MANILA, Philippines — Exactly on the day the Peace Corps was celebrating its 50th anniversary last March 1, 27-year-old-volunteer Rachel Saler received the good news. One of her students, Marivic Reparo of Bago City in Negros Occidental, had just obtained a college scholarship, courtesy of the Peace Corps.

"Something just happened today," an ecstatic Saler told Manila Bulletin in an interview at the sidelines of the celebrations in Makati City. "One of my students, she’s an out of school youth so she finished high school but her family could not pay for her to go on to college. And so today, March 1, the organizer called me and told me that she received a college scholarship."

"I started crying,” Saler said. She called Reparo, who had already been told about her scholarship.

“We were both crying on the phone and she really can’t say anything. She was speechless. She now has a four- year college scholarship," added Saler, a member of the 267th batch of the Peace Corps in the Philippines.

Thanks in part to Peace Corps and the Bago City government, the Norwich, Vermont, native said that above anything else she learned as a Corps volunteer, "when I see a student being rewarded with four years of furthering her education, it is indeed uplifting."

She arrived in the Philippines on August 2, 2008, her first assignment for the Peace Corps.

"I knew always wanted to become a Peace Corps (volunteer) since I was in high school," Saler said.

A social worker by profession, with a masters in Social Work from Syracuse University in New York, Saler said the Peace Corps "matched up" with her personal goal, her own vision and mission in life.

"I have a good job in New York City, I have an apartment, I have my friends, I have my family. I don’t know if I would say I sacrificed it because I wanted to grow. I knew I needed to leave my own country, my own comfort zone, to expand and learn new things," she said.

Saler was working as a counselor with At Risk Youth in the US before signing up with the Peace Corps.

She said her area in New York has almost the same number of out of school youth as in Bago, here where they are also very vulnerable to crime and unemployment.

Saler said a lot of what she is doing here is very much like in New York, despite the difference in cultures.

"I'm learning different approaches and new strategies when it comes to youth development. The students are really different. Here when you walk into the classroom they would say 'good morning ma'am.'
They're very welcoming and they're very friendly. In New York it was very different. It's kind of a tough-guy mentality. Its’ nice to go to work when it feels like the students want to learn," Saler said.

She had always wanted to travel and learn about new cultures and new languages and that’s exactly what the Peace Corps provided.

“Two years ago I went through the application process and I found out that I was assigned to the Philippines," Saler said.

She was assigned in Bago City in Negros Occidental at the City Social Welfare and Development Office representing the Child, Youth and Family Sector.

It didn’t take long for her to blend in. Saler now speaks fluent Ilonggo, but has not acquired a taste for batchoy, one of Iloilo's favorite dishes.

Saler now focuses on livelihood projects for women.

Like all Peace Corps volunteers, Saler has her share of major challenges as she tried to adjust to life in her assigned community.

"I had to figure out how to fit into the culture and of course I had to get used to the food, the climate and the language. I mean there were so many new things when I got here," she said.

But the biggest challenge she said is the difference between work environment in Bago and New York City.

"I worked in New York City where it’s very fast paced, and when I came to Bago City things happened a little bit slower,” Saler said.

It took her more than a year "to truly feel that I could accomplish what I want to accomplish and that is to understand the culture."

Many volunteers, according to her, feel frustrated “because they put a lot of pressure on themselves.”

"We are very goal-oriented types of people so we want to see outcomes,” she said. “So if I started a project and my students are not coming or maybe my co-worker was late I sometimes feel frustrated.
But as I learned more about the culture and how things really operate here, those little things I could brush aside now.”

Saler said not everybody is cut up to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Her younger brother applied and was accepted to the Corps but decided later that it wasn’t for him.

"It can be lonely at times, you can feel really isolated from your family and friends. It’s not an experience for everyone but I do wish more Americans, more people could have an experience like I have had," she said.

She has only gone home to the US only twice. During those times she showed her family pictures of her life in the Philippine countryside, and told them many stories.

"It's hard for them to visualize and understand what I do here because many Americans only have a sense of what a third world country looks like. They have their ideas but not really realities so I've been able to go back there and tell them this is what the culture is like, this is where I live and give them a better understanding of what the Philippines is all about," she said.

Among her students, Reparo really stood out and so she spent a lot of time with her outside the class, working with her.

Last year, when the Peace Corps had its annual presentation in Manila, Saler took Reparo with her.

"In front of the US ambassador and many important stakeholders, she gave her testimony and that was really a proud moment for me. Afterwards I wound up nominating her for a Peace Corps scholarship. There’s an alumni foundation that pays for college scholarships," Saler said.

More than 200 students have benefitted from the life skills class she taught in Bago, she said. The youth camp class she organized had more than 1,000 youths all the span of just two years.

Saler has decided to extend her tour of duty in the Philippines until December 2011.

"Honestly, I'm truly happy here. I love this culture, I love my work, I love the people and I wasn’t ready to go. I thought I have more to learn," she said.

But like all Peace Corps volunteers, she has to face the realities in life, particularly the financial side of it.

"I want to stay here but I realize that I have many financial responsibilities in America so I can't actually continue to be a volunteer for the rest of my life,” she said.

Among her options is applying for a staff job in the Peace Corps. “When I get back I’ll be looking for government jobs, NGOs, international development work. Some kind of giving myself different options," Saler said.

Since 1961, Peace Corps volunteers have served in 139 countries, work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation.

The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries.

From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.

Peace Corps Philippines is the second oldest Peace Corps program in the world, with Ghana being the first. Over 8,000 volunteers have served in the Philippines since 1961, the most of any Peace Corps Program.

At present there are more than 200 volunteers hosted by Filipinos all over Luzon and Visayas. This represents an 80 percent increase, from just 120 volunteers a year ago.