William Zimmerman is a master gardener and a member of the Missouri River Regional Library Board, but his commitment to volunteer work began decades ago.
He became a member of the board last August. Since retiring, he said, he enjoys reading good botanical books and anything about Japanese history. He also tries to incorporate a Japanese theme into his landscaping to honor his Japanese ancestry.
After leaving academia he worked for Unilever in quality assurance for 10 years. But before all of this he volunteered with the Peace Corps, and that has affected everything since.
"In between and during my career I worked with Peace Corps, and that set my philosophy for life," he said. "I started volunteering with them in the mid-'70s, and it shaped my doctoral research and my interest in sustainable agriculture."
Zimmerman estimated that he has traveled overseas up to 30 times to 10 different countries including China, the Philippines, Thailand and others in Central America and Africa.
"Part of it was growing up as a minority in the United States," he said. "And part of it was I felt I wanted to do something decent, so when I was a freshman I told myself I wanted to join the Peace Corps and when I graduated I just kept my promise."
He was first deployed to Nicaragua as a "generalist" from 1974-76. He said he was sent to Central America first because he was interested in the area and had a decent grasp of the Spanish language. He was a fresh graduate from the University of Delaware and was assigned to work in agriculture.
"We weren't farmers, but we tried our best," Zimmerman said.
As he got older, more educated and well traveled, he was moved from general assignments to what he called response assignments, or assignments where volunteers stayed for a shorter time, but had a more specific purpose. For example, in 2013 he was sent to Liberia to teach for Cuttington University.
"The response assignments are shorter and are advertised with people with more experience, who at some time in their life were a Peace Corps volunteer," he said. "To go on these you have to be able to live like the locals, even though at Cuttington I lived a lot better than the other Peace Corps volunteers."
Since his experience at Cuttington, Zimmerman has been working with the U.S. Agency for International Development's Farmer to Farmer Program. This program promotes sustainable economic growth, food security and agricultural development in developing countries. The 30-year-old program has helped more than 80,000 people through more than 12,000 assignments in more than 80 countries, according to its website.
Zimmerman's most recent trip was to Nigeria, where he wrote an institutional review of a Polytechnic college's agricultural and educational programs.
"They created it (the programs), but they needed help on the planning and they needed an external reviewer," he said.
Zimmerman said he will return to Nigeria in two years to review how the institution is implementing the recommendations given in the first review, and that he intends to volunteer for as long as he can.