Welcome To The Peace Corps Packing List
The goal of this site is to share useful tips, tricks, and packing advice for anyone about leave on an overseas volunteer assignment. Your Peace Corps packing list will differ depending on which country you will be serving in, however, there are certain items and ideas that will be useful for all volunteers.
Although this site was built with U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers in mind, the information here should be equally useful to VSO International volunteers or anyone preparing to live and work in developing countries around the work and who plan to fully immerse themselves in the local communities.
I remember the days before leaving for Peace Corps staging. I was completely stressed out over what I should pack to take to site. Of course, having never been a volunteer and having never been to the country where I would be serving, I had no clue what was going to be necessary or totally useless. The packing list I received from my country was pretty vague and the long list of items couldn’t possibly all fit in my relatively strict baggage allowance. So I did the best I could, and ended up having a lot sent to me later on. I also ended up sending home or giving away a lot of stuff I didn’t need.
If I did it again, I would probably do things a lot differently. This site attempts to bring together my experience and those of other volunteers. It can’t be everything to everyone. Every country and site is different. So is the volunteer. Read through the information on this site and make your own decisions. Also, please feel free to submit any essential packing list items that I may have missed.
One final note… where possible, I will include links to specific products that I personally used (or wish that I had) and highly recommend.