Peter Thompson’s journey to Pepperdine began this past December, when he stepped off of the plane at LAX after two years in the Peace Corps. He and his wife, Katy, stepped straight into a cab headed for the job interview that eventually made him the director of Pepperdine’s Volunteer Center.
Thompson found his passion for working with college students in outreach projects while volunteering as an undergraduate at Texas Christian University.
“My most valuable experiences have been volunteering. It gave me so much energy, and I was so passionate about it. I connected with a staff member at TCU’s volunteer center and this light bulb went off. I thought, ‘Wait, helping support people doing volunteer work is your job? I want to do that!’”
Thompson credits the success and growth of the PVC to the students who, he says, carry the majority of the workload.
He works directly with health and wellness service projects, education and literacy outreach, and hunger and homelessness. Thompson has also made great strides by working with faculty to enhance service learning on campus.
His greatest joy is in supporting students’ efforts with outreach. But the real value, Thompson says, is in the exchange.
“I can’t be out there every second, but with my work, I can support an extended network of students. What I do behind the scenes is essentially what students are doing with community development. It’s about being able to bring people together, showing people different populations.”
For Thompson, this is best reflected in Project Serve, the series of community outreach opportunities offered over spring break.
“The real focus is on how giving 2 percent of your year can affect the rest of your life. While adding labor for a week can be helpful, we aim to continually support the missions of the organizations by bringing what we learn back to campus. We hope students take what they learned during their week of service, and apply it to what they are doing here on campus and in the community.”
This is reflected in his own life, as well as his decision to join the Peace Corps with his wife. They were stationed in Ukraine for two years.
“I grew up in a sheltered suburban town in Houston, Texas. Through volunteering, I was able to see things greater than my own life. I kept talking about service learning and how passionate I was about it. I needed to spend my time doing it, which is why the Peace Corps made sense.”
Thompson found ways to apply service learning to his students.
“Our students in Ukraine liked singing and dancing. I was able to get funding for costumes and art supplies. We brought our students to special needs schools and retirement homes, giving them access to do what they liked, while also giving them the freedom to explore what is different.”
The Thompson family welcomed their son Liam into the world on June 9.
Thompson feels his outlook on volunteerism was phrased best by aboriginal woman Lila Watson’s response to mission workers in Australia: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
