Be an Advocate for Racial Justice
As we celebrate an anniversary, renew a commitment to building peace and friendship here are home by taking a stand for equity and justice under the law. By Jonathan Pearson We are just days away from the 60th anniversary of a moment that jump-started the establishment of the Peace Corps. At 2 a.m. on October 14, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gave an impromptu speech outside the University of Michigan’s student union. After a day of campaigning, he didn’t expect a crowd of thousands to be waitinig, but there they were. Those familiar with the speech recall these words: "How many of you...
Peace Corps Today
Address by the Director of the Peace Corps to the July 2020 global ideas summit: Peace Corps Connect to the Future By Jody Olsen On July 18, 2020, National Peace Corps Association hosted Peace Corps Connect to the Future, a global ideas summit. NPCA invited Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen to speak. She was introduced by Glenn Blumhorst, President and CEO of National Peace Corps Association. Her remarks come a week after Peace Corps signed a historic agreement for launching a program with Viet Nam in 2022. And they come as the COVID-19 pandemic makes the future for all international...
What Sustains Us
Food for thought — and for life — in a time of crisis By NPCA Staff Photo: Ackeem Evans, left, with a volunteer for World Central Kitchen. Courtesy Ackeem Evans. Here are two stories that inspired us in the past two days: Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who have carried their sense of community and commitment to the critical work they’re doing at a time of a global pandemic, and when people across the United States and around the world have taken to the streets to protest racial injustice. Ackeem Evans was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in...
Save the Date: Peace Corps Connect for the Future on July 18
We’re convening for an ideas summit to ask some big questions about the Peace Corps community in a changed world. In the next few weeks, we’re also bringing together members of the Peace Corps community around issues of racial injustice and climate change — to help shape our agenda for the future. In March 2020, Peace Corps Volunteers were evacuated globally because of a global pandemic still taking its toll. That created an unprecedented and enormous challenge on its own. We want to help reignite the work of Peace Corps around the world. So how do we do that, and...
Stand Against Racial Injustice
Our commitment to empathy and justice — around the world, and here at home By Glenn Blumhorst Our nation is reeling. How could it not be? More than 100,000 Americans are dead from COVID-19. More than 40 million have filed for unemployment since mid-March. And last week we witnessed the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of a white police officer. These are not unrelated tragedies. And George Floyd’s death is only the latest in a terrible litany of unarmed Black men and women who have been killed. We condemn the actions that led to...