Unfinished Business: From the Editor of WorldView Magazine
Hopeful work, as Volunteers return to serve alongside communities overseas. And crucial work to ensure Ukraine survives. By Steven Boyd Saum Illustration by Anna Ivanenko For so much of the Peace Corps community, the months since March have been brimming with optimism, bringing news of Volunteers returning to service in countries and communities across the globe. In Africa, they’ve returned to countries including Zambia and Madagascar, Ghana and The Gambia, Senegal and Sierra Leone. They have returned to the Eastern Caribbean and the Dominican Republic. In Latin America, Volunteers have been welcomed in countries including Paraguay and Peru, Colombia and Costa...
Carol Spahn Has Been Nominated to Serve as Peace Corps Director. Read Our Letter of Support — and Take Action.
Today National Peace Corps Association sent a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee supporting Carol Spahn’s nomination to serve as the 21st Director of the Peace Corps. Here’s what we said. And here’s how you can help ensure a better and stronger Peace Corps for the future. By Jonathan Pearson Photo courtesy Peace Corps In April President Biden officially nominated Carol Spahn to serve as Director of the Peace Corps. She began serving as acting director in January 2021 and has led the agency through one of the most challenging periods in Peace Corps history. In the weeks ahead, Spahn...
Peace Corps Introduces an Ethical Storytelling Toolkit
A video and workbook to help Volunteers — and those who served years ago — think about storytelling. That includes intercultural dialogue and awareness of whose voices are at the center of a story. By NPCA Staff Image courtesy Peace Corps video Shortly before the first Volunteers began returning to service overseas in March 2022, the Peace Corps agency published an Ethical Storytelling Toolkit. How we tell our stories — and the voices at the center of these stories — have informed discussions inside and outside the Peace Corps in recent years. A focus on ethical storytelling was also an important...
President’s Letter: After the Fall of Afghanistan, We Need the Rise of the Peace Corps
The United States needs to engage with the world — but not with top-down military-first policies. By Reed Hastings and Glenn Blumhorst Illustration by Melinda Beck Americans spent the past two decades trying to rebuild Afghanistan from the top down. Our military led the way, with huge sacrifice, and the American people spent more than $2 trillion on this effort. While hopes were raised, particularly for women, progress was fleeting. Our mission was not achieved. One could be forgiven, then, for believing that American engagement overseas is a pointless task. And one could even be forgiven for thinking that Americans should...
House Foreign Affairs Committee Advances the Most Sweeping Peace Corps Legislation in Years
The Peace Corps Reauthorization Act now moves forward. It would bring critical reforms to better protect Volunteers and put Peace Corps on the path toward a budget to bolster the number of Volunteers around the world. Though when it comes to health insurance and the Volunteer readjustment allowance, today’s changes provide a little less support. By Jonathan Pearson The Peace Corps Reauthorization Act (H.R. 1456), bipartisan legislation introduced by Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Representative John Garamendi (D-CA) and fellow Representative Garret Graves (R-LA), cleared its first significant hurdle on September 30th, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee moved the bill out of committee...
Letters: Readers respond to the Spring 2021 edition of WorldView
Letters, emails, LinkedIn and Instagram comments, Facebook posts, tweets, and other missives: Readers respond to the stories in words and images in the Spring 2021 edition of WorldView. We’re happy to continue the conversation here and on all those nifty social media platforms. One way to write us: [email protected] Sixty Years of Peace Corps Thanks for another great issue! Glad you included “If I had three minutes to talk to President Biden about the Peace Corps…,” which we heard in March, and then lots of other good stories such as “Once More, with Feeling” in Moldova and “Triage, Respite, and Isolation” at the Lord Baltimore Hotel. Glad, too, to...
White House Budget Proposal for Peace Corps in 2022: Not Where It Needs to Be
The budget proposed today by the White House comes up $40 million short of where it needs to be to implement critical reforms staked out in the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act of 2021. By Jonathan Pearson President Joe Biden has sent his Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) budget request to Congress. Included in his budget is a request of $ 410.5 million for the Peace Corps. By all measures, to build a better and stronger Peace Corps that can help the United States reengage with the world, this comes up short. The President’s request represents flat funding — and...
What Lies Ahead for the Peace Corps
An Update from Acting Director Carol Spahn Carol Spahn served as a Volunteer in Romania 1994–96 as a small business advisor, as country director for Peace Corps Malawi, and as chief of operations in the Africa Region, covering eastern and southern Africa. She has held roles at Women for Women International, Accordia Global Health Foundation, and Small Enterprise Assistance Funds. Here are edited excerpts of her remarks at NPCA’s Sargent Shriver Leadership Summit in March 2021. IN MY FIVE-YEAR TOUR AS COUNTRY DIRECTOR IN MALAWI, I swore in around 500 Volunteers. During each swearing-in ceremony, I reminded Volunteers that...
One Year Later: the Unprecedented Evacuation of Peace Corps Volunteers from Around the Globe
Communities and Volunteers feel the trauma of this disruption. But the pandemic has underscored even more profoundly that we need to foster global solidarity and understanding. An open letter to the Peace Corps community. By Glenn Blumhorst Nepal farewell: Training to become Volunteers, Rachel Ramsey, left, and Elyse Paré had to evacuate instead. Photo by Eddie De La Fuente Around the world in recent days, we have been marking a truly somber anniversary: It was just over a year ago that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. For the Peace Corps community, the burgeoning health crisis...
Peace in the Time of COVID
If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that approaching this endeavor with a sense of solidarity and humility and commitment is a matter of life and death. By Steven Boyd Saum Cover illustration by Ellen Weinstein This is not the magazine we wanted to publish. How could it be? Instead of marking six decades of Peace Corps in pageantry and scrappy DIY inventiveness, we find ourselves in an existential moment. Begin a familiar litany: devastating pandemic, cratering economy — and within the Peace Corps community, the evacuation of Volunteers from around the world last year, with their hoped-for...