In the News: APU Alumnus Spent Two Years with the Peace Corps in Thailand

 

Azusa Pacific University alumnus Ben Fairfield has always had a passion to help others abroad. Thousands of miles away in third-world Thailand is a small mountain village where Fairfield spent two years making his home.

The 2004 Azusa Pacific University graduate had a passion to see what the rest of the world had to offer and had a heart to help those in need, which prompted him, along with his wife, Lisa, to apply for the Peace Corps. In January of 2007 they started accustoming themselves to the mud and remained for two years in the Thailand Hill Tribe.

“I was ready to join the Peace Corps before I finished college,” said Fairfield. “My major was Global Studies, and I wanted nothing more than to go live abroad and experience life and culture first-hand. I had a naïve optimism that couldn’t be quenched by worried relatives or realists.”

Fairfield had his first experience of foreign land during his last semester at APU where he underwent a self-directed study abroad program that he designed.

“The plan was to live in an orphanage in China for the summer and conduct research on that topic,” he said. “I arrived in China to learn that there was, in fact, no orphanage. Instead I taught English in a small farming village and studied rural pollution – back before people took global warming and pollution seriously.”