Amanda Denney, 2008 Auburn graduate in secondary English language arts, served in the Peace Corps for two years in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and is now dedicating her time to being a recruiter for Alabama’s international development program.
Denney will be stationed in Auburn, but will be a resource to people throughout the state of Alabama for those interested in entering the Peace Corps.
“This is a totally new program for the state of Alabama,” Denney said. “I’m really looking forward to meeting with people who are interested and demystifying it a little bit.”
During her time in the Peace Corps, Denney said she spent three months training to be an informal girls’ education volunteer so she could be an elementary school tutor.
“When I got to the village … tutoring isn’t really a thing they do there, so I think the people in the elementary school that I was paired with didn’t really know what to do with me, so we just did a girls’ club after school,” Denney said. “Then the high school principle noticed I had all this time on my hands and that I taught English, so he asked me to teach a few hours of English a week.”
Denney said aside from her tutoring, she was also a part of a community health and AIDS task force to raise awareness on HIV and AIDS, malaria and other smaller health factors, such as teaching children the importance of washing their hands.
“One of the things I found really rewarding when I was there was we had a youth camp called camp GLOW,” Denney said. “It stands for Guys and Girls Leading Our World, and it’s actually a camp that they do in a lot of Peace Corps countries.”
These camps are sometimes designed solely for girls, but hers was for both boys and girls, according to Denney.
“That was definitely challenging because it was weeklong, and it’s a sleep-away camp, so you had to coordinate all these kids getting out there from all these tiny villages,” Denney said. “A lot of them never traveled before.”
Denney said at the camp she focused on feeding the children and holding sessions about health, violence avoidance, gender and sex and reproductive health.
“That was definitely challenging, but a lot of fun,” Denney said.
Denney said when she was living in Auburn she had misconceptions about the Peace Corps.
“I had all of these ideas of what I would be doing and all of these ideas in mind of what a Peace Corps volunteer looks like, how a Peace Corps volunteer behaves and all that kind of stuff,” Denney said. “Then once you get out to your village and you start working, it’s nothing like you expect.”
Denney said she thinks anyone, within reason, can join the Peace Corps without being the “super-crunchy-granola-type.”
“Now that I’m home, I get so many people telling me, ‘Oh, it’s so amazing that you did that. I could never do anything like that,’” Denney said. “But I think probably the biggest piece of advice I could give is that if you have the desire to be a good volunteer, you definitely have it within you.”
Denney said she looks forward to speaking with people interested in the Peace Corps.
“I really want to empower people to see that they can absolutely take something like this on and do a really good job if you put forth the effort,” Denney said. “It’s not a joke. It’s hard, but I think Auburn graduates in particular have a lot to offer as far as being a Peace Corps volunteer.”
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