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...
From the Editor: Honoring Your Stories
Sixty years of Peace Corps. Volunteers returning to service. And a first for this magazine. Illustration by Tim O’Brien By Steven Boyd Saum A year ago the cover of WorldView bore the image of a dove encaged by a COVID-like molecule and asked: “What’s the role of Peace Corps now?” It’s a question we’re still seeking to answer. There were then, as now, no Volunteers in the field — though staff in posts across the globe were sustaining connections with communities. And tens of thousands of returned Volunteers, whether they had been abruptly evacuated because of the pandemic or had...
Evacuation: Service cut short by medical crisis, the draft, and COVID-19
Evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers: Then and Now, We Continue to Serve — a conversation convened as part of Peace Corps Connect 2021. Pictured: “Gül” in Turkish, “rose” in English. Margo Jones served as a Volunteer in the village of Asagisayak, then in the city of Bolu. Photo by Ken St. Louis On September 25, 2021, Jodi Hammer hosted a panel of Volunteers who have been evacuated from the countries where they were serving — in the 1960s and in 2020. Hammer was a Volunteer in Ecuador 1994–97 and serves as Career Support Specialist at National Peace Corps Association. Here are edited excerpts...
WorldView Magazine Earns Top Honors for Editorial and Design Excellence in 2021 FOLIO Magazine Awards
An EDDIE award recognizing a series of stories about Volunteers evacuated from around the world. And a cover asking “What’s the Role of Peace Corps Now?” These awards mark the first time that the magazine published for the Peace Corps community has earned these top honors. By NPCA Staff For the first time in its more than three-decade history, WorldView magazine has brought home top honors in the FOLIO Awards honoring magazine editorial and design excellence. Published by National Peace Corps Association, WorldView is a winner of both an EDDIE and OZZIE in the 2021 awards. WorldView earned EDDIE top honors...
President’s Letter: An Historic Moment
A time to honor the past — and commit to a different future By Glenn Blumhorst Illustration by Richard Borge HERE’S A FAMILIAR CELEBRATORY REFRAIN: On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924, establishing the Peace Corps with the mission of building world peace and friendship. In honor of that beginning, every spring is a time for us to recognize the ways that the Peace Corps has made an impact — in individual lives and in communities around the globe. But this year is different. And an unprecedented time in so many ways. One year...
Now Is the Time: From the Editor of WorldView Magazine
An invitation to listen, learn — and roll up our sleeves. By Steven Boyd Saum Let’s start with a story about an invitation. There’s that historic letter from JFK below, sent to the first would-be Volunteers. And let me tell you about Laurel Hunt, a recent engineering grad from University of Minnesota, and the years of Peace Corps service she has yet to undertake in Peru, working with a community on health and sanitation. Return to March 2020: “Friday the 13th was my last day at work,” Hunt writes. “As I packed up my desk that afternoon, I got a...
Peace Corps Service: Then and Now
Sixty years since the Peace Corps was founded. Beginnings in a troubled world. Amid an unprecedented time, an anniversary like no other. And unfinished business in an age of divisiveness and uncertainty. In the print edition of WorldView, these photos open a section of the magazine that brings together a few stories of service across the decades. Plus, advice that former Peace Corps directors would share with the current president of the United States. Read. Explore. And share your stories. 1961: Towering Task Edition | Once More, with Feeling | Our Stories Are America’s Stories | “If I had three minutes to talk to...
Legislation for a Changed World
It has been decades since Congress tackled Peace Corps legislation this sweeping. Along with important reforms, it would lead to 10,000 Volunteers serving in the field — a number not seen in half a century. By Jonathan Pearson Illustration by traffic_analyzer On March 1 of this year, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and California Congressman John Garamendi introduced H.R. 1456, the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act of 2021. Co-sponsored by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), who serves as co-chair of the House Peace Corps Caucus with Garamendi, H.R. 1456 will serve as the foundation for National Peace Corps Association’s 60th anniversary legislative agenda. The...
In It Together
Before Milana Baish served as a Peace Corps Volunteer, she interviewed 15 who had served across the decades. Then came the global evacuation. Interview by Jordana Comiter Meeting multiple returned Volunteers while studying at University of Texas, Austin, led Milana Baish to interview 15 RPCVs and write an honors thesis on how they perceived their experiences’ impact — in their communities and on themselves. They served from the 1960s to 2015, from Ghana to Sri Lanka, Brazil to Ukraine. Then it was Baish’s turn. Her service in Zambia was cut short by evacuation. A Coverdell Fellowship brought her to Clark University for...
We’ll Always Have Sefrou
Evacuation, some Peace Corps history, and #apush4peace When Coronavirus Unmapped the Peace Corps' Journey Jeffrey Aubuchon (92252 Press) Reviewed by Jake Arce and Steven Boyd Saum In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the unprecedented global evacuation of Peace Corps Volunteers. Jeffrey Aubuchon brings together stories of some evacuees chronicled in WorldView: Chelsea Bajek, who was working with a women’s group in Vanuatu; Jim Damico, evacuated from teaching in Nepal; Benjamin Rietmann, yanked from his work with farmers and young entrepreneurs in Dominican Republic; and Stacie Scott, who left behind the community she was serving as a health volunteer in Mozambique. Aubuchon follows...