Peace Corps Is Back
Volunteers Have Returned to Some Four Dozen Countries By NPCA Staff More good news about Peace Corps Volunteers returning to service in countries around the world comes every month. As of the beginning of February 2023, Volunteers have now returned for training and service in 47 countries around the globe — including the new program launched in Viet Nam. More than 900 Volunteers are currently serving. Invitations are out for at least eight more countries. The first Volunteers began returning to service in March of 2022, two years after all Volunteers were brought home from the 62 countries where...
Meet the Winners of the Women of Peace Corps Legacy Awards
As part of Peace Corps Connect 2022, Women of Peace Corps Legacy honored two outstanding leaders in the Peace Corps community. The awards were presented by WPCL co-presidents Megan Celistine, who served as a Volunteer in Dominica 2014–17, and Jody Olsen, who served as a Volunteer in Tunisia 1966–68 and as Peace Corps Director 2018–21. Kate Raftery Emerging Leader Award Honoring those under the age of 40 who have shown a demonstrated dedication to improving the lives of women and girls. Jaynice Del Rosario Program Officer, Girls First Fund Jaynice Del Rosario began her career conducting independent research on girls’...
Carol Spahn Sworn In as Peace Corps Director
In a voice vote on December 13, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Carol Spahn to serve as the 21st director of the agency. And in a January 11 ceremony, Spahn took the oath office administered by RPCV Rep. John Garamendi. By Steven Boyd Saum It’s official: Carol Spahn has been sworn in as Director of the Peace Corps. In a voice vote on December 13, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Spahn to serve as the 21st director of the agency. And in a January 11 ceremony, Spahn took the oath office administered by RPCV Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA). Spahn has led the agency since...
President’s Letter: Helping the Peace Corps Be Its Best
As we celebrate Volunteers returning to service in dozens of countries, we pay tribute to a leader here at NPCA who made a difference at a critical time for the Peace Corps community. By Dan Baker At left: El Paso, 2019 — Glenn Blumhorst assists migrants at the border. Just as the Winter 2023 edition of WorldView went press, Carol Spahn was sworn in as Director of the Peace Corps. I was delighted to be there as RPCV Rep. John Garamendi delivered the oath of office. This is an exciting and important moment. The Peace Corps community has spent nearly three years seeking to maintain and...
Be Good, Be Kind, and Be Lucky
Parting advice from a writer and friend By Steven Boyd Saum Almost three decades ago, before I left California to begin serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, my friend Clark Blaise passed along the phone number for a fellow writer he knew in Kyiv. Yaroslav Stelmakh was the first Ukrainian to receive a fellowship to attend the International Writing Program at Iowa — a program that Clark directed and, since 1967, has connected well-established writers from around the globe. Slava Stelmakh (that's him on the left) was primarily a playwright — and staking out what was newly possible to say and...
Mapping a Life
A Life Unimagined: The Rewards of Mission-Driven Service in the Peace Corps and Beyond By Aaron S. Williams International Division, University of Wisconsin-Madison Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Aaron S. Williams grew up in a segregated neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s. When he began studying geography at Chicago Teachers College, it was because the subject would offer him good career opportunities in the public schools. But, as he notes early in the memoir A Life Unimagined, “studying the geography of distant places around the world…the seeds once planted by my father of distant travels began to take root.” That’s not to...
The Future that Almost Was
The Peace Corps Reauthorization Act was the most sweeping legislation in a generation. It passed the House and was on the verge of success in the Senate when the clock ran out. Here’s why that matters. By Jonathan Pearson, Joel Rubin, and Steven Boyd Saum Just as Peace Corps Volunteers began returning to service overseas in 2022, legislation moved forward in Congress that was meant to bolster a renewed, revitalized, and reshaped Peace Corps. In the House, the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act (H.R. 1456) was introduced by RPCV Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) and Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA). It won...
Travels and Ghosts: The 2022 Peace Corps Writers Awards
The people’s writer, love and marriage spats in Kazakhstan, mountain gorillas in Rwanda, a C-section by flashlight in Paraguay, and an epic journey by bicycle We make sense of the world and our interwoven lives through stories. Some of these find form years later as books — and they’ve launched more than a few literary careers. In 1989, returned Volunteers Marian Haley Beil and John Coyne embarked on a project that has evolved into the digital Peace Corps Worldwide, an affiliate group of National Peace Corps Association. They also founded Peace Corps Writers, publishing books by authors in the Peace Corps community. In 2022...
Peace Corps Volunteers Begin Service in Viet Nam
The end of the year began a new era — with a swearing-in ceremony in Ha Noi with Director Carol Spahn. By Steven Boyd Saum December 30, 2022, was a historic day for the Peace Corps: In a ceremony in Ha Noi, nine Volunteers were sworn in to serve in Viet Nam by Peace Corps Director Carol Spahn. The Volunteers arrived for training in October 2022 and are the first to serve in the country. Working alongside counterparts, they will be teaching English in secondary schools in Ha Noi. Participating in the ceremony were officials from the Vietnamese Ministry of Education...
An Accidental Stumble
Taking Stock of two decades of work by Tom Bissell. In 2022, Peace Corps Writers recognized him as the Writer of the Year. By Steven Boyd Saum Tom Bissell photo courtesy Penguin Random House It was at the Downtown Bookfest in Los Angeles that I met Tom Bissell half a dozen years ago. Along with celebrating “Literary LA: Places, Spaces, and Faces” and the independent book scene, some of us read tributes to writers the community had lost in the past year—poets and fictioneers, tellers of true stories and writers of screenplays. I found myself talking with Bissell about a living...