Are you interested in serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, but need additional experience to strengthen your application? The Peace Corps is partnering with organizations in the U.S. to help prepare Volunteers to support community projects around the world.
AmeriCorps
AmeriCorps is an opportunity to make a big difference in your life and in the lives of those around you. It's a chance to apply your skills and ideals toward helping others and meeting critical needs in the community.
Each year, AmeriCorps offers 75,000 opportunities for adults of all ages and backgrounds to serve in the U.S. through a network of partnerships with local and national nonprofit groups. Whether your service makes a community safer, gives a child a second chance, or helps protect the environment, you'll be getting things done as an AmeriCorps member.
The skills that AmeriCorps members gain during their service can be directly applicable to Peace Corps service.
America's Service Commissions (ASC) is a non-partisan, nonprofit trade association representing and promoting the 53 governor-appointed state service commissions who fund and support more than 650 AmeriCorps programs and 33,000 AmeriCorps members annually.
If you want to be a more competitive Peace Corps applicant, ASC can help connect you to a wide range of AmeriCorps programs across the country where you can become an AmeriCorps member or a community volunteer supporting AmeriCorps projects. AmeriCorps members help address local community needs in the areas of health, education, economic opportunity, clean energy, and the environment, which align with Peace Corps volunteer assignments throughout the world.
If you want to work in youth development as a Peace Corps Volunteer, you can become a more competitive applicant by serving as a City Year Corps AmeriCorps member.
City Year was founded in 1988 with the belief that young people can change the world in a positive way. It provides those ages 17 to 24 a year of full-time service, giving them skills and opportunities to change the world. As tutors, mentors, and role models, these diverse groups of leaders make a difference in the lives of children and transform schools and neighborhoods. City Year, a proud member of AmeriCorps, engages 1,500 members a year and operates in 19 cities in the U.S. City Year alumni are leaders for life, working as business leaders, educators, nonprofit managers, and public servants.
In addition to offering opportunities to be an AmeriCorps member, City Year may also be able to help you connect to a shorter term community volunteer assignment with one of its programs. These short term volunteer opportunities within the City Year program are open to people of all ages and could strengthen your Peace Corps application.
If you want to serve in the environment and/or youth development sectors as a Peace Corps Volunteer, you can become a more competitive applicant by serving as a Corpsmember in a Service or Conservation Corps.
The Corps Network represents service and conservation programs that annually enroll more than 29,000 young men and women. The Corps Network - inheritor of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps legacy - engages young men and women in visible and valued public work. Members revitalize communities, prepare young people for responsible productive lives, build civic spirit through service, and preserve and restore the environment.
National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC)
If you want to work in community health or health education as a Peace Corps Volunteer, you can become a more competitive applicant by serving as a Community HealthCorps AmeriCorps member.
Community HealthCorps is the largest health-focused national AmeriCorps program and promotes health care for America's underserved, while developing tomorrow's health care work force. More than 650 Community HealthCorps members serve each year through 40 partner organizations across 19 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Learn more about tomorrow's health care work force.
If you want to work in education as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Teach For America is excellent preparation. TFA alumni are very competitive Peace Corps applicants.
Teach For America alumni who have taught in schools in low-income communities in the United States are very competitive Peace Corps applicants. Teach For America will encourage its alumni to consider serving in communities abroad with the Peace Corps. Currently more than 8,200 Teach For America teachers serve in 39 urban and rural communities and impact 500,000 students every year. Teach For America has more than 20,000 alumni.
