He helped inspire the Peace Corps, then became a Volunteer: Douglas Kelley
In Memoriam: Douglas Kelley (1929–2022) By Catherine Gardner Photo courtesy the family of Douglas Kelley. Douglas Kelley holds a special place among those who helped inspire the Peace Corps. As a student at Berea College in Kentucky, he was committed to international cooperation and civil rights. In his senior year in college, in 1951, he began laying the groundwork for the International Development Placement Association, a program to promote humanitarian service by placing people internationally in jobs with indigenous organizations and governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Within three years the program had sent 18 young Americans abroad and had...
Juliane Heyman Escaped the Holocaust in Europe. In the U.S., She Became the First Woman to Serve as a Peace Corps Training Officer.
In Memoriam: Juliane Heyman (1925–2022) By Catherine Gardner Photo of Juliane Heyman courtesy Alana DeJoseph Born in the Free City of Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland, Julie Heyman was 12 years old when she fled her home due to increasing Nazi persecution. After months of being disconnected from her parents, she and her family were reunited in Brussels. They fled again when the Nazis invaded Belgium. In 1941, Heyman arrived in New York by freighter. She graduated from Barnard College before earning master’s degrees in international relations and library science from U.C. Berkeley. In what she calls one of her “most...
GALLERY: The Face of Iran Before …
A selection from Dennis Briskin’s photos from Iran in the late 1960s. His book was recognized with the Rowland Scherman Award for Best Photography Book by Peace Corps Writers. By NPCA Staff Dennis Briskin has published a collection of 60 photographs from the city of Arak and central Iran, where he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer 1967–69. Briskin writes that he calls the collection The Face of Iran Before… because these photographs were taken before “the Islamic Revolution took the country back to oppressive intolerance and brutality. Before oil wealth brought engines and electric motors to replace mule, camel and horsepower, sometimes even human power,...
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...
He Started Out Selling Soap. And Went On to Found the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Good Business The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World By Bill Novelli Johns Hopkins University Press Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Bill Novelli’s career includes serving as CEO of AARP, founding the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, leading the humanitarian organization CARE, and establishing global PR agency Porter Novelli. He teaches in the MBA program at McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. In Good Business, he offers lessons on life and leadership. He got his start in the corporate world with Unilever, selling soap. Next stop: a New York ad agency, where he sensed a kind of...
On the Plain of Snakes
In the mountains near Oaxaca, tales of El Norte: among weavers and migrant workers who left family and home for work across the border — and returned. Conversations from a time before COVID. By Paul Theroux On a sojourn in pursuit of understanding, writer Paul Theroux set out five years ago to travel the length of the U.S.–Mexico border. Then he drove his old Buick south, visiting villages along the back roads of Chiapas and, here, a mountain town near Oaxaca. An excerpt from On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey. In the small Zapotec-speaking town of San...
As a Child, She Fled Nazi Germany with Her Family. Two Decades After the War, She Was a Chemist Teaching at a University in Lagos with the Peace Corps.
My Years in the Early Peace Corps Nigeria, 1964–1965 (Volume 1) Ethiopia, 1965–1966 (Volume 2) By Sonja Krause Goodwin Hamilton Books Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Sonja Krause Goodwin had already traveled far from home, earned a doctorate in chemistry, and worked for six years as a physical chemist when she joined the Peace Corps. Born in St. Gall, Switzerland, in August 1933, she had fled Nazi Germany with her family and resettled in Manhattan, where her parents opened a German bookstore. Sonja entered elementary school without speaking a word of English. Science is where she found her calling....
Peace Corps Week 2022: Events to mark the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps — and to renew a commitment to the work of building peace and friendship
Celebrate Peace Corps Week February 27 – March 5. Events are taking place across the country and throughout the world. Here are a few highlights, including a special forum hosted by the Peace Corps Agency and a kickoff for National Days of Advocacy in Support of the Peace Corps. By NPCA Staff As we mark Peace Corps week in 2022, it is with a sense of both hope and fear. The Peace Corps Agency has announced that the first groups of Volunteers are preparing to return to service overseas in March. The first groups are set to begin service in...
Letters: Readers Respond to the Summer 2021 edition of WorldView and Snapshots of Peace Corps History
Peace Corps Response at 25. Sarge leads the first Volunteers. Budget advocacy. Remembering 9/11 two decades later. JFK at the Cow Palace in ’60. Letters, emails, LinkedIn and Instagram comments, Facebook posts, tweets, and other missives: Readers respond to the stories in words and images in the Summer 2021 edition of WorldView, special digital features, and the conversation on social media. We’re happy to hear from you there and here: worldview@peacecorpsconnect.org An anniversary. A pandemic. Peace Corps Response. Great magazine — I always read it cover to cover. Congratulations! Nancy Hatch Nepal 1966–69 Big Picture: Sarge Leads Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and...
The Peace Corps at Sixty: A Timeline of Six Decades of Service — and Snapshots from the Wider World
Some moments that have defined the Peace Corps from 1960 to today. Plus a year-by-year look at countries where Peace Corps programs began. Researched by Ellery Pollard, Emi Krishnamurthy, Sarah Steindl, Nathalie Vadnais, and Orrin Luc At right: the 10th-anniversary Peace Corps stamp, issued in 1972. Image courtesy Peace Corps As part of the 60th anniversary of the Peace Corps in 2021, WorldView magazine has published a series of timelines tracking Peace Corps’ beginnings — and we’ve traced the 25-year history of Peace Corps Response. Explore more here: Annotation: Changing World | The Globe in 1961, the year the Peace Corps was founded...