Inspired by her time at Marquette, a recent Marquette alumna is among the first group of Peace Corps volunteers to return to El Salvador after an eight-year hiatus.
Valeria Martinez, H Sci ’20, Martinez recently finished a two-year rotation as a health volunteer in Botswana and is working with eight other Peace Corps volunteers alongside local leaders in the country as they focus on youth and economic development.
As she begins her work, Martinez has been motivated by this year’s mission theme “Imagine,” — in particular the line “for when we imagine, we experience the lives of others,” from the thematic statement.
“At this point in our work, we are just barely re-opening the post,” Martinez says. “A lot of what we’re doing right now is community integration and working with others to understand their worldview. That way we can have a strong foundation for other volunteers to build on in the future.”
Martinez began volunteering in middle school at local soup kitchens near her hometown in the Chicago area and has since expanded her horizons to volunteering in hospitals and supporting others globally.
While at Marquette, Martinez joined the student group Making A Real Difference In the Gulf Region and Areas Surrounding, or MARDI GRAS for short.
Martinez met with local leaders and organizations in Houston as part of a MARDI GRAS trip to Houston after Hurricane Harvey struck the region in 2017. The experience transformed how she viewed service, she says.
“Helping those people in Houston taught me there is more to service than just serving,” Martinez says. “We would talk with people to find out what they needed most and assist in those ways versus coming into their hometown and assuming we knew what they needed.”
After she graduated, inspired by her work with MARDI GRAS and her focus in the public health sector as a biomedical sciences major, Martinez joined the Peace Corps.
“The Peace Corps offered the best of both worlds in terms of professional development and getting to do what I love which is volunteering,” she says.
Martinez says she never imagined doing the type of work she does today while highlighting that she always wanted to serve in some capacity and was grateful for her undergraduate experience.
“Marquette was amazing at presenting me with service opportunities,” she says. “There are so many benefits to service work and it’s something that I plan to continue doing in some capacity throughout my life.”
