Jodi Gornbein majored in Russian and received a bachelor's in English from the University of Colorado in 1983.
She never thought that someday she'd run a dairy cow project in the Peace Corps in Thailand. But she did. And she says she loved it and other volunteer experiences.Gornbein, an area representative in the Denver area office for the Peace Corps and whose father is a volunteer in the Dominican Republic, is in Utah through Thursday recruiting for the corps.
She's enthusiastic about her work, saying she has found that University of Utah and Utah State University students and community residents are anxious to learn more about the work of corps members, now serving in 94 countries.
"The Peace Corps opened things up to me. It brought things out of my personality. I used to be very shy. Because of my Peace Corps
experience, I don't tell myself anymore that I can't do anything. It teaches you to not be afraid of trying," Gornbein said during an interview Tuesday.
A recruiter for 31/2 years, she was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1985 to 1987 in northern Thailand where she taught English and agriculture in a junior high school in Chiang Rai.
"I did things in Thailand that I would never have the opportunity to do here. I got funding and (supervised) a dairy cow project," she said.
"Besides my Thai friends, I (most value) a sense of accomplishment" in the Peace Corps.
Gornbein and other volunteers assigned to Thailand were trained for three months in an abandoned refugee camp, located across the Mae Kong River from Laos in northeastern Thailand. Bathing out of an outside water trough and going through a wide variety of other experiences proved to be rugged at times - but well worth it, she said.
Gornbein said 18 people attended a Peace Corps film and question and answer session at the U. Monday night. Surprisingly, she said, 15 of that number came from the community. All expressed an interest in the corps. Some people might think that widespread interest in the organization is generated by a poor economy and people looking for jobs. But she said that isn't true.
"The process of getting into the Peace Corps takes about six months to a year. People out of work can't wait that long," she said, noting an increased interest in volunteering and people probing their ancestral backgrounds.
Recent developments in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union) have helped spark that interest.
The Peace Corps, which now has a planning team in the Baltic states, has been asked to send volunteers to several former Soviet republics, where they will teach, among other things, English and the basics of Western-style market economics.
The Peace Corps expects to send some 500 volunteers to the commonwealth by 1994, she said. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia should receive volunteers by next summer. Volunteers with skills in business management and English will probably be among those in greatest demand in the commonwealth.
Peace Corps assignments are for 27 months, including three months training in the host country. Volunteers who are chosen receive a monthly stipend, and their transportation housing, medical and dental expenses are paid. Volunteers receive a separate $200-a-month readjustment allowance ($5,400 after 27 months). Partial forgiveness or deferments are available for most student loans.