Archive - August 2, 2012

Kevin Quigley, President and CEO of the NPCA, will return this fall to Thailand where he was a PCV from 1976-79. Quigley, who has been with the NPCA for nearly a decade, is well equipped to be the next CD in Thailand. He is fluent in the language, and while a PCV converted from his family’s Catholicism to Buddhism, then spent several months having buat phra–become a monk–after his Peace Corps tour. He has returned  to Thailand several times since his Peace Corps years, once as a Fulbright scholar, and he has maintained relationships with many HCNs. Kevin, who studied at Georgetown University, Columbia University, University College Dublin and Swarthmore College, before the NPCA was also the Acting CEO of  the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. His Ph.D. is in international relations and besides the Fulbright, he has been a   Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Resident Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, . . .

Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) has just produced a 71-minute documentary entitled: Waging Peace: The Peace Corps Experience that weaves personal letters, journals, emails and blogs written by Peace Corps Volunteers with the profiles of four RPCVs whose work today shows the enduring impact of these experiences on their own lives and the lives of others. As Allen writes, “I hope this film demonstrates not only the value of volunteering–in a distant land or your own hometown–but also the importance of getting to know another culture firsthand and respecting the differences.” It is a terrific Peace Corps film. It is a terrific film. Allen also filmed a 82-minute RPCV writers’ panel discussion organized earlier this year by Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas that included Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65), Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67), Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) and Marnie Muller (Ecuador 1963-65). Allen tells me that he is . . .