5 Ways Blogging Changed Our Peace Corps Service

When my Uncle did the Peace Corps in the 70’s, my Mom would record messages for him on tape and wait months to receive his response in the mail. Times have really changed! These days, many Peace Corps Volunteers are just as connected by phone and internet as they would be in the States. While this new digital age certainly has many implications for Peace Corps that can be good and bad, we found the ability to keep a blog during Peace Corps to be particularly rewarding.

Here are some of the key ways that keeping a blog improved our Peace Corps experience:

1. Reflection and Processing

One of the benefits of writing out my thoughts during Peace Corps was that it required me to reflect and process what I was experiencing. To live out the ups and downs and find myself in so many new and unusual (or uncomfortable) situations could be mentally, emotionally, and physically taxing.

Termed “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” there is a lot to process when you’re placed in a developing country for two years: leaving home, starting a new way of life, a new culture, a new group of friends, a new job description, new co-workers, confronting poverty, feeling incompetent with the language… Writing reflectively can help overcome these challenges.

Over our two years in Peace Corps Jamaica, I was also developing a deeper understanding of humanity and this world we live in, and it helped me to at least try and put these new realizations into coherent sentences.

2. A valid sense of accomplishment

Not every volunteer leaves their two years with a nice, big, completed project like a building a well in a community that had no water. In fact, even though I consider the work I did in Peace Corps to have been mostly successful, I know I’m not alone when I say that the cross-cultural exchange and relationships we built in our community were the most impactful part of my service.

Fortunately, Peace Corps recognizes that service is not all about your job. Two of Peace Corps’s three core goals are about bridging cultures: to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served and to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. This means that blogging to promote cross-cultural understanding is a valid way to achieve success in Peace Corps.

This is good news, because the success of Peace Corps work projects are often outside of the Volunteer’s control. So on those days when the rain turns all the roads to mud swamps and no one shows up for your meetings and you can’t even get laundry done… if you publish one blog post, at least that’s one win for the day!

3. Taking friends and family along on the journey

We kept a blog before Peace Corps, but it never got quite the attention as it did when we were living and serving in Jamaica. We had a captive and curious audience who were eager to get updates from our “exotic” life abroad. Some of them wouldn’t dare set foot in our host country – others would have loved to visit but couldn’t for one reason or another.

With a blog, you can take all of these people – and more – along on your journey.

If you’re strapped for time or can’t afford the long-distance minutes to call everyone, a blog is one way to communicate with everyone at once. No longer are you the only one who gets to benefit from the new knowledge and growth that this experience brings. And when you get home, at least a few more people will have a better understanding of what you’ve been up to while you were away.

4. A way to document memories

Peace Corps is full of precious and unique memories. Our blog was primarily useful for other people while we were in Peace Corps. But now that we’re done, it’s a great way to look back on all that we did and remember the ups and downs. 

To this day, we go back through our old blog posts to find recipes we used, or recall the name of someone we met, or just to reminisce.

5. Developing useful online skills

Perhaps the biggest and most unexpected benefit of keeping our blog was that it opened doors for us to continue the life we’ve always dreamed of.

By using our blog as a testing ground, we learned valuable online skills. We had our first client lined up as soon as our service ended – a non-profit we had interacted with in Jamaica. And we had soon built a freelance web services business that allows us to work online from anywhere in the world.

For anyone who might go into journalism, copywriting, photography, video, social media, website services, etc., a blog is a great starting ground; and the Peace Corps experience provides plenty of content to practice with.

If done well, your blog can become a portfolio of your work. By taking your blog seriously, being consistent and intentional, and constantly working to improve, you can develop valuable skills for a career or self-employment.

The Ultimate Guide to Awesome, Meaningful Blog Posts While Living or Traveling Abroad

UDPATE: The resources on this page have moved to BloggingAbroad.org.

You’re abroad having wonderful, enriching, challenging, and crazy cross-cultural experiences, meanwhile your friends and family back home are missing out. What can you do to make sure you’re not the only one benefiting from this life-changing opportunity? How can you share what you’re learning and experiencing  in a way that will keep people at home interested?

Whether you’re volunteering (like Peace Corps), living abroad for other reasons, or simply traveling through a new culture, a blog can be a great platform to draw people in. Not everyone can do what you’re doing, but they can benefit from the impact your experience has on your life … if you share it.

We originally helped create a blog post idea back when we were Peace Corps Volunteers sharing about our host country to family and friends. Peace Corps headquarters brought us together with a few of the top Peace Corps Volunteer bloggers from around the world to brainstorm ways Volunteers could better use technology as a tool for promoting cross-cultural understanding. Shout out to Jessica (Mexico), Sara (Thailand), Josh and Jen (Ethiopia)!

We’ve revamped some of our original ideas to apply not just to Peace Corps bloggers but anyone wanting to use their blog to promote cross-cultural understanding and global citizenship.

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Blog Basics

The necessary elements for increasing your readership and making an impact with your words are important regardless of your blog’s topic. If you’re just starting out, these foundational guidelines will get you pointed in the right direction. If you’ve been blogging for a while already, they can help you hone your craft.

These resources have moved to BloggingAbroad.org

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Blog post idea bank

We all need a little inspiration from time to time, especially when you get accustomed to your life abroad and things aren’t as new and exciting anymore. To keep your readers engaged, You need fresh ideas and creative ways to mix things up on your blog. That’s why we put this idea bank together. Feel free to contact us with your own brilliant ideas that we can add to the list!

If you’re curious about our Peace Corps experience in Jamaica, you can see those archived posts on our personal blog.