Archive - August 2022

Dear AGNAM Participants, On behalf of our team at NPCA, thank you all for your engagement in the 2022 Affiliate Group Network Annual Meeting (AGNAM). We enjoyed the opportunity to see you all and share updates, successes, and ideas during the meeting. As promised, we are sharing the event recording, detailed agenda with links , and responses to unanswered questions you asked in our post-event survey. Find our responses to your questions below. If you did not yet have the chance to provide feedback during the event, you can still fill in your thoughts here. First, as announced at AGNAM, two relevant decisions have been made by the NPCA Board of Directors. First, Dan Baker has graciously stepped in as NPCA’s Interim President and CEO. Dan will guide NPCA’s operations as the board moves ahead in its search for a new CEO. The second decision is I will be co-chairing . . .

The September issue of Stroll Spring Valley features Maureen and students from Escuela Marina Orth on the cover. Find out how it all began from Maureen’s Peace Corps days in Medellin: https://www.strollmag.com/locations/spring-valley-dc/articles/-5f6638/  Please come to the fiesta!   When Maureen Orth, best-selling author, special correspondent at Vanity Fair magazine, and resident of Spring Valley, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, at 21, she was desperate to travel abroad. Seeking adventure, and heeding President John F. Kennedy’s call to serve, she applied to join the Peace Corps and asked to be sent to Latin America — an area of the world she had always felt drawn to culturally. Assigned to be sent to live in a poor barrio on the outskirts of Medellin, Colombia (coincidentally, the first country Kennedy himself visited upon becoming president), Orth prepared for her time there by training at the Columbia University School of Social Work, studying Spanish and practicing the . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Leita Kaldi (Senegal 1993-96)   Volunteer and Club Fair Sarasota, Florida     The “Volunteer and Club Fair” is an annual event during normal times, but this was the first event post covid restrictions at the Ringling College of Art & Design, in Sarasota, Florida. This event is designed for the students at the college. There was a screener at the door to facilitate the entry of the students attending the event and to allow the invited clubs and volunteer groups to enter. The students join clubs affiliated with the college and find out more about both campus based and outside volunteer opportunities, such as the Peace Corps, especially since the college hosts select outside groups to join the event. RPCV GCFL being one of those. The “Volunteer and Club Fair” has been going on for at least 10 years. The RPCV GCFL affiliate . . .

On the Road Again The WOW Factor: Words of Wisdom from Wise Older Woman By Bonnie Black (Gabon 1996-98) Whenever I want to travel without leaving home, I turn to Paul Theroux. Right now I’m accompanying him on his nostalgic trip throughout Asia in his 2008 book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, in which he retraces the epic journey he took in 1973 when he was in his early thirties, which became his first bestseller, The Great Railway Bazaar. I’ll admit it: I love traveling with this man this way. I love his sensibilities, his observations, his breadth, the sound of his voice on the page. I love the way he chooses to travel – down to earth, close to the real people – the way I, too, prefer to be. In an effort to remain a companionable traveling companion, I tend to agree with him and go along with everything he . . .

Peace Corps Volunteers Resume Service Ambassador Pierangelo congratulated the Volunteers and thanked local Peace Corps staff August 19, 2022   The Peace Corps officially welcomed the return of two Volunteers who resumed their service in a swearing in ceremony Tuesday with U.S. Ambassador Claire A. Pierangelo and Peace Corps Country Director Brett Coleman. The Volunteers were among those who left the country in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.They returned to Antananarivo earlier this month and have spent the last two weeks refreshing their Malagasy language skills in preparation for service as middle and high school English teachers. An additional thirty new Volunteers will arrive in Madagascar later this month to teach English and work in agriculture Ambassador Pierangelo congratulated the Volunteers and thanked local Peace Corps staff. She highlighted the importance of the oath taken by each volunteer and noted it is the same oath taken by the . . .

  Each person’s Peace Corps story is unique and valuable to help us understand who we are as individuals and how our individual experiences are integral parts of the 60-year Peace Corps legacy. The Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Oral History Archives Project (OHAP), an NPCA affiliate, preserves the Peace Corps experience by conducting in-depth oral history interviews of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), Evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers (EPCVs), Peace Corps staff and host country counterparts. RPCV interviews follow each person’s path, including their motivation to join the Peace Corps, what on-boarding and training was like, what they did during their Peace Corps service, what their cultural-cultural experiences were, and their reflections on the impact Peace Corps service had on them, the communities in which they served, and increasing Americans’ understanding of the world. Visit the OHAP website for more information and sign up here if you’d like to be interviewed . . .