Engaged Learning and Peace Corps

The Peace Corps Masters International program offers students the opportunity to combine their Peace Corps service with their master’s education. This article demonstrates how class-room learning strengthened the author’s Peace Corps service in Tanzania, which in turn strengthened her master’s thesis. Peace Corps supports an approach to community development that situates Volunteers closely with people in power, but this makes it difficult for them to gain the participation of the poor and mar-ginalized. How can one strike a balance between effectiveness and cultural appropriateness? As an outsider, how do one’s rela-tionships with community members affect project processes and outcomes? This autoethnography investigates the first author’s learning experience in undertaking community development in Tanzania’s southern highlands. Although the conclusions ar