I Won Blog It Home and Went on a Top Bloggers’ Tour

Last year, in the weekly e-mail that is sent out by the Peace Corps Thailand office, there was a call for people who keep a blog to submit theirs for consideration for the first ever Blog It Home competition. The winners would be flown to D.C. to take part in the Third Goal Conference and to give a presentation on blogging and their country of service. At that point, I had been in country for about seven months, but was making regular posts and decided to submit for the country director to choose which one would best represent Thailand.

I wasn’t chosen. My friend, Sara, was chosen as the finalist for Thailand and then the people at the Office of the Third Goal selected her as one of the winners. She finished her service in March, and I have kept on blogging.

Blog It Home Competition 2014

This year, they revamped the contest selection a bit. In April, the Office of the Third Goal sent out an e-mail to all the volunteers, asking to submit their blog by July 15. I submitted the day I got the e-mail and then waited four months until the deadline passed.

I got an e-mail notifying me that I was selected as a finalist, which meant I would participate in a voting round on Facebook, along with 19 other blogs. Voting ended on August 10, and on August 13 I woke up to an e-mail that began with “Congratulations!” I garnered enough votes to be selected to go to Washington D.C. for a week in September to participate in the Top Bloggers’ Tour, which kicked off my whirlwind of travel (that I’m still in the midst of).

Top Bloggers’ Tour in Washington D.C.

Making Media Connections

Myself and eight other bloggers, representing a total of 8 countries from almost every region of Peace Corps spent the week being whisked around the city and telling almost everyone about our countries of service.

We started the week off by going to the broadcast center for Voice of America, a publicly-funded international broadcast company that reaches around the globe. I gave a recorded interview, in Thai, with the people manning the Thai desk and the women serving in West Africa gave an interview, live on the air, in French that was broadcast to over 150 million listeners.

The visit with VOA was just a way to get our toes wet with fast paced American culture, though, because the next day was packed!

We started with a trip to the White House where we met with two members of the Digital Strategy team there, including Brian Forde who is an RPCV from Nicaragua. After he finished his service, he stayed in country for five years starting a phone company. He has since sold to the employees of the company and it is now one of the top phone service providers in the country. As PCVs, we have unique insights into the problems that face our countries of service and great perspective into ways to come up with a solution.

After our visit with the White House, we went to the headquarters of the ONE Campaign, which was started by Bono of U2 with the mission to eliminate extreme poverty. Their main mission is to spread awareness and they do this through their blog posts.

One of the bloggers, Sara who is serving in Guinea, already had experience with the ONE Campaign as they had reblogged her post about Ebola.

Much of their work is focused solely on Africa, but they have recently launched a new women and girls’ section for their blog and they are looking for contributors for this new area of focus. If you have a blog post that touches on this topic that you would like to be spread with the world, let me know and I can pass on the contact information for the people there.

Sharing Our Host Countries’ Cultures

The day didn’t end there. That evening we set up tables at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library and invited the public to learn more about our countries of service. We set out fabrics and other artifacts to show off the respective cultures and got to do what I think every Peace Corps Volunteer dreams of when they come back the States, which is gush to people who are interested in hearing about what you have to say about your country of service.

That project continued the next day when we went to local DC public schools to talk to school assemblies and classrooms about our countries of service. It was really great to be back with students and to hear what piqued their curiosity about the countries we serve in. One of my favorite questions from the day was, “They don’t got Jordans there?” when I explained that most people in Thailand wear sandals to make it easier to take your shoes on and off.

That evening we hosted an event for 150 Girl Scouts, in a similar format to the event at the library. We talked briefly about what it’s like for girls in our countries of service and then each manned our tables to talk to girls individually. They were all delighted by the fact that Thailand also has Girl Scouts.

Sharing with Peace Corps Headquarters Staff

We ended the week with a short presentation about blogging to the staff at headquarters. One of the things that stood out to all of us was when one of the staff stood up during the question and answer time and told us that a member of his cohort had been administratively separated for keeping a blog in 2007, showing us that Peace Corps has come quite a ways in thinking about ways to achieve the Third Goal in the last decade.

That afternoon we met with the staff of the National Peace Corps Association, a diplomat in residence who talked about the Foreign Service and the chief photo editor for the Smithsonian Magazine – all great networking opportunities.

Check Out the Other Winners!

It was truly a whirlwind and jam-packed week that my jai yen yen and sabai sabai life was not entirely prepared for, but it was a good reminder of what life in America is like and was such a wonderful experience. Again, thank you to everyone who helped get me there and if you’d like to hear more about any specific parts of the trip or want some contact information, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

You should also definitely check out the other winners’ blogs as well, to get a taste of some of the other countries that Peace Corps is in!

• Jill Conway is serving in Albania! One of her posts, “50 Unique Observations About Albania” went viral!
• Anna Nathanson is serving in Cameroon! She brings a little slice of Africa in Miniature to the masses.
• Keith and Heather May are serving in China! They are slightly older than the rest of the winners and do not have any children of their own, but through service have gained nearly 200 sons and daughters.
• Bronwen Raff is serving in the Dominican Republic! She writes her blog as if she’s writing home and she has some amazing and bad-ass projects going on.
• Sara Laskowski was serving in Guinea! Unfortunately, she was evacuated and Peace Corps has recently made the decision that she and the other volunteers will not return because of the Ebola outbreak, but she has an excellent blog showing that this country is so much more than this disease.
• Erica Hooker is serving in Senegal! She works doing agriculture projects and writes about the people that are a part of her community, which in a predominantly Muslim country with arranged marriages as a norm is pretty insightful into a completely different culture.
• Julia Lingham is serving in Uganda! Her blog is filled with amazing photos and stories about the projects she’s lead and done that are really inspiring and empowering of the youth in Uganda.