January 31, 2022 – Peace Corps Worldwide

The Volunteer Who Brought China Home to America — Peter Hessler (China)

Jan 31 2022

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia, 1963-65) Peter Hessler graduated from Princeton University in 1992 with an A. B. in English. The summer before graduation, he wrote an extensive ethnography about the small town of Sikeston, Missouri, which was published by the Journal for Applied Anthropology. After graduation, he received a Rhodes Scholarship to study English language and literature at Mansfield College, University of Oxford. Peter then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in China from 1996 to 1998, teaching English at Fuling Teachers College, in a small city near the Yangtze River. After Peace Corps, Peter continued his work in China as a freelance writer for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The South China Morning Post, and National Geographic. He joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2000 and served as a foreign correspondent until 2007. Peter left China in 2007 and settled . . .

Peace Corps documentary lauds storied history and looks to the future

Jan 31 2022

A former Peace Corps volunteer says the organization remains relevant 60 years after its founding during the Kennedy administration. Other nations have development programs, yet the Peace Corps is unique, said Dane Myers, now the assistant director of the Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development at Illinois State University. “A lot of the focus of the early Peace Corps years is sustainable agriculture, digging wells, and things like that. And it has evolved. Many of the areas where Peace Corps volunteers serve are undergoing vast economic, social, political, and technological changes,” said Myers. “But each location has such specific challenges, that the fact the Peace Corps sends volunteers directly into these communities where they are immersed for a period of two years, just helps them to understand the culture of the problems in a way other development efforts can’t.” The Peace Corps is celebrating six decades of . . .

Archive - January 31, 2022