Cedar Grove grad preps for Peace Corps journey to Ukraine

The world opened up for Cedar Grove native Niki Maffettone when she graduated college, and she took advantage of it.

Maffettone, a 2013 graduate of Cedar Grove High School, was accepted into the Peace Corps. In September, she will start a two-year stay in the eastern European nation Ukraine working with children in after-school programs.

“Right now, I’m really nervous and excited,” Maffettone said. “Everyone I see in town keeps asking me about it, so I have to keep on talking about it. It’s just really surreal right now that it’s actually happening.”

Maffettone recently graduated from Moravian College in Pennsylvania. She studied sociology with a minor in peace and justice studies. When she get to Ukraine, she will live with a host family, who will help her learn the language faster, she said. 

She said she’s unsure what to expect.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to that goes into the Peace Corps says it’s different than they thought,” she said. “I know they have cold winters. The day-to-day living I don’t have too many expectations. That’s why it’s exciting because I’m kind of just going for it.”

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The Peace Corps is a government-run organization that sponsors volunteer missions to more than 60 countries across the world. Maffettone took a Peace Corps prep program during her junior year at Moravian before filling out an application to join. 

“Once I completed the program, I said, ‘Wow this is something I can see myself doing.’ It really happened quick.”

Maffettone has some prior volunteer experience. While in college, she joined Moravian’s Habitat for Humanity chapter and traveled on a service trip to Guatemala. While there, she helped build cooking stoves from adobe bricks in the coastal area of San Juan La Laguna. 

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The Cedar Grove native also played softball while at Moravian, continuing her days as a catcher while in high school. It was sometimes hard to juggle her many responsibilities while in college, she said, but it taught her how to prioritize. 

When she returns from Ukraine in 2019, Maffettone said she isn’t sure what will be next for her.

“Once I get back, I’ll have a totally different perspective on how I see myself going forward in the future,” she said. “I always thought of working for a government position like a parole officer because I worked at a halfway house for a while. I liked the idea of a re-entry program for prisoners.

"I could also see more volunteering like Habitat for Humanity, which I did last winter in Guatemala, and loved that,” she added.

Email: jongsma@northjersey.com