Understanding the Reasons Peace Corps Volunteers ET
During the Vietnam War, we Peace Corps civil engineers were supposed to act as technical support for local community development…
While most Volunteers successfully complete their assignments, some do leave before the designated end date. This blog explores the reasons behind Peace Corps Volunteers’ early departures and shed light on the challenges they may face during their service.
1. Personal Health and Safety Concerns:
One of the primary reasons Peace Corps volunteers may choose to leave their posts is due to personal health and safety concerns. Volunteers may experience physical or mental health issues that require medical attention beyond the capabilities of their host country. In some cases, the political situation in the country of service may deteriorate, exposing volunteers to heightened risks, such as civil unrest or natural disasters.
2. Incompatibility with the Host Community:
Cultural adjustment can be a significant challenge for Peace Corps volunteers. Cultural differences, language barriers, and unfamiliar living conditions may lead to feelings of isolation and frustration. Some volunteers may find it difficult to integrate into the host community, affecting their overall well-being and motivation to continue their service.
3. Professional and Career Development:
While volunteers join the Peace Corps with the intention of making a difference, they may also have long-term career aspirations. In certain cases, volunteers may leave their posts to pursue educational opportunities, internships, or job offers that align better with their professional goals. The Peace Corps experience can be a stepping stone, providing valuable skills and experiences that enhance career prospects.
4. Family and Personal Circumstances:
Volunteers often face challenges related to family and personal circumstances that may necessitate leaving their posts. These circumstances may include family emergencies, health issues of family members, or the need to be closer to loved ones. The emotional toll of being away from family and support networks can sometimes become overwhelming, leading to the decision to return home.
5. Dissatisfaction with the Peace Corps Experience:
While the Peace Corps offers a unique and rewarding experience, it may not be the right fit for everyone. Some volunteers may find that the realities of service do not align with their expectations or personal motivations. The demanding living conditions, limited resources, and bureaucratic challenges can contribute to a sense of disillusionment, prompting volunteers to cut short their assignments.
Conclusion:
The decision to leave a Peace Corps post is a complex and personal one. Peace Corps Volunteers may face a multitude of challenges that impact their physical and mental well-being, professional aspirations, and personal circumstances. It is important to acknowledge and support Volunteers in their journeys, regardless of whether they complete their assignments or choose to depart early. The experiences gained during their time with the Peace Corps can still have a profound impact on their lives and the communities they served.
Do you know of any other reason why a PCV in your group terminated early?
It would be helpful to know who prepared this material and whether it is based on research. Thanks.
Jeanne, I had the same question. I thought it was probably a “briefing paper” for a new potential employee at Peace Corps who knew nothing about the agency! It would also be good to have a time line with a graph showing ETS through the decades.
Having been involved with the Peace Corps as a Volunteer and staff member in India in the 1960’s, As country Director 1977-79 and
Associate Director in PC/Washington overseeing Recruitment/Placement and Special Services (the department that handled Early Terminations,s of all kinds—I know it ws always a a concern that the ET rate from beginning of training thru completion of Service was generally around 33% (at least half of which were during the pre-service training period). And there were many attempts/plans/strategies to lower the number of ETs with little success (at least until the early 1980’s–I am not familiar with the numbers since 1981).
Since then I have discovered that at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, The U. S Army Academy at West Point and at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, the attrition rate before the academy classes graduate is also roughly 33%!!!! At Annapolis and West Point the Naval and Army academies starts with a class of 1200 and generally graduate four years later about 800.
This despite the academies’ alleged highly selective entrance requirements (including endorsement by the candidate’s Member of Congress), the very challenging but controlled and homogeneous culture/ethics and pride of service environment, plus the participants are paid to be there, they have strong unit (squad, company, brigade) identity/ties upper class officers encouraging and supporting them every day/week and year and career military officers (Majors and Colonels or equivalent) mentoring them on-site full time (the mentoring/counseling offices are right in the dormitories).
Even with all of that, the academies, while admittedly turning out many excellent and much needed military officers, their ET rate is 33% by the time a class reaches graduation. That gives an interesting perspective on Peace Corps’ similar early termination rate of 30+ percent from entry to close of service.
A final thought, my guess is the cost incurred for each recruit that early terminates at the military academies is at least ten times that of Peace Corps Volunteers.
These appear to be right on target with what I know, but I am not an expert. Maybe no one is. This is not a topic often discussed. Thank you for giving some insight to the situations. Another one I know of first hand is political unrest (due to becoming independent form Great Britain). But personal danger falls into that category. I wonder how much Peace Corps knows about the ETs..?
I’ve had the opportunity to work for the Peace Corps in six different decades and in a number of positions during that time I was directly engaged with ET issues discussions. I find the categories described to align with what I had seen from the data available at the time. Of course there are other unique outliers such as the trainee who only wanted to learn a language during PST to pass a graduate school requirement to leave a day before his Volunteer service began!
One of the issues I had raised, however, was the use of an “all” or “less” category dichotomy as misleading. Accumulative months of service is a much better indicator of relevant service than the dichotomy. A number of PCVs leave a month or so early to go back to graduate school, so discounting their 23 months of service as an ET misrepresents their service. The same for most of the categories described in this article.
This is a very good discussion by experienced staff. I hope it continues. It does raise some questions for me:
The article describes only reasons why Volunteers or Trainees would choose to leave. It does
not appear to consider the involuntary early terminations. I wonder if those involuntary terminations are included in the 33% rate.
” Attrition is the departure of employees from the organization for any reason (voluntary or involuntary)”
During the early days of Peace Corps, there was a Selection process. Trainees were subject to constant evaluation and many were found not to be appropriate for Peace Corps service. Their departures were not voluntary. I believe that the formal selection proces with psychologists and selection boards was discontinued in the late 60s. I believe it was decided it had no real bearing on predicting success. However, Peace Corps continues to reserve the right to terminate Volunteers in-country.
I also presume that military academies also had procedures for eliminating cadets who were not meeting standards.
In the very early days PC was a sink or swim organization. Volunteers sometimes had to find jobs once in the host countries. Soon training and programming caught up, and V’s had a shot at predictable jobs. However, many US training sites tried to determine who would make successful V’s, a fool’s errand. In the process they deselected many T’s and unwittingly damaged group morale that is so often necessary to prevent early field terminations. BUT, over the years poor staff leadership, poor staff support, poor medical support, and especially poor support of harassed and assaulted female V’s are all important contributing factors that have long plagued the PC, leading to many very unhappy and unfortunate early terminations. Some early terminations have been firings by staff of V’s who committed various offenses or who were unwilling to give reasonable effort to their work. Some staff took the time and expended the effort to counsel struggling V’s and help them find strategies to continue their service with confidence and optimism. Kudos to them.
Will Newman, PCV/Nepal, APCD/Nepal, CDO/PCW, CD/Nepal
Thank you so much for these important facts.
Thank you for asking! Yes, LOVE. We were all young once. You can read all about it in South of the Frontera: A Peace Corps Memoir..
I was a PCV in South Korea from 1980 to 1981, when the program there abruptly ended. I was also country director in Ethiopia from 2012 to 2014. At the time, Peace Corps Ethiopia became one of the largest programs in Africa.
The reasons for ETs described in the article are generally on target. Here are a few of my own observations:
– Few of my PCV’s ET’d due to physical hardship.
– Several LGBTQ+ PCVs left because even hinting at their sexual identities could have very negative consequences, including bodily harm, in Ethiopia.
– Sexual harassment and assault were significant problems in Ethiopia, and several female PCVs left early due to that.
– Several PCVs had community integration problems, due in no small part to daily access to the internet. They had one foot in Ethiopia and the other at home with family and friends. PCVs in remote sites without internet access we’re often much happier and more productive.
– And then the perennial difficulty in finding useful work in communities that often couldn’t fathom why they were dare. Some PCVs were far more resourceful and self-motivated in this regard.
Whenever a PCV advised us that they were considering ET’ing, I spent a lot of time speaking with them and trying to figure out if there was something we could develop together to address their issues. Sometimes there was, but more often they had already made their decision.
I find the one foot at home an interesting thought. It was one I wondered about when I returned to Ethiopia after 50 years in 2019. Our communication with home in the sixties was aerograms and a rare phone call from the telecommunications office. There were no visits home though family from home could visit us.
Our group also had one ET due to ethics. It was during the time of Vietnam and I believe he felt that the draft deferment was unethical and returned home to put in his papers as a conscientious objector.
Interesting discussion!
This may be of interest: From 2011 to 2017 I ran a program in Michigan that I called the Peace Corps Applicant Mentoring Program to help prepare people for service as PCVs. About 240 mentees participated, each of whom I matched with a recently returned PCV mentor. Mentees included those who had not yet decided whether to apply, those who were in the process of applying, and those who had been accepted. We mentored them throughout the experience–from giving them the kind of information based on experience that would help them decide whether PC was for them to preparing them for the interview to remaining in touch throughout their PC service, if the mentee chose. Of the 240 mentees, at least 80 actually served as PCVs; I know of only one mentee who was not accepted. While the numbers are small, I believe we can still draw the inference that it was our program of intensive preparation that resulted in an ET attrition rate of under 10%, and that included at least one PCV who was medically evacuated. Incidentally, the program had an additional effect in that it helped recently returned PCVs deal with the culture shock of return by pairing them with people who were eager to hear about their experiences.
Jeanne Paul, Brazil ’64-’66, PC HQ ’66-’69
Fascinating program! Thank you for all your efforts.
Thank you. The feedback from mentees who served as PCVs was extraordinary. Many felt that their mentors gave them the kind of insights that allowed them to persevere when things got especially tough. I am happy to report that I have (finally!) found an RPCV who is perfectly cut out to restart the program. He had served as a mentor to several mentees in the program and has an excellent feel for what is needed.
I was part of Ethiopia One PCVs– September 1962 to July 1964.
We were more than 285 Volunteers, mostly secondary school teachers, who had trained at Georgetown University and would teach elementary and secondary schools throughout Ethiopia and Eritrea.
When we arrived in-country on a handful of DC-3 from Europe, we were houses in two dormitories of Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa.
It was there, within hours of arrival, that a young woman PCV sought out Harris Wofford, our Director, and said she wanted to go home.
The woman was from Pennsylvania, 23, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, with her B.A. in creative writing. The Peace Corps Staff immediately attempted to change her mind. The Ambassador’s wife even invited her to stay with her family at the Embassy so she could adjust to Africa. The woman lasted 5 days in-country.
However, in our two years with the first Peace Corps Volunteers to the Empire, we lost only 2 women because they were pregnant and wanted to give birth in America. Two other PCVs left due to serious illness, and another 3-4 others gave up for one reason or another after their first year of teaching. PCVs who ETed wasn’t an issue for Ethiopia One.
And 3 PCVs extended for a third years, going home for the summer, returning in the fall of ’64.
Ethiopia One Peace Corps Volunteers, in my opinion, proved just how good a job Peace Corps Volunteers can do overseas.
India III started training with 75 During training in Puerto Rico and the U of Minnesota 8 chose to leave, 25 were deselected, 42 went to India (1963-65) and 41 completed their service.
During the Vietnam War, we Peace Corps civil engineers were supposed to act as technical support for local community development department workers in Northeast Thailand. According to material submitted by Peace Corps to the Congressional foreign affairs committee in February of 1974, we actually supervised the construction of six hundred dams and spillways during the two-years while I was a volunteer.
But the truth on the ground was quite different. In fact, Ambassador Leonard Unger had decided volunteers should not work on village projects at all for fear of possible confrontations between volunteers and Communist insurgents. He wanted just TEFL volunteers in towns and cities. As the Thailand PC Director later told me, actually told my father but in my presence, I’d been in all the wrong places ever since I’d arrived in Thailand.
We all loved Thailand. Or most of us did. And statistically our Community Development Department program was probably successful because the extended man-hours of volunteers who stayed beyond two years offset the reduced manhours of early terminating volunteers, and that meant that the net attrition rate of volunteers was actually lower than the attrition rate of trainees. Peace Corps and Action Directors were using the term “man-hours” in those days when making their presentations at the Peace Corps Congressional Hearings. It didn’t matter what we were doing or didn’t do just as long as we stayed because, according to their calculations, the longer each trained volunteers stayed incounry, the greater the man-hours of volunteer service per hour of training. That is, they (they meaning the Peace Corps and Action Directors during the Action years) were making Peace Corps more efficient by increasing Peace Corps man-hours overseas while reducing training costs. They became efficiency experts. It’s in the Congressional Record from the PC hearings.
The best thing I might have done in the Peace Corps, or after the CIA was outed in my area which was right after I finally quit, was to go back to Thailland and register my complaint. II don’t know if I did any good, but I don’t think the /embassy red-listed districts after Ambassador Unger left, and he left just about when I left . Or maybe a month before. And, after another year, Peace Corps found a different agency to sponsor our program so projects could actually be funded.