Peace Corps Fellow interning at IVCC
By Amanda Gapinski
For 38 years the Peace Corps has offered individuals who wish to make a difference the opportunity to go the distance.
One return volunteer who spent three and a half years in Paraguay is now serving an internship at IVCC. Candice Embling is earning a graduate degree in community and economic development through a program at ISU that recruits return Peace Corp volunteers.
Embling left for Paraguay just a few months after she graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1993 with a degree in economics. She was hardly prepared for the culture change, but was well aware that Paraguay would be her home for two years.
"I couldn't even say 'my name is Candice,'" Embling said. "I figured I'd learn (the language) when I got there."
Luckily, the training program for new Peace Corp volunteers in Paraguay included four hours of intense language training each day. It was called Mission Impossible, and it included regularly assigned group activities that taught new volunteers how to interact with the people there.
"A group of us were given a set of questions and an address and told to survey people," Embling said. "We had no idea where the town was, or how to translate the questions.
"It wasn't like a hand-holding kind of thing. It was difficult."
Embling completed her training and was sent to the town of Yaguaron in the department of Paraguari. She was involved in a cooperative loan project and a budget and blueprint committee shortly after she arrived.
Their efforts were focused on lending money to families that needed to improve parts of their homes. Embling said that most of the loans went to people who had a latrine and needed a bathroom or for the addition of a kitchen.
"Paraguay is fairly wealthy in comparison to other parts of the world," she said. "There are schools, restrooms, water, and they have more electricity than they know what to do with."
The housing projects she was working on were terminated because of funding, though, so Embling started to assist with a women's group and mother's club. There were many activities including soy cooking and nutrition projects.
"Soy is only ten cents a pound in that region," Embling said, "so the women made soy coffee, soy milk, soy flour, and tortillas out of leftover soy.
"I loved the soy project. It was a lot of fun."
Embling volunteered at the local schools and worked on a summer school world map project with fifth and sixth graders and self-esteem workshops at the high schools.
A garden project she did with special education classes became challenging because of a drought. It was hard to keep up, she said, because they had to transfer water to the garden in buckets.
"We had plenty of tomatoes though," she said. "We just didn't have anything else."
She had just gotten to know the people of Yaguaron when her two-year service was nearly completed. She was granted a rarely given third-year extension, and she moved into a coordinator position at the capital.
"The capital was completely different," she said. "There were soccer games and concerts, things to do."
In October 1997, Embling returned to her home in Wisconsin to continue her education with only memories and lessons learned in Paraguay.
"Before the Peace Corp, you think you are invincible, that you can do anything in the world," she said. "There were low points in Paraguay that made me more realistic.
"If you can accept challenge, you will be successful, and you'll be surprised where your boundaries really. You are able to do more than you thought."
The Apache April 29, 1999