Story Slammers Wanted
The New York City Peace Corps Association hosts the ninth season of their Story Slams — all virtual this year. So you can tell and hear stories from everywhere. Still to come on November 19: “Global Reentry: Evacuation Stories” from Volunteers forced to leave the communities where they were serving last March. This season also included stories on “Unexpected Americans: Experiences with Identity in the Peace Corps” and “Political Animals: Encoun-ters with the Political Process.” RSVP and sign up: bit.ly/nycpcastorytellers2020 This story appears in the Fall 2020 editiof of WorldView magazine. Read the entire magazine for free now in the WorldView app. Here’s how: STEP...
10,000 Meals: World Central Kitchen and Hurricane Laura
All in a day’s work for the team with World Central Kitchen By Steven Boyd Saum Indeed, 10,000 meals is all in a day's work for the team with World Central Kitchen (WCK) working in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, helping feed refugees and first responders. “A very long (but good!) day,” says Daniella DeLaRue, who traveled from Texas to help out — and support the work that Ackeem Evans was coordinating as project manager for WCK. Evans asked National Peace Corps Association to put out a call for more volunteers. “It was really wonderful to meet Ackeem and tell him...
A First for Puerto Rico
Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan has become the first Puerto Rican college to be part of the Peace Corps Prep program for undergraduate students. By WorldView Staff Image by iStock The certification program strengthens students’ professional and intercultural skills, combining academic preparation with volunteering and an entrepreneurial project in areas such as health, education, the environment, and community economic development, among others. Alumni from Sacred Heart University, as it’s known in English, have served in Peace Corps for years. Those versed in Peace Corps history also know that some of the very first Volunteers to serve around the world trained in Puerto Rico beginning in June 1961. The Peace Corps Prep program was inaugurated...
Peace Corps Viet Nam: Launching in 2022
An historic partnership years in the making By Steven Boyd Saum The news broke July 10: inking of an agreement between Viet Nam’s Ministry of Education and Training and Peace Corps to formally establish a Peace Corps program in English education. The occasion also marked 25 years of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. “We are thrilled to be entering into this historic partnership,” said Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen. “I am honored and deeply grateful to the people and Government of Viet Nam for their willingness to open their hearts, schools and homes to Peace Corps volunteers. This program, with its emphasis on cross-cultural...
Peace Corps 60th Anniversary
We’re marking the events in 1960 and 1961 that led to the creation of the Peace Corps. And we seek inspiration in how we can reimagine Peace Corps for a changed world. By WorldView Staff At 2 a.m. on October 14 the Peace Corps community kicked off 60th anniversary celebrations with a once-a-decade gathering: We returned (virtually) to the steps of the student union at University of Michigan to commemorate the impromptu speech by John F. Kennedy that helped launch the Peace Corps. The questions that caught the zeitgeist: “How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana?...
COVID-19: Putting a Face on the ‘Invisible Enemy’
Making SARS-CoV-2 tangible helps demystify the challenges we face with the COVID-19 pandemic By Markian Hawryluk From her laboratory in the far western reaches of Montana, Elizabeth Fischer is trying to help people see what they’re up against in COVID-19. Over the past three decades, Fischer, 58, and her team at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, part of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have captured and created some of the more dramatic images of the world’s most dangerous pathogens. “I like to get images out there to try to convey that this is an...
Letters Fall 2020: WorldView Readers Write
Unprecedented Times We set aside the standard magazine playbook for our summer edition. We’re happy to bring back your letters — to continue the conversation.Write us: worldview@peacecorpsconnect.org I’m writing to congratulate and thank you for the current issue of WorldView. It’s the most powerful thing in print I’ve seen from Peace Corps since I received my acceptance letter in 1969. Congrats to everyone involved on a mammoth job so very well done. Stephen Barefoot Kenya 1969–72 Most remarkable WorldView ever, both the quality of the product and the effort it took to gather and edit the stories. What we may have is the substance for a book, proceeds from which would...
In Memoriam: Walter Carrington
He led Peace Corps programs, served as a top diplomat, and achieved important milestones in civil rights. By Jonathan Pearson One of the first country directors appointed by Sargent Shriver in 1961, Walter C. Carrington led Peace Corps programs in Tunisia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone in the 1960s before serving as Regional Director for Africa. But that was just one facet of a remarkable life. Prior to that, at Harvard he founded the chapter of the NAACP. He was the youngest-ever member of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and in the late 1950s his commission work included leading an investigation into the racist practices of the Boston Red Sox...
Peace Corps Connect to the Future: Views from around the world and Volunteers at home
Eight town halls and a global ideas summit to reimagine the Peace Corps for a changed world. By Glenn Blumhorst What are the big ideas for the Peace Corps, National Peace Corps Association, and the Peace Corps community going forward? To answer that, in July we convened eight town halls and a global ideas summit that brought together thousands of members of the Peace Corps community. The reason: In March 2020, all Volunteers were evacuated from around the world because of COVID-19. They came home to a country in economic turmoil and with a worsening pandemic, and soon wracked by...
Reed Hastings and Patty Quillin Give $120 Million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Investing in the future: It’s the largest gift of its kind. By WorldView Staff Graves Hall, Morehoiuse College. Photo by Thomson200, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons “THIS IS THE TIME to do some-thing bigger,” Netflix Founder Reed Hastings said when the news broke in June. How big? He and wife Patty Quillin announced that they were giving $120 million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Hastings served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) from 1983 to 1985, where he taught mathematics. And this summer Hastings and Quillin began changing the equation for scholarships to HBCUs: $40 million each...