Communication Overseas

Communicating With Your Peace Corps Volunteer While Overseas

May 2012

Dear Families,

Greetings from the Southeast Asia Desk in Washington, D.C.! It is with great pleasure that we welcome your family member to the 2012 Philippines training program. We receive many questions from Volunteers and family members regarding travel plans, sending money, relaying messages and mail, etc. As we are unable to involve ourselves in the personal arrangements of Volunteers, we would like to offer you advice and assistance in advance by providing specific examples of situations and how we suggest handling them.

1. Written Communication. The mail service in the Philippines is not as fast as the U.S. Postal Service; thus, it is important to be patient. It can take from seven days to a few weeks for mail coming from the Philippines to arrive in the United States via the Philippines postal system. From a Volunteer's site, mail might take several weeks to reach the United States.

We suggest that in the first few letters sent, the Volunteer family member give an estimate of how long it takes to receive the letters and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often the volunteer will write. (Also keep in mind that written correspondence sometimes wanes as the Volunteer’s service progresses.) Also, try numbering your letters so that the Volunteer knows if one has been missed.

Volunteers often enjoy telling their “war” stories when they write home. This is one of the exciting and adventurous elements of serving as a Volunteer. Anecdotes in letters might describe recent illnesses, lack of good food, isolation, transportation challenges, etc. While the subject matter is good reading material, it is often misinterpreted or exaggerated on the home front. There is a Peace Corps medical officer at the Peace Corps office in Manila, Philippines. In the event of a serious illness, the Volunteer is sent to Manila and is cared for by our medical staff. If Volunteers require medical care that is not available in the Philippines, they are medically evacuated to the nearest medical hub site or the United States. Fortunately, these are rare circumstances.

If for some reason your normal communication pattern is broken and you do not hear from your family member for an abnormal amount of time, you may want to actively follow-up with your family member. If you have serious concerns, you may contact the Counseling and Outreach Unit at Peace Corps Washington at 1-800-424-8580, extension 1470. Also, in the case of an emergency at home (death in the family, sudden illness, etc.), please do not hesitate to call the Counseling and Outreach Unit immediately, so that we can inform the Volunteer. Tell the operator your name, telephone number, and the nature of the emergency and the Duty Officer will return your call.

2. Telephone Calls. The telephone service in the Philippines is relatively good and service in and out of the Philippines to the United States is mostly reliable. During training, your family member may have scarce access to email, and the host training families may not have phones. However, during the first few days in country, your Volunteer will be issued a cell phone for use during service.

Few volunteers will have residential lines; most will probably need to purchase international calling cards to make calls to the US. They will be able to inform you of the actual telephone numbers once they arrive at their permanent sites in the country or upon the receipt of their cell phones during training.

During service, most Volunteers in the Philippines will have access to email, though access is not as consistent or as fast as in the United States. Depending on where your Volunteer will live and work, they will be able to access email at a local Internet cafe, at their place of work, from home (if they have a computer), or at the nearest regional center. Volunteers generally find the internet to be the fastest and most affordable way to communicate with friends and family in the United States.

3. Sending mail. Families like to send care packages through the mail. Unfortunately, sending packages can be a frustrating experience for all involved due to delays and heavy customs taxes. You may want to try to send inexpensive items through the mail, but it may take from 1 to 4 weeks to arrive even if the U.S. post office has sent in “3-5 days” or express mail. Experience has shown that expedited mail services (i.e. DHL, FedEx) tend to be more reliable in terms of delivery estimates. We do not recommend, however, that costly items be sent through the mail.

Letters and packages may be sent to the following address:
“Name,” PCT c/o U.S. Peace Corps
6/F PNB Financial Center
Macapagal Blvd., Pasay City
1308 Philippines

Only letters, on the other hand, may be sent to the following address:
“Name,” PCT U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 7013, Airmail Distribution Center
NAIA, Pasay City
1301 Philippines

A Peace Corps staff member picks up mail from the post office box weekly and sends it to Volunteer sites by special delivery through a courier service, known in-country as the Peace Corps pouch or through the Philippine mail system. Please note that Volunteers are expected to personally retrieve their packages sent to the Manila office. Should they request the Mail Clerk to forward their package to their site, they will shoulder the cost of sending it.
After training, because it is more convenient, many Volunteers choose to have packages and letters mailed directly to their sites.

Please note that all mail sent through the above Peace Corps addresses is opened and checked according to standard U.S. government policy.

Peace Corps/Philippines advises you not to have packages sent through any airline. Even if the freight charges are prepaid in the United States, there will be numerous charges in the Philippines for customs, brokerage, storage, and clearing. Please note that regardless of how the package was sent, by local post office or a courier service (DHL, FedEx, UPS, etc.), your Volunteer will be required to pay the duty charge before they can claim their package/s. Please note that the amount of these charges may sometimes cost more than the worth of the package contents, depending on the customs officer’s assessment. It is advised that the sender pay the import taxes at the shipment origin to avoid delays when Volunteers claim their package/s

We hope this information is helpful to you during the time your family member is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. We understand how frustrating it is to communicate with your family member overseas and we appreciate your using this information as a guideline.