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...
Dear Editor: Why Peace Corps Matters
Here’s what the Peace Corps community in one state has to say about it. Some lessons and inspiration from New Mexico. By Jonathan Pearson As National Peace Corps Association worked with members of the Peace Corps community to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Peace Corps Act last September, we launched an eight-week campaign around the anniversary, seeking community members to be advocates through news outlets across the country — both digital and print. The results? Two months in, advocates for the Peace Corps successfully placed 49 submissions in publications across 23 states, reaching an audience...
Peace Corps ‘Jeopardy!’
Four recent contestants — and one champion By NPCA Staff Geographer Charles Fogelman. Photo courtesy “Jeopardy!” Here’s your clue: This University of Illinois geographer served with the Peace Corps in Lesotho 2003–05, once hosted Queen ‘Masenate Mohato Seeiso for dinner in Harlem, nailed questions in the category “The Equator” … and became champion on “Jeopardy!” on February 16. Answer: Who is Charles Fogelman? The one-day winner on the show was one of four recent RPCV contestants. The day before, Jimmy Rollins (Albania 2005–07), an international economic development consultant with Deloitte, leaned on his knowledge of Hemingway to finish second on the show. In...
Peanut Flour, Peace Corps, and the President
In 1967, Jack Allison wrote and recorded a song that went on to be the No. 1 hit in Malawi for two years running. Then the president kicked him out of the country. 45 RPM: “Ufa Wa Mtedza (The Peanut Flour Song)” — No. 1 in Malawi 1967–70. Photo courtesy Jack Allison The Warm Heart of Africa An Outrageous Adventure of Love, Music, and Mishaps in Malawi By Jack Allison Peace Corps Writers Jack Allison served as a Volunteer 1967–69 in Malawi, a country known as “The Warm Heart of Africa.” While there, he wrote and recorded the number...
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...
Fixing Loan Forgiveness for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
Rep. John Garamendi joined Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen in sending a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona asking for returned Volunteers to be included in Public Service Loan Forgiveness Reforms. By Jonathan Pearson In early March 2022, CNN reported that the U.S. Department of Education has identified 100,000 borrowers eligible for debt cancellation from the beleaguered Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. Reforms were announced to the program last October, allowing some borrowers to receive credit toward PSLF for periods of public service that would not have previously qualified. But Returned Peace Corps Volunteers were not listed among those...
For “Hardball” Host Chris Matthews, a Life in Politics Began with the Nixon-Kennedy Battle in 1960
This Country My Life in Politics and History By Chris Matthews Simon & Schuster Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum “I suppose everyone has a moment that wins them over to a lifelong enthusiasm,” Chris Matthews writes early on in This Country. “For me, it was the 1960 battle between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy that got me truly excited about politics.” Matthews was 14, and from an Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia. He fell hard for JFK — at first. But his was a Republican family. Come GOP convention time, young Chris had swung around to his...
An Audience with the King
For 30 years Ambika Joshee worked for the Peace Corps in Nepal. His memoir, The Life of a Nepali Village Boy, is a candid account of a country being transformed — and traces a personal quest for knowledge, justice, and understanding. Here is an excerpt. An Audience with the King By Ambika Mohan Joshee Bandipur is seven kilometers south of Dumre Bazar, which is on the Kathmandu-Pokhara highway. It is a small hilltop settlement with a population of about 16,000. About 1,030 meters above sea level, on a saddle of the Mahabharat range, it is a beautiful town with old Newari architecture. Houses...
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...
How the May 1980 Democratic Uprising in South Korea Was Met with Brute Force: A First-Person Account
Witnessing Gwangju By Paul Courtright Hollym Publishers Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Paul Courtright arrived in South Korea in 1979 to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer, based in a community near the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. He worked with patients afflicted with Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy. On May 19, 1980, on his way through the bus terminal in the provincial capital of Gwangju, he saw a young man being beaten by military special forces. A phone call to another Volunteer confirmed: “Something big” was going down in the city — part of a mass...