Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and the College of Social Work Unite their Missions to Serve the Hispanic Community in South Carolina

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have the opportunity to use their skills and extensive training through Spanish/English interpretation at HABLA, an interpretation hotline for public service agencies that is administered by The Center for Child and Family Studies, College of Social Work, University of South Carolina. The Peace Corps Volunteer program is a selective process, and those who are chosen undergo life-changing experiences as they work towards the three goals of Peace Corps:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

USC also benefits from having these experienced individuals on campus. The Peace Corps fellows add a richness of global experience to their classrooms and help build cross-cultural awareness in the university community. They have developed critical thinking skills and compassion though their service in other cultures and countries. They understand commitment and hard work under less than ideal conditions, an advantage to any organization. These Returned Peace Corps Volunteers’ creative use of resources and gratification in service to others are assets to the university and to the community.

Victor Galdamez, Valerie Flores, Amy Mracna, and Jennifer Almeda, RPCVs who currently work at HABLA, have served in rural communities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and have returned to the United States to pursue graduate degrees and further their global education. Through HABLA, they continue to fulfill the need for trained men and women to promote understanding among cultures here in the US.

Victor Galdamez is getting his master’s of social work degree at USC and is an intern with Richland County School District Two. His is a returned Peace Corps volunteer who spent two years in the small town of Gokdepe, Turkmenistan, in Central Asia and then spent a month traveling in Turkey, Thailand, and India. He speaks English, Spanish, Russian, and Turkmen. He and his family are originally from El Salvador but moved to California when he was 15 years old. He graduated from the University of California at Riverside with a degree in political science and a concentration in international affairs.

Valerie Flores spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kattaqurqan, Uzbekistan, where she learned to speak Uzbek. She is now in the master’s of social work program at USC, and uses her Spanish, which she studied along with government at the University of Texas at Austin, as an HABLA interpreter. She is originally from El Paso, Texas, and has also worked for the Close Up Foundation in Washington, DC. At that position, she was responsible for recruiting students from five territories (California, New Mexico, Colorado, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) to participate in the foundation’s government studies program in DC.

Amy Mracna, a student in USC’s master’s of social work program, volunteered with the Peace Corps in the small rural community of El Aguacate in the Dominican Republic, where she was involved in environmental education outreach. She learned Spanish at Northern Arizona University, where she majored in environmental science. After her stint in the Peace Corps, she traveled in Central America and then worked for a year as a bilingual social worker for the Catholic Charities in Arizona. Amy was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved to Pittsburgh, where her family still lives, at age 12.

Jennifer Almeda, a doctoral student in political science, spent three years in Mali with the Peace Corps. During her time in the small village of Kinparana in eastern Mali, she helped set up micro-lending programs, and during the third year she worked with World Education in the northern city of Gao to increase the number of girls in school. Born in Japan and raised in New Jersey, Jennifer has traveled extensively, worked as a tour guide at the United Nations, and earned a joint master’s degree in international business and in diplomacy and international studies from Seton Hall in South Orange, New Jersey. Her goal is to be a university professor in the Philippines, where her father is originally from.