In March, Ayanna Williams ’08 will leave the hustle and bustle of Washington, D.C., where she works for a nonprofit organization, to embark on a mission that will take her to a small village in Morocco.
As Williams begins her assignment as a Peace Corps volunteer, she follows in the footsteps of hundreds Colgate alumni who have left their mark on some of the more remote areas of the world.
“I’m both excited and nervous,” she said. “I’ve been in contact with alumni who are on missions and they have been extremely helpful in letting me know what to expect.”
With 19 alumni currently serving in the Peace Corps, Colgate is the seventh highest producer of volunteers among small colleges and universities, according to a ranking released last week by the organization.
“This ranking tells us that Colgate students have the courage and determination that it takes to live and work in a developing country,” said B.J. Whetstine, a Peace Corps recruiter. “Colgate students truly have a volunteer spirit and a passion for helping others.”
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| Watch Ayanna Williams ’08 talk about her experience at Colgate in this video. |
Since the Peace Corps was founded in 1961, 319 Colgate alumni have joined the Peace Corps.
A mission lasts 27 months — three months of training and two years of service — and volunteers are placed deep within a culture, living side by side with those whom they serve.
Once on the ground in Morocco, Williams will serve as a rural community health educator, a position designed to address a range of community needs, including maternal health, sanitation issues, water quality, and early childhood development.
She credits her Colgate experience — particularly courses with a global focus as well as the emphasis on service-learning and study-abroad programs — for laying the foundation for her Peace Corps mission.
“When I took Colgate trips abroad, it became clear how important public health issues were.”
She was one of 12 students who spent three weeks in a remote Ugandan jungle
as part of an interdisciplinary extended study course that involved research on
rare mountain gorillas being conducted by Conservation Through Public Health, a grass-roots Uganda organization. Williams also studied in Australia for a semester.
“As I spent a short amount of time in other countries, I thought how immersing myself in other cultures would be very important to future career training,” Williams said. “I also want to be an international citizen and come to appreciate and understand how privileged we are here.”