Georgia State University graduate student Justin Hargesheimer has found a novel way to cope with the Great Recession. He’s become a combination garbageman-architect-builder-educator.
In Guatemala.
And he’s helping people there build schools while also “helping myself pave the way for my own future.”
Hargesheimer, 32, joined the Peace Corps’ masters international program for a 27-month hitch, and when he returns to the Piedmont Park area, he says he’ll finish his master’s degree in public administration at GSU in one semester.
By then, he figures the economy will have improved and he’ll be able to use his degree and Peace Corps experience to land a good job.
“The job market in the states is very bad, but I have a meaningful job down here,” Hargesheimer says by phone from El Tumbador in southwest Guatemala. “I am gaining professional skills. I am doing international development work, getting paid, I have health care, and the Peace Corps is highly regarded.”
Which is why it gets more than twice as many applications as it has slots, says spokeswoman Kelly McCormick. She says most people join because they are idealistic, not because the U.S. economy is in the doldrums, but there’s no way to quantify motivations.
She says Hargesheimer is “doing a great job down there” and that building school houses with garbage, which is what he’s done, is a pretty tough task.
So far, he’s built one school for 52 kids with trash picked up in the area.
“The kids learn, but at the same time we deal with the community’s trash problem,” Hargesheimer says. “Down here a lot of garbage is just stuff that’s dropped. Like plastic bottles. A primary goal is environmental cleanup. The project kept at least 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of trash out of rivers and public spaces.”
Trash, he says, is a great building material because it’s plentiful and cheap. His volunteer workers have gathered nearly 7,000 plastic bottles and stuffed them with inorganic trash such as candy wrappers and potato chip sacks to form “eco-bricks.” The bricks are then tied into frames made of chicken wire. The result was sturdy even before the walls were covered with stucco.
But still, the walls are light enough so as not to be a hazard in the event of an earthquake. The first school of 1,033 square feet opened a couple of months ago.
With support from the American non-profit called Hug It Forward, 10 other “bottle schools” have been built in Guatemala.
“Sure, I’m a little older than the average Peace Corps volunteer,” Hargesheimer says. “But I think that gives me perspective that is helping now and will also in the future.”
Hargesheimer, one of about 200 Peace Corps volunteers in Guatemala, hopes after finishing his master’s to get a job with a non-profit or a position in the U.S. Foreign Service that allows him to help people.
And now, he’s fluent in Spanish.
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