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Patricia: We’re celebrating 50 years of Peace Corps service. And in those 50 years,
more than 200,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps.
It’s a program that allows people from the United States to volunteer 2 years of their
lives to live in another country. And when they live and work in another country they
work side by side with the people who live there. And the person from the United States
usually brings some technical skills to help develop some industry or education or business
in some way in the country in which they serve.
Elizabeth: My name is Elizabeth Spellman. I'm a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer
from Zambia where I served as a health volunteer from February 2008 until May 2011.
So in front of me we have a pedal powered maize sheller and what this is, it’s a simple
kit that you can attach to your bike. The way they farm maize, is they dry it in the
fields and then they collect it. And once they do that, they have to take these kernels
off, and the way they do that traditionally is with their thumbs.
All right, paddle forward.
Something like this, again, 10 to 20 times faster than the traditional method and can
save up to 800 work hours per year.
Laura: My name is Laura Cutner and I served in Guatemala from 2007-2010.
When I first arrived in my site, there was the frame of two classrooms they wanted to
finish. And one day I realized that the bottle that I was drinking was the exact width of
this frame.
Basically what you do is you stuff a bottle, a 20-milliliter bottle that's full of plastic,
all plastic trash – plastic bags, chip wrappers, wherever it's not paper and not cardboard.
And you stuff it really, really full. It has to be really full, kind of like an eco-brick
is what it's called. And then you have a frame that you build and this serves as just like
the stuffing of a wall, which is called insulation. And this is a wonderful way to teach about
the environment because we have a lot of plastic that we have wasted.
Narrator: Play the Peace Corps Challenge Game and find out what it’s like to be a Peace
Corps volunteer.
Bring different countries to your classroom through Peace Corps’ World Wise Schools.
For more information about other government careers, go to Kids.gov.