WorldView Magazine: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
This Isn’t Over
One year after being evacuated from the Philippines, a Peace Corps Volunteer faces the trauma of leaving, the country he returned to, and a question that’s impossible to answer. By Rok Locksley Work and friendship: Rok Locksley, left, with Ban-Ban Nicolas. Photo courtesy Rok Locksley The last day of my Peace Corps service was Friday, March 13, 2020. Together with my wife, Genevieve, I was serving in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. We had gotten up early to enjoy the sunrise on what we knew would be our last day on the island that had become our...
Because Together We Are Stronger
Introducing Peace Corps Community Connect—an effort to connect, inform, and engage the Peace Corps community like never before. By Marieme Foote, Caitlin Nemeth, and Molly O’Brien Illustration by Forum One The past year has underscored just how crucial the experience of Peace Corps service is, as are the values that it instills. Recent months have also driven home the fact that we need to connect, inform, and engage our community like never before. Which is why National Peace Corps Association has launched Peace Corps Community Connect. As part of that team, we’re already partnering with groups of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers...
Volunteers in the House
The 2020 congressional elections mark the end of an era for Peace Corps in Congress: Now there’s only one. And he is working on new legislation to support and improve the Peace Corps. By Jonathan Pearson Photo: John Garamendi The 2020 congressional elections mark the end of an era for Peace Corps in Congress: Since 1975, at least two returned Volunteers served simultaneously in the halls of Congress. Until now. Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), who served as a Volunteer in Ethiopia 1966–68, was reelected with a relatively comfortable victory, securing 58 percent of the vote in California’s Third District....
A Presidential Welcome: El Salvador in 2022
Volunteers will return to a program suspended in 2016 By NPCA Staff The President of El Salvador, Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, tweeted news about the Peace Corps to his 2.2 million followers on a Saturday morning in November: “Ahora, que hemos dado grandes avances en seguridad, regresan,” he wrote. Now that we have made great advances in safety, they return. That was on the heels of a release shared by the Peace Corps agency: Community economic development Volunteers will return to El Salvador in 2022. The Peace Corps program in El Salvador was established in 1962, making the country one of the earliest to...
Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia
Another time, another place, another virus By Barry Hillenbrand ”Eradicating Smallpox in Ethiopia” is a hefty and important book that rightfully deserves an honored place on any shelf of serious books about epidemiology and public health. The book tells the tale of the work that some 73 Peace Corps Volunteers did in the 1970s with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Smallpox Eradication Program (SEP), a massive project that ultimately eliminated smallpox from the world. This serious story is served up with large dollops of nostalgia, humor, delightful tales of daring, and loads of information about fighting infectious diseases, which —...
She Helped South Korea in Its Time of Need. In the Pandemic, It Repaid Her.
Decades ago, a young American woman served an impoverished South Korea as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now the country is an economic powerhouse, and it decided to send her a token of its gratitude. By Choe Sang-Hun Photo: Sandra Nathan teaching in South Korea. Courtesy Sandra Nathan Sandra Nathan spent 1966 to 1968 in a South Korean town as a young Peace Corps Volunteer, teaching English to high school girls. Fifty-two years later, Nathan, now back in the United States, received a care package from South Korea that nearly brought her to tears. Nathan, 75, had been feeling increasingly isolated...
TCP Global Hits $1 Million
A Volunteer-led project now serves communities in the Americas, Asia, and Africa — and just hit a big milestone. Olla Milagrosa (Fundacion, Magdalena, Colombia), which has benefited from earnings through TCP Global, has distributed food and facemasks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo courtesy TCP Global Two decades ago, when 25,000 families were displaced annually by violence in Colombia, a group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers started The Colombia Project, a loan program to help families reestablish financial independence. The program quickly grew to include communities in Niger, Guatemala, and Peru. It now serves 14 countries in Asia, Africa, and the...
A Lasting Tribute
A concluding moment to the service of Joe Kennedy III in the House: legislation to enable work on the Peace Corps Commemorative to carry forward By Jonathan Pearson and Steven Boyd Saum Illustration by Edward Rooks Joseph Kennedy III served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. After he was elected to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012, one of the first pieces of legislation he introduced and passed focused on Peace Corps: It provided congressional authorization for the creation of a Peace Corps Commemorative in Washington, D.C. In September 2020 the design was...
Budget Victory
Full funding of $410.5 million for fiscal year 2021. And Peace Corps must put together a plan to provide access to menstrual hygiene products wherever Volunteers are serving. By Jonathan Pearson Peace Corps received good news on the budget front in December: Congress approved level funding for the agency at $410.5 million. The House had supported full funding all along, but the Senate Appropriations Committee had called for cutting $51 million. “We are extremely grateful to our Capitol Hill Peace Corps champions for their efforts to make sure Peace Corps remains strong with level funding to help it begin the process...
Pioneer in Justice: Drew S. Days III
First African American to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice — and the first Black man to lead any division at Justice, period. Photo Courtesy Yale Law School Drew S. Days III was appointed to the Department of Justince in 1977 under President Jimmy Carter. He later served as solicitor general of the United States under President Bill Clinton. Gentle, courageous, and kind, he devoted much of his career to striving for racial equality. Born in Atlanta in 1941, he grew up in Tampa, Florida, and at the age of 30 won a lawsuit that desegregated...
