person a job.

"Being there does have an affect," she said.

Volunteers find serving difficult because their efforts to establish programs aren't always successful. Ciemins attempted to teach weaning procedures for women to use with their children, something Peace Corps volunteers had been trying to do for years.

"The women never did it," said Ciemins. "They never had and they would never change so it was pretty frustrating in that way."

The skills volunteers bring back also prove valuable, said UCLA Associate Professor Don Morisky.

"The Peace Corps provides you with a wealth of experience that you would never be able to obtain in other assignments," said Morisky, who served in the Philippines in 1968. "The level of responsibility is extremely important in terms of being able to utilize skills from undergraduate training programs.

"It was an excellent experience," Morisky said.

Learning to deal with different cultures is a skill Ciemins said she gained during her service and a skill she brought back with her and uses today as a research assistant in the sexually transmitted diseases department of Los Angeles County's department of health services.

"Living here in Los Angeles where there are so many different cultures, what I learned during my service in the Peace Corps helps me deal with those different cultures, especially in the public health field," said Ciemins.

"It's definitely the best thing I've ever done," she said.