Kinder-Resilient
VAVA'U, TONGA — The village of Tu'anuku ushered in a new era for early childhood education in early February, celebrating the soft opening of a brand-new, resilient kindergarten facility. The milestone marks the culmination of an international collaborative effort spearheaded by Friends of Tonga (FoT), a National Peace Corps Association-affiliated non-profit operating out of Laurel, Maryland. Founded and operated by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), FoT remains dedicated to sustaining the spirit of service long after their initial tenure in the Kingdom. FoT built their first climate-resilient kindergarten in Ta’anga, ‘Eua back in 2021, directly responding to the damage from...
Reading Room: RPCV Book Clubs
Nobody joins Peace Corps without a hunger to understand cultures beyond their own. But where does that hunger go once Volunteers are home again, amid traffic, school pickups, and email pings? For many, book clubs have become a doorway back to service, a place where returned Volunteers can feel the same spark of curiosity that once led them across oceans. Each meeting is an echo of those shared nights in far-flung Peace Corps sites, trading tattered copies of The Poisonwood Bible for One Hundred Years of Solitude. In Portland, Oregon, Bill Stein (Niger 1990–93) has been tending one of the...
The Fourth Goal?
Every Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV)’s experience is unique and challenging. Facing the unknown, learning a language (or two), developing sensitivity to very different cultures, growing new relationships, identifying and completing projects, and overcoming physical difficulties are but a few of the tasks that PCVs face. When they return home, their stories tend to revolve around the experiences they had during their service and the impact they had in the countries they served. But service in the Peace Corps also affects the United States in ways that are equally important to document. The Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Oral History Archival Project...
New School in Nepal
A village in Nepal has a beautiful new school, thanks in part to members of several RPCV groups: Friends of Nepal, Friends of Moldova and the North Carolina Peace Corps Association. They were among the donors for the new home of the Vidhya Mandir Boarding School in the eastern Nepalese village of Samalbung. The school has 126 students, many from indigenous and marginalized groups. School fees are low and some students receive full or partial scholarships. My wife, Champa, and I led the fundraising effort and donated most of the budget for the new school, which was dedicated on April...
Garden of Refuge
As part of our commitment to continued service, the Seattle Peace Corps Association (SEAPAX) is partnering with World Relief Western Washington to support a refugee community garden. For the last five years, teams of SEAPAX Volunteers have worked in the garden, clearing weeds in the spring to ready the beds for the planting season and planting cover crops in the fall to prepare them for winter. At the suggestion of refugee and immigrant community members concerned about the lack of access to healthy food, World Relief Resiliency Program created an urban garden in Kent, Washington, in 2017. In transforming a...
Plains to the Pacific
We are in uncharted public policy territory. Our nation’s foreign assistance infrastructure has been gutted with the elimination of USAID, the dismantling of entities such as the U.S. Institute of Peace and Voice of America, and cuts to the Department of State budget, which are likely to be implemented in 2026. President Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal to Congress also includes the elimination of AmeriCorps, the premier federal program supporting national service. It is not a good time to be in the business of promoting international peace and development, or even service here at home. Comparatively, Peace Corps is...
Meet Them Where They’re At
Earlier this month, Friends of Tonga launched Tau Laukonga, an exciting pair of Tongan and English reading apps aimed at supporting literacy across both the Kingdom of Tonga and the Tongan diaspora. Each app offers 100+ fun, culturally-relevant books across various difficulty levels, topics, and genres. Moreover, the majority of available books also feature read-along audio narration recorded by native speakers. Tau Laukonga was developed by current Tonga PCV and Friends of Tonga Officer Andrew Pavey, who currently is serving in the village of Houma, Tongatapu. Pavey decided to develop the project when he noticed his students’ low achievement rates...
Ubuntu in Action
Ubuntu is a word most Returned Peace Corps Volunteers are familiar with. It’s the belief that an individual’s humanity is fostered through their relationships with others, often summarized as “I am because we are.” Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu leveraged Ubuntu during South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy emphasizing empathy, collective responsibility and restorative justice. Last month, the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (MPCE) launched its first exhibit of 2025, Ubuntu in Action: Exploring the Peace Corps and Shared Humanity, hosted by the International Peace Museum in Dayton, Ohio. This inspiring exhibit delves into the spirit of service,...
Women, Wellness, and Change
The Ruppe Award for Outstanding Community Service is a prestigious honor presented annually by the National Peace Corps Association to RPCV affiliate groups. Named after the respected 10th director of the Peace Corps, Loret Miller Ruppe, this award celebrates initiatives that embody the Peace Corps’ mission to pro- mote cultural understanding, collaboration, and volunteer- ism. The award aims to highlight impactful projects that uphold the Third Goal of the Peace Corps: “Bringing the world back home” through community service and international understanding. The award also serves as a model for other RPCV groups to emulate in their own communities. At...
Work Huddle
For many Peace Corps Volunteers closing out their service, returning to the United States can be an overwhelming experience. But two years of service in a host country cultivates a broad range of skills valuable to federal agencies that offer an opportunity to continue serving the public. That’s why numerous Returned Peace Corps Volunteers embark on a career with the federal government; in addition, these positions offer community based on shared experiences through RPCV workplace affinity groups. “The purpose of the [workplace] affinity groups is to create a community of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers,” said Colleen Dundas (Malawi 2013–15). “It’s...