Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Celebration in San Diego

I volunteered to help out at the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Celebration held on Friday April 15, 2011 at UCSD (University of California San Diego). I figured this would give me another chance to talk to returned Peace Corps volunteers, a little more volunteer experience before leaving on my big adventure, and a way to honor and thank the Peace Corps for my opportunity to serve in Armenia. More info on the schedule of events can be found here.

I got this Peace Corps 50th Anniversary T-shirt for volunteering at the celebration event held at UCSD.

As I didn’t have a vehicle, I got a ride with the UCSD Peace Corps recruiter, Diana Gomez. We got there really early, because she had to get everything set up. So I chipped right in and helped out with that, too—hanging posters and setting out refreshments in the VIP lounge.

The celebration was held in two parts: First there was a speaking portion, with keynote speaker Meg Garlinghouse. Her bio is the following:

Currently the Vice President of Employment Branding and Community for LinkedIn, has over 20 years of experience working at the intersection of nonprofits and corporations, developing strategic and mutually beneficial partnerships. Her particular expertise is in leveraging media and technology to meet the marketing, communications and brand goals of respective clients and she has a passion for developing innovative social campaigns that have a business benefit. Prior to LinkedIn, Meg worked at Yahoo! where she was the Senior Director of Yahoo! for Good. She has also worked at the World Bank and The Asia Foundation. Meg served as a Rural Development Volunteer for the United States Peace Corps in the country of Niger from 1989-1992. She has a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Political and Economic Development and a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in Public Policy.

I was excited to hear her speak.

The second portion was a lunch and celebration, which included a cultural exhibit contest, some performances, and a cake cutting.

My official duties for the day as told to me in several emails, weeks in advance, were….. collect ballots. That’s it. I was originally slated to also announce the winner of the cultural exhibition, but that duty was reassigned in the days leading up to the celebration.

Volunteers decorated tables with unique cultural items. Spectators then voted on their favorite table. *Photo from SDPCA newsletter.

Sounds easy, right? It was a lot more confusing than it seems at first.

After I finished setting out refreshments, I was recruited to help fold anniversary t-shirts with some other volunteers. Then I was brought to the International Center to show exhibitors to their tables, so they could set up their displays. I was given a manila folder with names and parking passes and told to give them to the exhibitors. But the people I needed to give the passes to weren’t there, and other exhibitors who weren’t on my list were setting up tables.

Then they started asking me where they were supposed to park. I had no idea; I had only been to UCSD one other time, and I took the bus there.  Then I realized that the ballots had a few typos and were missing two exhibitors. As I brought the matter up to one of the organizers, she told me and another volunteer to hand-write the missing information.

As the morning progressed, it quickly became apparent that none of the volunteers were very sure what was going on. We had each only received a tiny bit of information, and from that, had to piece together the big picture of the event, in order to figure out where we were needed and when we had to be there.

There were a lot of volunteers helping out at the event. Here are some of them, who had time to pose for a picture. *Photo from SDPCA newsletter.

The main speaking event started soon after I took a seat in the “Horizon Room.” But before the keynote speaker had come to the front, I realized I was supposed to be at the International Center getting ready to hand out ballots. So, unfortunately, I didn’t get to listen to what she had to say. (Such is the life of a volunteer; you don’t get to experience the event the same way that the guests do.)

Anyway, eventually everything got sorted out, the speaking portion finished, and people started streaming into the cultural center for lunch, and to look at the cultural exhibits and talk to the exhibitors. The International Center has a Friday International Cafe, which is often just a special lunch menu. But this particular Friday was our 50th celebration, so there was more going on than some of the “regular” students were used to.

I passed out ballots to everyone (even though some didn’t seem to know what was going on—they just wanted lunch), and collected as many as I could.

People enjoyed hearing about the different countries during the cultural portion of the Peace Corps Anniversary Celebration. *Photo from SDPCA newsletter.

I managed to get my own lunch and enjoy a portion of the performances. A drumming group called Asayake Taiko was very entertaining.

The following is one of their YouTube videos, since I did not take my own video.

Then I had to help count ballots, and missed the remainder of the events. When it was all over, I wished I had taken pictures. So most of the pictures in this post are taken from the San Diego Peace Corps Association newsletter.

Overall, the event was well-attended and enjoyed. Even though the morning had started out with so much confusion for me, a lot of people thanked me for my help, and I was glad I had been there to help out.