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Teasley joins Peace Corps Headed for Moldova
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| By JENAY TATE, Editor and Publisher |
October 21, 2005 |
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NORTON - Located off the Black Sea, between Romania and the Ukraine, Moldova is depicted in travel lingo as a picturesque destination.
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"Where postcard villages, regal cities and wine country meet," one travel company says.
It doesn't mention that Moldova is the poorest nation in all of Europe. Or that it suffers from widespread crime and underground economic activity.
It is the country's plight, not just its beauty, that Jason Teasley will confront when he arrives there as a new Peace Corps volunteer.
The Peace Corps has been a goal since Teasley first heard family friend Mike O'Donnell talk about his experiences.
"Some people want to be a doctor. Some people want to be a lawyer. I want to be a Peace Corps volunteer," Teasley said recently as he prepared to depart on the first leg of a two-year journey.
Teasley is in Philadelphia now, where he is undergoing training for his assignment. He will familiarize himself with the language and such issues as health care, security and safety.
At the end of his training, Teasley will head to Istanbul and then on to Moldova, where he will serve with nine other Peace Corps volunteers. They will undertake the process of creating a non-government organization, called an NGO, which he compares to a non-profit organization in America. It is a collaborative undertaking with the people in Moldova, he said, helping to identify what they most need and want to serve their best interests.
The assignment plays to his skills, Teasley said, which he identifies broadly as being team building and the capability of "dealing with people in a different way."
"I don't have traditional skills," he says unapologetically, describing himself as an artist and kind of a vagabond.
"Our parents raised Tess and I to be free thinkers," Teasley said of himself and his sister. "They taught me to look past what is 'given.' "
Now they're nervous, he said with a broad grin, because he doesn't have a paying job.
Family has been a big influence in his attraction to service work. Son of Randy Teasley and Ann Jacobe and grandson of Glenn Teasley and Mary Lynn Teasley, the younger Teasley was exposed early on to lives of service. He has volunteered with the Lions Club, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Toys for Tots and Habitat for Humanity.
A 1997 graduate of Burton High School, Teasley graduated from James Madison University in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in fine arts. He worked as a team leader at an adventure camp. He traveled with friends on a three-month back-packing adventure in Costa Rica.
Before plunging head-first into the distant obligation of Peace Corps, Teasley decided to test a similar experience closer to home.
In 2003, he joined AmeriCorps, which took him on service missions around the United States. He moved every three months. In San Antonio, he and other volunteers rebuilt a park. They worked in environmental awareness in Denver. In South Dakota, they worked with a Boys and Girls Club on a reservation at Wounded Knee. In Indianapolis, he worked in the education field. Disaster relief was the assignment in Birmingham.
At the end of his AmeriCorps service, Teasley landed in Washington, D.C., and a far different world. He couldn't find fulfilling work. While his service resume looked impressive, Teasley said, it couldn't get him hired.
He wasn't happy at the odd jobs he found, like bouncing bars in the district. "I felt empty," he said.
He returned home to spend time "recentering" - painting, independent contracting and re-introducing himself as an adult to his family and the community where he grew up. Then he began making application to the Peace Corps.
Like the typical member of the Peace Corps, Teasley said, he is a person in transition. Potential volunteers usually are people in mid life, looking for a change in vocation; he said, or younger people, like him, not exactly certain where to head next.
Once accepted into Peace Corps, the new volunteer awaits an invitation into service and is given 10 days to make a decision. To reject an offer typically means a second will never come.
But reject is exactly what Teasley did when the invitation came to serve in Bangladesh, a country of 133 million. The young man who thrives in the outdoors, who prefers small over big, decided on the seventh day that this assignment to a crowded big city was no match for him. The Peace Corps directed him to write a one-page paper explaining his rejection of the offer.
"I told them I had no passion and with no passion you can't effectively serve the community." he recalls.
That was in June. By August, he was issued a second invitation, to Moldova.
This was a fit.
As he sat in his parents' living room, and family and friends milled around at his send-off gathering, Teasley admitted the jitters.
"Oh, yeah, I'm nervous," he said, "but that's the fun part of it. That's where I thrive - on the edge."
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