Dengue Fever Blues
The Marshall Islands: Climate change and healthcare By Jack Niedenthal I work with a group of health care workers whom I will forever consider to be heroic. And this is why this is so: In the Marshall Islands climate change to us is not a “threat,” it already weighs heavily upon our island lives each and every day. Climate change not only means battling periodic inundations from rising sea levels that began to become routine in 2011, but now it also means fighting numerous and unpredictable disease outbreaks. And it will undoubtedly continue in this manner well into the future. This...
Writ on Water
Tonga: Lessons and memories, hopes and fears By Siotame Drew Havea Forty years ago I started working with Peace Corps Tonga. When I came on board in the mid-1980s as training director and then associate director, our two main projects focused on education and health. We had also launched an agricultural project, focused on research and agribusiness, in the 1970s. Some of our volunteers complained of not enough happening in their structured jobs. So we made sure volunteers’ time and energy went to secondary projects focused on the environment. Volunteers worked directly with farmers and community members to plant trees—to...
Full Circle
In the wake of a devastating natural disaster, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers mobilized. And the nonprofit Friends of Tonga was formed. By Michael Hassett and Chiara Collette On February 11, 2018, Cyclone Gita, with winds that topped 233 km/h — category 4 hurricane strength — slammed into the Pacific island nation of Tonga. It was the worst storm in over 60 years and wrought horrendous damage on the islands of Tongatapu and ‘Eua, resulting in two deaths and numerous injuries. More than 2,000 homes were damaged, crops were destroyed across both islands, and 80 percent of the Tongan population was...
Tilting with Windmills
Connect turbines from wind alley to where people need the juice, and you could transform the American energy grid. Even get us to 50 percent renewables. That was Michael Skelly’s grand vision. By Russell Gold This is not a story with a happy ending — yet. It’s a tale of former Peace Corps Volunteer Michael Skelly (Costa Rica 85-87), who set out to build an interstate energy transmission superhighway system. Over a decade, the roadblocks proved immense. Here are excerpts from Superpower: One Man’s Quest to Transform American Energy by Russell Gold. When he was 25 years old, Michael Skelly felt directionless. He wrote...
A Towering Task
Peace Corps in the American Conversation By Alana DeJoseph Nearly six and a half years ago, when we began production on “A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps,” it was important to get this story out. America was forgetting that there was a Peace Corps. Much has changed in the years since. In some ways, it’s not just the Peace Corps we need to talk about now, but why and how America as a whole engages with the rest of the world. Peace Corps historian John Coyne, who served asa volunteer in Ethiopia 1962–64, talks about the Peace...
Flashback 1984: Travels in China
Gallery Photos by Jamie Fouss. Introduction by David Arnold In 1984, Jamie Fouss and a Peace Corps Samoa friend, Liz Alperin, spent six weeks traveling in the People’s Republic of China. The United States had established diplomatic relations only five years prior. China had recently removed the requirement that all foreigners travel in groups; Jamie and Liz were some of the first foreigners to travel on their own. Traveling in those days was quite challenging. Few Chinese people spoke English. Foreigners needed special permission to visit certain cities and could only stay in hotels that accepted special foreign exchange currency....
Shaping Three Worlds
How WorldView pieces together our Peace Corps experience By David Arnold As this magazine continues publishing into its fourth decade, WorldView has become many things for the Peace Corps community. That’s what magazines do. Particularly this one. The tone and texture of this modest quarterly was bound to change for at least several reasons: tumultuous events in most of the 142 countries where we have served for more than five decades, the diversity of those of us who have volunteered to go there, and the often-failing efforts of our own government’s larger attempts to provide world leadership. The puzzle Since I began...
Letters Spring 2020: WorldView Readers Write
Zambia Microfinance I am a Peace Corps Volunteer posted in Zambia. I lent a copy of [the Spring 2019] WorldView to some members of my community and they saw the article about TCP Global, “Empowering a Village.” They’re interested in microfinance and would like loans to help with various projects they want to pursue in our village. Then they formed a group of ten and asked me to get in touch with Helene Dudley at TCP Global. The leader of them is Stanley Shikoki. Would it be possible for TCP Global to provide micro-loans in my community? Calvin Yahn Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia...
Gold in Peace
WHY I GIVE: From Mongolia to the San Francisco Police. For Kenneth Syring, it’s about service. A Conversation with WorldView Magazine Kenneth Syring joined Peace Corps when Volunteers didn’t choose their destination. He was thrilled when Peace Corps asked him to go to Mongolia. That’s the country he had in mind when this Bakersfield, California native applied. He soon was teaching English and tackling human trafficking. Now he’s an investigator with the San Francisco Police Department. Their motto, in part: Oro en paz — “gold in peace.” How did Peace Corps shape your path? Peace Corps gave me a bug for service. I like...
World-Class Teachers
Thirty years of connecting Peace Corps Volunteers, educators, and classrooms For three decades the Peace Corps’ Paul D. Coverdell World Wise Schools program has fostered global learning in the United States and around the world. And the program is celebrating its 30th anniversary by bringing more to the classroom: new interactive resources that teach intercultural understanding and global competence to young people. What’s there? Hundreds of online resources for U.S. learners, teachers, and current and returned Peace Corps volunteers. New lesson plans, activities, stories, and global competence trainings for educators. World Wise Schools provides easy-to-implement programs that educators can incorporate. They...