Peace Corps Response: An anniversary. A pandemic. A historic moment for this program launched a quarter century ago.
Short-term, high-impact. Now marking 25 years since its founding. By Steven Boyd Saum Photo by Christian Farnsworth A quarter century ago, at a midsummer White House Rose Garden ceremony attended by President Bill Clinton and Sargent Shriver, first director of the Peace Corps, a new type of Peace Corps service was announced to the world: Crisis Corps. Short-term, high-impact, it was, as then-Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan explained, “an effort to harness the enormous experience, skills, motivation, and talents that the Peace Corps, including its returned Volunteer ranks, possesses, and bring them to bear in an organized fashion during...
Priscilla Goldfarb: Within 48 hours she was on a plane, headed to serve in Katrina relief efforts.
Priscilla Goldfarb Peace Corps Volunteer in Uganda (1965–67) | Crisis Corps Volunteer in Alabama, United States (2005) By Joshua Berman From the Winter 2010 edition of WorldView Photo: Priscilla Goldfarb serving as a Crisis Corps Volunteer with FEMA after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Courtesy Priscilla Goldfarb Priscilla Goldfarb, a longtime nonprofit executive and former National Peace Corps Association board member, had a 40-year gap between her Peace Corps service in Uganda in the mid-1960s and her first Response assignment. Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc across the Gulf Coast — and not long after she retired — Goldfarb received...
Peace Corps Response Volunteers Will Partner with FEMA at Vaccination Centers Across the United States
Evacuated Volunteers will put their skills and experience to work at home helping during the pandemic. By Glenn Blumhorst This week we received very welcome and timely news: Peace Corps Response Volunteers will be deployed to work with FEMA, to assist at vaccination centers across the United States. Not since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have Response Volunteers been deployed domestically. From the early days of the pandemic, we’ve seen members of the Peace Corps community step up to help communities across the United States — as contact tracers, working with food banks, making masks, as part of NPCA’s Emergency Response...