Peace Corps News

The Peace Corps Community marches in Obama's Inaugural Parade

Read our photo essay about members of the Peace Corps community who marched in President Obama's Inaugural parade.

Organized by the National Peace Corps Association and the Washington DC Returned Volunteers, members of the Peace Corps community marched in President Obama's Inaugural Parade.President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden's Inaugural Committee officially extended an offer to the Peace Corps Community and AmeriCorps Alums to march in the 56th Inaugural Parade.

In keeping with its commitment to hold inaugural events that celebrate our common values and reflect our nation's history of community service, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden's Inaugural Committee officially extended an offer to the Peace Corps Community and AmeriCorps Alums to march in the 56th Inaugural Parade. Members of these service organizations will join representatives from across the country and our Armed Forces in the historic parade down Pennsylvania Avenue following President-elect Obama's swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the Capitol. "These organizations embody the best of our nation's history, diversity and commitment to service," said President-elect Obama. "Vice President-elect Biden and I are proud to have them join us in the parade."

Members of these service organizations joined representatives from across the country and our Armed Forces in the historic parade down Pennsylvania Avenue following President-elect Obama's swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the Capitol. The Peace Corps Community included members who served with the corps in the 1960s to the present. Marchers carried the flags of the countries that Peace Corps have served over the years. AmeriCorps Alums will include some of the millions of alumni of national service in this country since John F. Kennedy's call to service and the conception of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) in 1961.

An Exhibit of RPCV David Whitman's photographs of Brazil opens in Key Biscayne September 9

An Exhibit of Saint Lucia RPCV David Whitman's photographs of Brazil opens in Key Biscayne September 9
Six years ago Miami photographer David Whitman visited Ilha de Maré, an island in northeastern Brazil. His friend Jorge Antonio Espirito Santo Batista, a teacher there, had promised Whitman a glimpse of a Brazil that was disappearing—an island without cars, where you arrive by boat and wade through the surf to the shore, a place still dependent on the sea and the legendary tides that give the island its name. As they wandered along streets made of crushed shells and earth, Whitman noticed two barefooted boys playing marbles. “From where I stood, they happened to form a yin-yang shape,” Whitman recounts, “and I quietly reached for my camera, hoping I could record the moment before they shifted positions.” He did, and the young marble players—Jefinho and Darlei—famously landed on the cover of the International Calendar of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers in 2005. Jefinho and Darlei inspired the calendar’s theme that year: Harmony in Play. “The two boys playing marbles convey the age-old concept of Yin and Yang—opposites that fit together perfectly to make a whole—a reminder that harmony does not come from being the same. It comes from embracing differences and discovering how we complement and balance each other, thereby making the world a richer place.” Whitman’s photo—and the story behind it—were featured at the time on Progreso Weekly and Progreso Semanal, and also caught the attention of Alhemar Altieri, the publisher of InfoBrazil, a site that offers independent analysis and opinion on Brazilian current affairs. “With most Brazilians absorbed by the annual Carnival celebrations, we at InfoBrazil decided to break away from the usual political, business and economic content, and asked David Whitman, an accomplished photographer, to reflect on his time spent in Brazil.”

Last November, Whitman returned to Ilha de Maré during a four-week photographic journey through Brazil. As he was walking along the same road where he’d encountered Jefinho and Darlei six years earlier, he passed two boys—about the same age as the marble players had been—seated at a cement table. He gave them each a keyring from Miami, and asked if he could take their picture, the first shot of the day. That photo, “Best Friends,” is now the announcement for an upcoming exhibit of Whitman’s work, in Miami, called “Luminous Youth.” Reviewing an exhibit of Whitman’s work in Berkeley, California, Stephanie Hornbeck, now a conservator at the National Museum of African Art, wrote, “Whitman’s photographs evoke a gentle world. Beneath leafy trees in sunny, seemingly carefree settings by the sea, warm smiles and bright eyes engage the viewer directly. He focuses on the inner warmth and outer beauty of his young subjects, separating them from their often sad circumstances.” “Luminous Youth” runs from September 9 to November 2 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center in Crandon Park, Key Biscayne. The opening reception is on Sunday, September 9, from 3 to 6 pm, with Brazilian music performed by Rose Max and Ramatis.  Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Saint Lucia.

Read more about Peace Corps Brazil.

Read more about Photography and the Peace Corps.

Read more about Peace Corps Exhibits.

Spotlight on Peace Corps Mongolia

Peace Corps Volunteer Michelle Toon writes: From the West Side to Mongolia
"I've been in Mongolia for seven months. After landing in Ulan Bator, I and 56 other Peace Corps trainees were bused to a "ger camp." A ger is a traditional Mongolian home that can be described as a round felt tent supported by wooden poles. Though it was June, it felt like February. It had snowed two weeks earlier. Mongolia is a country of extremes. Its sun is as oppressive as its poverty. The summers are short and blazing and the winters long and bitter - 30 degrees below zero bitter. Its people are generous to a humbling degree. Nothing is mine or yours. They consistently say the word manai, which means our. Our Mongolia. Our project. Our Michelle. Waking up that first morning in the ger camp, the mountains were staggering. There is something familiar yet inexpressible about the landscape here. The people are reflections of it. They build little mountains on the roadsides in the form of Buddhist shrines. And with their ceremony and solemnity they are mountains themselves." Read more.

Caption: Ulan Bator Photo:  chill Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0

Stephanie Trafton serves as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mongolia
In June 2006, Stephanie arrived in Khujirt, the 13th century capital of the great Mongolian Empire. She arrived somewhat overwhelmed. In a cell phone interview to her in Mongolia last week, Stephanie related the following: "Picture this," she explained. "You're dropped off in front of a ger (a nomadic felt dome tent) that is completely bare (sans a wooden futon that is broken, and two cabinets), you don't know anybody besides the director of the school who knows absolutely no English, you're hungry but have no electricity yet, and no wood for the stove.

"The only water you have is the stuff in your Nalgene bottle because you don't know where the well is yet, and school wasn't starting for two days. The director said you should be 'amarij bain' (resting)." That didn't dissuade her from changing her mind. To her, it was a way of experiencing life. She left her ger, went for a walk, found the girst delguur (little shop) and made friends with the owner who told her about the town.

Scarfs and hats are no longer a fashion statement. She wakes to a frozen water bucket and almost everything else in her ger. She's had to chop off blocks of ice and put them in her water boiler to make her morning tea everyday trying not to think of her frozen toes.  "Jumping from Florida weather to this makes me think that I just might have skipped a few baby steps," Stephanie laughingly said, "but all of this is making me stronger. I go to bed with three pairs of socks, long underwear, pajamas, two undershirts, and a sweater. "I find that cocooning myself inside my sleeping bag liner, zipping myself up all the way and covering myself with another thick blanket on top does the trick."

She teaches grades 6 to 11 but does other projects as well. One of Stephanie's goals is to build a Resource Room. Currently the students don't have pencils, and sometimes lessons are made up by her. She said it's difficult. With only a handful of books, she is trying to get books for the 1st grade to 4th grade levels and nothing above that. Books such as Dr. Seuss or grammar books with no more than 30 pages and large letters are needed for this project. She also has an English club in the afternoons where the students play games. Although there is one school from Kindergarten to grade 11 with a dormitory next door called a Hudoo (phonetic spelling) which means countryside, children from other villages stay at the dormitory. Classes are separated by grades. The children speak Mongolian and have a different alphabet. But Stephanie is persevering in teaching them and feels that she is accomplishing something. "It's amazing. You learn so much about the people," she said. "Mongolians love foreigners, especially in the villages. A lot of my students have never seen an American before," she continued. Read more.

Tschetter visits Volunteers in Mongolia
Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter completed his four day visit to Mongolia, where he met with Volunteers and staff and discussed Peace Corps' program with government officials. "The Peace Corps program in Mongolia is flourishing thanks to the welcoming spirit of the Mongolian people, and I’m excited to witness the growing friendships between the people of our countries," said Director Tschetter.  Tschetter and his wife, Nancy, who is accompanying him on his official visit, were Peace Corps Volunteers in India from 1966 -1968.

The Director met four of the 14 Peace Corps Volunteers working in community health. This program focuses on working with individuals and communities in Mongolia to improve their health and well-being through preventative health education programs. Volunteers working in the rural areas have developed dynamic strategies to promote health awareness and prevention behaviors, including HIV/AIDS prevention programs. After visiting Volunteer sites in some of the rural areas of Mongolia, Tschetter visited the host village of San Francisco, Calif. native and Peace Corps Volunteer, Sean Speer. Director and Mrs. Tschetter stayed in Speer’s village for the evening and spent the night in a traditional Mongolian ger, a style of felt tent that many Mongolians and Peace Corps Volunteers call home. Read more.

Four weeks after Kathy Davies returned from Mongolia, she is ready to expose the public to the nomadic lifestyle in an exhibit of watercolors, photography, and folk art
For Kathy, the photographs and paintings recall her stay in Mongolia. "It was definitely educational, in a way that no classroom could ever touch. ... For two years, it was a different life, but it was still my life, and I had a different experience with noticing the cultures, and everyday things that actually stood out because I was a foreigner in a different place. "I've come back to America with that same attitude. I think [I am] looking at everyday things with a different set of eyes and just kind of appreciating how beautiful it is here a little bit more."

Kathy adds that she came back wanting to educate more people about Mongolian culture. "The Mongolians are really impressive people, and I'd like more people to appreciate that. [The Peace Corps experience] gives you a different perspective on the world, and I wanted to share that with other people. If you do that through images, I think it's a lot more effective and powerful."

The art exhibit will include an ovoo, a cairn made of rocks or sticks and blue silk scarves, which Mongolians build as sacred sites, and Kazakh wall hangings, which are elaborately embroidered wall coverings used to warm the walls of gers, or yurt-like homes, in western Mongolia. "All the threads they use for [the wall hangings] they sell in the market," Barbara says. "I did a whole painting on that. It was a line of different types of threads they use and it made a wonderful photo as well as a painting."  Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Mongolia.

Read more about Returned Peace Corps Volunteers working on the Third Goal.

Spotlight on Peace Corps Malawi

RPCV Janet Littlefield has built an orphanage in in the village of Chigamba to shelter, feed, and give medical care to homelss children
Janet Littlefield first went to Malawi as a Peace Corps volunteer after she graduated from Skidmore College in 1998. She was assigned to teach in the Ntaja region in the small, landlocked African nation tucked between Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia. While there, she funded the education of an orphan almost her age name Shaibu Kaliati, who today is the director of the Little Field Home, named by the staff in honor of its founder. Littlefield sends the money, Kaliati oversees the orphanage. Littlefield guesses so far the investment into the orphanage has totaled $15,000.

The orphanage is impacting more than just children in Malawi. This summer, Janet Littlefield brought four teenagers from the academy with her to Chigamba for a month-long trip that affected the students and fortified her mission. "It changed their lives going there; they think differently," Littlefield said about the students. During the recent trip to Chigamba, the four Hebron Academy students slept on the cement floor of the home along with the children, living without electricity or running water. They taught seminars on nutrition, AIDs, goat husbandry and health. The group was met with singing by the villagers.

Littlefield, a science teacher originally from Union, started the home in 2003 with money she donated from her teaching salary and from fundraisers. Since then, the orphanage has grown from 20 children to 56. They are cared for by a staff of 14 teachers and workers. An international AIDs charity called Avert reported that in 2005 more than half a million children in Malawi had been orphaned by AIDs. By 2003, roughly 14 percent of the country's adult population had been infected with HIV, according to data from the United Nations Development Programme.  Read more.

Greg Dorr describes Peace Corps stay in Malawi at Camden Public Library
Dorr said that the sheer joy of the work he does is that there is no schedule or itinerary. “I get up in the morning and am free to do whatever I want that day. It makes you extremely motivated. More than that is almost too complicated to describe, but remember it does take some time to boil water for tea first thing in the morning and, without electricity, night comes early (6 p.m.), so you’re limited to what you might want to read or write by kerosene lantern. I’m greatly enjoying writing letters with my Cross fountain pen.”

“From my village to the nearest town of any size is a 20-mile ride in the back of a pickup truck. I’ve counted 47 people in the back of that truck with me. I was holding on to the rollbar with only one foot inside the truck body, as were the two people in front of me and the two behind me. I’ve never traveled on the paved road from Mzuzu to Lilongwe (the capital city) without passing a couple of overturned vehicles. Every vehicle is loaded with passengers. It feels like just a matter of time before you’re going to end up in the ditch,” he said.

The Tumbuka are a handsome, proud, friendly, gracious, engaging people, he said. “Greeting is nearly mandatory, so we foreigners refer to a Malawi traffic jam as the delay you experience where ever you go in having to exchange greetings, handshakes etc with everyone you meet,” Dorr noted. “I’ll often go for a walk with my violin, that way I can play music and not have to be speaking all the time to all the people I meet, and they enjoy the Irish jigs and reels immensely,” he said. He said he is unaware of any melody instruments in the community, outside of his violin, but drumming is everywhere. “Groups of boys seem to be either drumming or playing soccer. And singing is ubiquitous. People walk the path past my house on their way to their gardens singing. At night groups of people gather and sing and dance to the most exotic drumbeats. The absence of electricity seems to contribute to community cohesion. You don’t have people sitting in their individual houses starring at a small lit screen, not speaking to each other.”  Read more.

Speech by President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi: American Peace Corps Are Best Friends Indeed
Let me begin by extending to you all a very warm welcome to the residence as we celebrate 40 years of Peace Corps volunteerism in Malawi. This is a great day to you as well as to us Malawians because it marks the spirit of sharing and solidarity that the United States of America and Malawi have enjoyed together through Peace Corps Volunteers over the years. It is indeed now 40 years since the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers came to Malawi as part of President John Kennedy's commitment to nation building in developing countries in 1963.

I invited you to come here today for me and the entire Malawians society to experience the joy in solidarity with you that 40 years have passed since the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers came to Malawi. Today I want to congratulate you all and express the gratitude of the government of Malawi and my own, for entering into relations of friendship with us for the good of our two countries.

I congratulate you because it is always the young people with the spirit of self-help and discipline, concern for others and their aspiration who pioneer to a new era. It is the young people who are the engine for reform, whether it is Nicole Nelson teaching at Chikangawa Community Day Secondary School in Mzimba or Emily Petersen working at Tulonkhondo Health Centre in Mwanza. I cannot therefore underestimate the remarkable contributions Peace Corps Volunteers have made in Malawi during the past 40 years.

Moreover, it is my ardent desire that the Peace Corps Volunteers should expand their programmes of activities to include teacher training, agriculture and vocational training. These are very pertinent areas for this country to achieve sustainable development. I am aware that this would require an increase in the financial resources usually made available to the Peace Corps development assistance programme. Certainly, Ambassador Meece will look into his request with the necessary authorities in Washington.

I am also aware that as Peace Corps you live under difficult conditions in the rural areas and that your wages are small but you do worthwhile work. I thank you most sincerely for all the sacrifice and efforts of walking together with Malawians and placing your individual skills and talents at their service to shape a better Malawi.

Let this be a day of celebration as well as a day to reaffirm our commitment to work hand in hand in the development of Malawi, and strengthen the good will and mutual understanding existing between the citizens of our two governments. Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Malawi.

Senator Chris Dodd introduces Peace Corps Volunteer Empowerment Act

Senator Chris Dodd introduces Peace Corps Volunteer Empowerment Act
The bill will provide seed monies for active Peace Corps volunteers for demonstration projects at their specific in-country sites. It authorizes $10 million in additional annual appropriations to be distributed by the Peace Corps as grants to returned Peace Corps volunteers interested in undertaking "third goal'' projects in their communities. The bill will also authorize active Peace Corps volunteers to accept, under certain carefully defined circumstances, private donations to support their development projects.

For any organization to thrive, managers and leaders must have access to first-hand knowledge and perspectives of those working on the front lines. And so, this bill will establish mechanisms for more volunteer input into Peace Corps operations, including staffing decisions, site selection, language training and country programs. This bill will also explicitly protect certain rights of Peace Corps volunteers with respect to termination of service and whistleblower protection.

We must bring the Peace Corps into the digital age. To that end, this bill will provide volunteers with better means of communication by establishing websites and email links for use by volunteers in-country.

Inadequate funding and internal structural roadblocks have unfortunately resulted in an unfulfilled Presidential pledge to double the size of the Peace Corps by 2007. Despite a large increase in volunteers signing up for the Peace Corps immediately after September 11, the Congressional Research Service reports that the number of Peace Corps volunteers actually declined in 2006. It is crucial that we work to reverse this troubling trend. That is why this bill authorizes active recruitment from the 185,000 returned Peace Corps volunteer community for second tours as volunteers and as participants in third goal activities in the United States.

This bill will also remove certain medical, healthcare and other impediments that discourage older individuals from becoming Peace Corps volunteers. It will create more transparency in the medical screening and appeals process, and require reports on costs associated with extending post-service health coverage from 1 month to 6 months. 

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic in the 1960's.  Read more.

RPCVs continue service on the Third Goal of the Peace Corps

When Togo RPCV Gregory Acker played African drums with a group of fourth- and fifth-grade students during an assembly, the students couldn't stop moving
Gregory Acker, of Louisville, spent four years in Togo and Morocco in the Peace Corps. He is a part-time professor at Indiana University Southeast and has been performing African music at schools around Kentucky, most of them elementary schools. "I hope these kids got a taste of the spirit that I got when I was living there," he said. Beating on African drums and creating "musical conversations," Acker described each drum and various ways to play them. Fourth-grade students then performed an African skit about unity. "I want to go to Africa now," said Kitty Williamson, a 12-year-old fifth-grader who played in the drum ensemble.   Read more.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Podcast Around the Globe
The RPCV Podcast brings you interviews with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers from around the world. Whether you have an interest in a certain region, enjoy world travel, have served or are interested in serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, the RPCV Podcast will provide you with a unique perspective from volunteers living and working in the far reaches of the globe. The RPCV Podcast is a GSIS original created by first-year MA student Hayden Gore. Hayden—who served with his wife Lisa in the Peace Corps in Guatemala from 2002 to 2004—first came across the idea of educational Podcasts in a newspaper article in 2005. Working at the time as a bi-lingual teacher in Fort Worth, Texas, the idea struck him: why not use the Podcast as a medium through which my students can publish their creative writing pieces before an international audience? To catch everyone up to speed, the Podcast is a digital media format through which anyone with a computer and an internet connection is able to produce audio or video broadcasts and publish them online for viewing by a Web-wide audience. It represents a completely democratic form of journalism and entertainment.

Visit the RPCV podcast web site.

RPCV Edward J. Shultz creates Web Site to teach About Korean-American Experience
''Americans remain awfully ignorant about Korea and also ignorant about Korean-Americans (although) Korean-Americans have been in the States for well over 100 years,'' Shultz said Friday during an interview with The Korea Times. ''And even younger generations of Korean-Americans don't know much about their ancestors' country.'' So he hopes that his new educational Web site can help those who have tried to find interactive and in-depth materials for the study of Korea and Korean-Americans.

The creation of the Web site shares the main purpose of the 2003 documentary films about Korean-Americans, which were produced as part of the project to commemorate the centennial of Korean immigration to America and shown through PBS. Shultz was also a core member for the production of the documentaries. ''The main purpose of the documentaries was to make Korea and Korean-Americans much better known across the America and also help Korean-Americans understand who they are and where they are fit in the American society,'' Shultz said.

Visit the Arirang web site.

RPCVs at University of Nebraksa/Lincoln sponsor “A Night of International Dance”
The event was not designed as a recruiting tool for the Peace Corps, but rather to celebrate ethnic diversity, said Gretchen Mills, Peace Corps coordinator at UNL. “It’s important to open the doors of the world to Nebraskans,” she said. Following the dance exhibition, the audience was invited to visit with a group of local Peace Corps volunteers and representatives from the student-led Global Friends of Japan organization. The former Peace Corps volunteers, who’d served in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, the Ivory Coast and the Kyrgyz Republic, displayed various souvenirs from their travels and answered questions about their experiences.

Don Bush, a graduate student at Union College in Lincoln, said his involvement in the Peace Corps stemmed from a personal desire to gain experience about societies other than his own. However, he said telling others about the experience he gained was not enough to make people’s lives better – a goal he aimed for during his Peace Corps service. “You can talk about it, but people have to go and see it for themselves,” he said.

Read more about the Third Goal of the Peace Corps.

Jordan RPCV Lee Wilbur writes: I want people in the United States to realize that the Muslim world is vast and varied

Jordan RPCV Lee Wilbur writes: I want people in the United States to realize that the Muslim world is vast and varied
When I turn on my American television and see Muslims, I feel scared. I see acts of violence. I hear rants of anger and hate. I see war and threats and tempers boiling. You see, Muslims do not have a peaceful face on my American TV. They do not appear to be happy people. I feel these images and this anger, over and over, again and again, every time I turn on my American television.

These images are shocking to me. I do not doubt that they are real. Several parts of the Muslim world are experiencing unimaginable suffering from war, death, poor human rights and fear from social insecurity. What I know, however, is that these images of anger and hate are not universal traits across the Muslim world. I know this because I recently returned from Muslim lands and I experienced quite the opposite.

What I want is for people in the United States to realize that the Muslim world is vast and varied. In my experience it is also exceptionally welcoming. Since we do not see the everyday life in much of the Muslim world in the media, I encourage us to seek it out. Using the internet, we can easily contact people all over the world – perhaps their televisions give them as negative an imagine about us as ours does about them. We can also meet people in our communities and discuss images and assumptions we acquire from watching television. By reaching out in this way, we will gain a personal and more balanced image.

Most importantly, those of us with positive cross-cultural experiences should be vocal in counteracting stereotypes and assumptions. We can do this by simply sharing our experiences. I, for example, share stories such as the ones in this article in hopes of counteracting negative feelings and misperceptions acquired through the media. Though I do not reach audiences as wide as those reached by CNN and Fox News, I feel blessed to be able to spread positive news from the Muslim world to anyone who will listen.  Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Jordan.

Read more about the Peace Corps and Islamic Issues.