My Greatest Failure in Peace Corps… Until Now

Within AIESEC, I have worked in a few different capacities and with different projects, which overall keeps me busy through the course of the year.   However, my main responsibility as a part of the Executive Board is to manage the Outgoing Exchange functional area of our entity.  This part of AIESEC is responsible for sending students from Macedonia to other countries on voluntary or professional internships.  The main duties of our team is to help those who are interested in embarking on an internship find a suitable opportunity, to edit their CVs, and to act as a liaison with entities in other countries to smooth the matching process.

Last July, AIESEC Macedonia set big ambitions for our entity.  Motivated by the release of our new, international internship database, many predicted that the number of outgoing interns would increase many-fold.  However, EXPA, as we call it, delayed its release from the middle of August to the beginning of November, and those software-launch bugs pretty much made the system useless until around the beginning of 2015.

Throughout most of this year, AIESEC Prilep was unable to realize any match for the interns who were hoping to work or volunteer abroad.  Much of this can be blamed on the problems with the database.  Also to blame are the processes and lack of institutional knowledge on how to properly execute the Outgoing Exchange functional area within our committee.

Since I had a bit of experience with the career center at UChicago before I left for Peace Corps, and since I applied for many jobs and internships before and after graduating, I assumed that my knowledge of editing CVs and preparing our participants for interviews would suffice in this position.  However, I did not understand that there would be a major cultural component of Outgoing Exchange that would serve as an obstacle to us realizing as many exchanges as we had hoped.

Basically, many of the students who apply through our program treat it as an opportunity to work in a more advanced economy to make and save money.  Similar to “Work and Travel” programs that send Macedonian students to Germany or the United States to work at a restaurant, hotel, or resort for the summer, many students signed up through our program to do the same, albeit with a more desirable job description.   This mindset regarding our outgoing program resulted in many futile applications for internships that many of our participants would not be qualified for.

Of course, I empathize with the students and understand why they would apply for the more competitive internships in our system.  Many students who study business, law, or languages in Macedonia do not land a suitable job after graduating.  With a youth unemployment rate at above 40%, there is a lack of demand for such high skills.  Thus, their education itself is pretty much voided, and it is only those who are active and participate in leadership or professional experiences outside their studies (or who have connections) who are competitive for employment.

In many ways, that is what our AIESEC internships do.  They give students an opportunity to gain practical or leadership experiences in an international setting.  Working on a project or in a company abroad also helps them open their mind and discover their skills and challenge themselves.  However, with a limited number of internships available in places like Canada, Germany, or the Netherlands, and with competitive applicants also applying from Western European countries and other growing economies, like Brazil, China and India, Macedonians are at a disadvantage in realizing this type internships through AIESEC.

But it is not impossible for them to find an opportunity with AIESEC.   There are plenty of internships in countries close to Macedonia that could use the skills these students developed in their education.  Countries like Turkey, Romania, and Hungary have high rates of growth, and although the salaries they offer are not much higher than those in Macedonia, the experience is very valuable and students do not need to pay much to travel to these places (since they are so close).  But staying in the Balkans or Eastern Europe may not be appealing enough to take the risk to work a year abroad.  One can compare this to offering an American a qualitative, albeit modestly paid internship in Wichita, KS or Toledo, OH.  Of course most young Americans would rather spend a year of their youth in San Francisco or Miami or NYC, but experience is experience.

Then comes the other issue: since Macedonia is not part of the European Union, many internships only take current students from Macedonia due to taxation or immigration rules.  Unfortunately, most Macedonians are raised thinking that they must finish their university studies first, then gain practical experience on things like foreign internships.  Therefore, some students who are qualified for certain internships decide not to go if they are accepted because they do not want to interrupt their studies.  Of course, some only apply after they graduate because they envision staying in that country after their internship ends.

Thus, the Outgoing Exchange program in our committee is at a HUGE disadvantage.  There are many Macedonians who are convinced of the value of such opportunities, but the percentage is much lower in Prilep than it is in Bitola or Skopje (which is why we try to focus many of our promotions in Bitola).  The values of working or volunteering through AIESEC will gain better traction if we have returned participants who share how they benefited from the program, but unfortunately we have not been able to send anyone on an internship… until recently.

At the end of April, two interns were successfully matched for professional internships in Europe.  One is currently working with customer support in Budapest, the other (a Cameroonian student who is studying IT in Ohrid) will start his internship in Germany at the beginning of July.  Finally, we will be able to market their success to highlight the value of these programs.  Even though we are far short of our goals for outgoing exchange participants, we have met the minimum requirement in order for our entity to exist after July.

All AIESEC committees around the world are currently marketing for Summer Peak, or the largest matching period for internships, especially for volunteers.  Our marketing team is working hard to promote the opportunities to our students in Prilep and Bitola.  While I will be away for 10 days on a personal trip through Central Europe, I have incorporated into my itinerary plans to meet with the committees in Vienna and Budapest to learn more about how we can market their summer projects.  We also hope to convince a few of our members to go on an AIESEC voluntary internship this summer, because it would be a great development project for them, and they would be living examples of the benefits of these programs (we currently only have one member who participated in an AIESEC internship).

Overall, working with Outgoing Exchange has been one of the most challenging experiences of my Peace Corps service.  Even though I enjoyed improving my people skills by working with the applicants for internships, it frustrates me that there is little I can do after they apply to the internships.  As I describe above, a lot of my work involved changing the mindset of Macedonian students, something that the Peace Corps warns NOT to do.  I just hope that any work I contribute to this functional area begins to change the attitudes Macedonian students have towards professional development.