Polyglot
Polish Archive Looking for Peace Corps Artifacts, Memories
By Erica Burman on Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
a photo from Andrea Ginise, who was teaching English between 1997-99 in Kleczew in Poland. The picture is of all of the 97-99 Peace Corps Poland group.
“Peace Corps was in Poland”
“Really??”
As years hurtle past and world events pile on top of world events, it’s not surprising that the fact that the Peace Corps once had a program in Poland might be overlooked. After all, Poland isn’t one of those “typical” Peace Corps countries that spring to mind. But it was a Peace Corps country, and to mark the 10th anniversary of the finishing of activities in Poland, a team at the American Embassy in Warsaw started to collect memories and photos. [Note: there is currently no official Poland RPCV group.]
In the process, they learned that the KARTA Center conducts documentary projects and asked the Center if it could undertake further research about Peace Corps / Poland. The research has been very fruitful thus far, but the Center would like to spread the word even more.
KARTA is collecting any materials which show the history of activities of Peace Corps in Poland, such as memories and private photos of Volunteers, their supervisors and receivers of the activities of Volunteers, but also official documents, photos, leaflets, booklets and any publications connected to the American Peace Corps in Poland. If you cannot scan the documents, they can be mailed to KARTA, scanned and returned.
They also want to interview all people, who had participated on or conducted the activities of American Peace Corps in Poland (via telephone or Skype or if it’s possible face-to-face). Donors can remain anonymous if they choose.
The aim of the project to produce an edited booklet in English and Polish and a bilingual Internet presentation with chosen documents and photos and fragments of the interviews.
The documentation will be a part of the KARTA Center archive and will made available to visitors of the Archive of the KARTA Center for their academic, educational and journalistic purposes.
The project team is looking forward to all inquiries and submissions, and will be collecting materials until the end of March 2012.
To learn more about the project, contact:
Agnieszka Kudełka
e-mail: a.kudelka @karta.org.pl
Ośrodek KARTA
ul. Narbutta 29
02-536 Warszawa
Polska/Poland
Website: http://www.karta.org.pl
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OsrodekKARTA
Does your country of service have plans to mark a special Peace Corps anniversary? Let NPCA know!
