Carol Spahn Named Acting Director of Peace Corps
Updated March 4: The Biden Administration continues to fill out political appointments for staff at the agency. By NPCA Staff On January 20, Carol Spahn was named Acting Director of the Peace Corps by President Biden. Spahn had been serving as the Peace Corps chief of operations for Africa. She succeeds Jody Olsen, who stepped down as director on January 20. Spahn has over 25 years of experience in international development, business, health, and women’s empowerment. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Romania (1994–96) and country director in Malawi (2014–19). Her work with the nonprofit sector includes experience with Women for Women International...
An Enormous and Panicked Bird
From Owls of the Eastern Ice By Jonathan Slaght Photo: Blakiston’s Fish Owl chick in Primorye, Russia. Photo by Jonathan Slaght A revelatory tale from biologist Jonathan Slaght. Among the many accolades for Owls of the Eastern Ice: It was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Times of London best nature book of the year. It appeared on numerous best books of the year lists, from NPR to the Wall Street Journal. Slaght was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Russia’s Far East 1999–2002. I SAW MY FIRST Blakiston’s fish owl in the Russian province of Primorye, a coastal talon of land hooking south...
The Stories We Tell
Dreams and disillusionment. A 3,000-mile ultramarathon and a library in a Mayan village. Catching up with books recognized with the Peace Corps Writers Awards. Baked into the mission of the whole Peace Corps experience is the work of telling stories: of listening, catching, giving voice and shape and form with a sense of fidelity to people and place, and an awareness of audience. Nurturing stories from the Peace Corps community in words and images can be a way to foster understanding and empathy, stuff lately in short supply. Back in 1989, returned Volunteers John Coyne and Marian Haley Beil launched a print...
Because Together We Are Stronger
Introducing Peace Corps Community Connect—an effort to connect, inform, and engage the Peace Corps community like never before. By Marieme Foote, Caitlin Nemeth, and Molly O’Brien Illustration by Forum One The past year has underscored just how crucial the experience of Peace Corps service is, as are the values that it instills. Recent months have also driven home the fact that we need to connect, inform, and engage our community like never before. Which is why National Peace Corps Association has launched Peace Corps Community Connect. As part of that team, we’re already partnering with groups of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers...
Volunteers in the House
The 2020 congressional elections mark the end of an era for Peace Corps in Congress: Now there’s only one. And he is working on new legislation to support and improve the Peace Corps. By Jonathan Pearson Photo: John Garamendi The 2020 congressional elections mark the end of an era for Peace Corps in Congress: Since 1975, at least two returned Volunteers served simultaneously in the halls of Congress. Until now. Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), who served as a Volunteer in Ethiopia 1966–68, was reelected with a relatively comfortable victory, securing 58 percent of the vote in California’s Third District....
Farewell, Jody Olsen
She led the Peace Corps Agency since 2018 — and through the unprecedented global evacuation of all Volunteers from countries where they were serving. By NPCA Staff On January 20, Jody Olsen stepped down from her post as Director of the Peace Corps to make way for a new team to be appointed by the Biden administration. Taking on the leadership role for the time being is Carol Spahn, who had been serving as chief of operations for Africa. Olsen was sworn in as director in March 2018. The challenges she and the agency faced in the past year were...
A Presidential Welcome: El Salvador in 2022
Volunteers will return to a program suspended in 2016 By NPCA Staff The President of El Salvador, Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, tweeted news about the Peace Corps to his 2.2 million followers on a Saturday morning in November: “Ahora, que hemos dado grandes avances en seguridad, regresan,” he wrote. Now that we have made great advances in safety, they return. That was on the heels of a release shared by the Peace Corps agency: Community economic development Volunteers will return to El Salvador in 2022. The Peace Corps program in El Salvador was established in 1962, making the country one of the earliest to...
Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia
Another time, another place, another virus By Barry Hillenbrand ”Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia” is a hefty and important book that rightfully deserves an honored place on any shelf of serious books about epidemiology and public health. The book tells the tale of the work that some 73 Peace Corps Volunteers did in the 1970s with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Smallpox Eradication Program (SEP), a massive project that ultimately eliminated smallpox from the world. This serious story is served up with large dollops of nostalgia, humor, delightful tales of daring, and loads of information about fighting infectious diseases, which —...
She Helped South Korea in Its Time of Need. In the Pandemic, It Repaid Her.
Decades ago, a young American woman served an impoverished South Korea as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now the country is an economic powerhouse, and it decided to send her a token of its gratitude. By Choe Sang-Hun Photo: Sandra Nathan teaching in South Korea. Courtesy Sandra Nathan Sandra Nathan spent 1966 to 1968 in a South Korean town as a young Peace Corps Volunteer, teaching English to high school girls. Fifty-two years later, Nathan, now back in the United States, received a care package from South Korea that nearly brought her to tears. Nathan, 75, had been feeling increasingly isolated...
More to This Story: The COVID-19 Survival Box from Korea
How service as Volunteers shaped careers in public health, teaching, and more — for Americans and Koreans alike By NPCA Staff Photo: Survival box, delivered to Gary Krzic, President of Friends of Korea. Photo courtesy Gary Krzic The gifts of more than 500 COVID-19 survival boxes to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served in South Korea inspired news stories across the country. Here are a few. As some note, the Korea Foundation, which sent the boxes, coordinated with Friends of Korea, the group of returned Volunteers, to find and thank them. The Korea Foundation also created a video. A story...