CorpsAfrica Takes On Small Projects With Big Impact

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the mid-1990s, Liz Fanning was repeatedly asked by locals how they could serve their country.

“That question changed my life, but I didn’t know it at the time,” Fanning says.

Those Peace Corps experiences eventually led Fanning to start CorpsAfrica in 2011, which allows Africans to serve people in their own country.

Recruiting Africans to the program hasn’t been difficult, Fanning says. The network of volunteers grew by word of mouth, with current Peace Corps volunteers recruiting locals to serve their communities through CorpsAfrica.

For 10 positions open in Rwanda last year, 657 people applied, Fanning says.

Many volunteers are young and educated and grew up in cities. Fanning says they’re eager to spend time helping their fellow citizens.

Volunteer Boubacar Biro Diallo (pictured) spent a year teaching and working in the village of Baba-Garage, Senegal, where he built a grain-storage facility so villagers could earn money from the sale of crops.

Water and irrigation projects are the most common issues the volunteers tackle. School renovations and new community centers are also popular.

The projects are small scale and high impact, Fanning says. All projects must get at least 10 percent of their financing from the communities they serve, plus another 15 percent from gifts of products and services.

“Building a culture of philanthropy in Africa is really key to the long-term sustainability of a model like this,” she says.

The organization has almost 70 volunteers in Morocco, Senegal, Malawi, and Rwanda. It hopes to expand to 250 a year and have a presence in every African country in the next 10 years.

“When we say, ‘Do you want to be a Peace Corps volunteer in your own country,’ they really are eager to do that.”