April 2023 – Page 2 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Julia King (Malawi) receives award

Apr 20 2023

Gainesville Ohio City Schools names 2023 Philip Wright Award recipient The Times Published: Apr 18, 2023 Julia King (Malawi 1984-87), a special education teacher at Enota Multiple Intelligences Academy, an elementary school in Gainesville, was honored at Monday’s school board meeting with Gainesville City Schools’ 2023 Philip Wright Award. “I am humbled and honored to serve our community of deeply caring families and educators,” said King, a speech-language pathologist. The award is given annually to educators in the Pioneer RESA region, which covers Northeast Georgia. The award is given annually to educators who demonstrate a strong commitment to improving educational outcomes for students with disabilities. It is named after Philip Wright, an educator who created a legacy of service in the area of special education. Every year, each school district selects a recipient, and all of the winners are presented with their awards at a regional event. “I started as . . .

Fr. William Ryan (Togo) back in Togo

Apr 20 2023

Fr. William Ryan served in the Peace Corps in Togo from 1973 to 1975. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Washington in 1980. After serving for many years in Hispanic ministry, he returned to Togo in 2006 to become the founding pastor of the mission parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Read more at: www.catholicworldreport.com

Courtney Copeland (Ukraine) welcomes Ukraine refugees

Apr 19 2023

Alum of Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey CA sponsoring a Ukrainian Alum’s Humanitarian Parole It wasn’t the email Yaroslav Perepadya had been hoping for. Cortney Copeland MPA/MAIEM ’15 had bad news—the potential American sponsor for him and his teenage son hadn’t checked out. It had been six months since Perepadya MACD ’03 and his son had fled their home in Dnipro, a day after Russia invaded at the border, just 150 miles from their home. They headed first to western Ukraine, then to Ireland, where they’d been hunkering down in a hotel room for months as Perepadya looked for a long-term home in the U.S. Copeland, a board member and volunteer with the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Alliance for Ukraine (RPCV Alliance), apologized for having gotten his hopes up and said they were still looking to see if they could find a match. As she scanned his bio, a detail jumped . . .

Thursday, April 20th, Rocky Mountain PBS will air A Towering Task

Apr 18 2023

On Thursday, April 20th, Rocky Mountain PBS will be airing A Towering Task across the state of Colorado. We are finally getting this Peace Corps story out to a broader television audience. For those of you in the area, tune in at 9pm Mountain Time (11pm Eastern Time). And if you live in Colorado (or want to travel to meet us there!), we are working on hosting a follow-up watch party in a couple of months at the Rocky Mountain PBS studios in Denver. Let us know if you want to be on our official invite list by emailing us at info@peacecorpsdocumentary.com. We hope you can join us in watching the broadcast, at the follow-up gathering, or both! And, of course, we are continuing to work with public television distributors across the country to bring A Towering Task to your local stations. Stay tuned for more information and how you can make sure your station airs the documentary. Director . . .

Ray Nayler RPCV Science Fiction (Turkmenistan)

Apr 18 2023

RAY NAYLER (Turkmenistan 2003-05) was born on June 5, 1976 in Alma, Quebec. When he was three years old, his family moved to California. He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied modern literature and developed an interest in semiotics, graduating in 1999. He lived in the Bay Area and Toronto and worked on various odd jobs before joining the Peace Corps and moving to Turkmenistan in 2003. He learned Russian there and later worked in Russia for an international NGO specializing in educational exchange. He lived in Moscow, then Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, from where he joined the US Foreign Service in 2010. He subsequently served in Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Kosovo, living abroad for 20 years before returning to the US in 2022. He still works for the State Department, now on detail to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as their . . .

Clement E. Falbo (Zimbabwe) | MATHMATICAL MILESTONES

Apr 18 2023

Dr. Clement E. Falbo provides food for thought in an exquisite elucidation of mathematics Mathematical Milestones is about the historical and worldwide progress of mathematics and its uses over the years, especially in the most recent four centuries. The reader learns of the contributions from the Western World, the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world. We tell stories about the important work done by the top Mathematicians, both men and women. We show that Mathematics is a branch of the humanities as well as the Sciences; it benefits from growth in other fields, such as business, art and technology. Finally, we reveal that Mathematics suffered its own version of an “uncertainty principle” that mathematics cannot be both consistent and complete, discovered by Kurt Godel in 1931. Dr. Clement E. Falbo was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. After serving four years in the U. . . .

The Wow Factor | Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon)

Apr 17 2023

by Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) • There’s a joke (una broma) that Mexicans in other parts of Mexico tell among themselves, I learned this week, that goes something like this: If you want to visit San Miguel de Allende, you’ll need to get a U.S. visa. In other words, Mexicans themselves don’t think of SMA as being in Mexico, it’s so overrun with us Norteamericano gringos. This broma, like most jokes, contains a large grain of truth. In the eight years I’ve lived here, I’ve often heard SMA being referred to as “Mexico Lite” and “Gringolandia.” In fact, in 2010 the director Dennis Lanson made a video titled “Gringolandia” about this very fact. According to the most recent estimates, we expats represent only about 10 percent of the residents of San Miguel, but our presence seems to me to be outsized. We gringos are everywhere, all the time – in all . . .

THE WORLD CUP IN QATAR | Steve Kaffen (Russia)

Apr 15 2023

It was a World Cup like no other. And author Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) should know,this being his seventh. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar had everything: great soccer, memorable moments, surprising upsets, a remarkable final, plus controversies and a sustained effort by a small Middle Eastern country of sprawling sand desert to host the world’s most important sports event. The grand display of exciting matches and outstanding performances, day after day, captivated the world and brought to the sport a new generation of enthusiasts. It was also a World Cup of camaraderie for the fans in Qatar and those who gathered at homes and in venues all over the world to share the soccer experience. The author takes the reader to the event as a fan, attending matches with some of the best teams, taking in the 24-hour energy, and exploring Qatar’s rich history. Some 400 original photos . . .

The Transformative Power of Education | Jenna Mitchell (Malawi)

Apr 14 2023

Education can transform a life and the world. That statement drives Jenna Mitchler. She experienced it firsthand as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi and more recently in Tajikistan through the Fulbright Specialist Program. “I look for opportunities to learn about people who are different than myself — there’s so much value in diversity and difference,” she says. Mitchler joined the Peace Corps after earning her undergraduate degree — a major in English education with a minor in coaching — and taught English and HIV/AIDS education in Malawi in southeastern Africa. She also served as the president of northern Malawi’s Gender and Development Organization, which provides scholarships to girls to pay for secondary school fees. After her two years in the Peace Corps were up, Mitchler returned to the U.S. and began teaching high school English. However, some familiar strains kept playing in her ear. “While reflecting on my . . .

Talking with Gene Stone (Niger)

Apr 13 2023

An interview by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) A graduate of Stanford and Harvard, Gene Stone (Niger 1974-76) is a screenwriter, television producer, and journalist as well as a book, magazine, and newspaper editor. He has also ghostwritten more than thirty books (many of which were national bestsellers), specializing in socially conscious business and health—among his bestselling health related books are UltraPrevention (with Drs. Mark Hyman and Mark Liponis) and The Engine 2 Diet (with vegan firefighter Rip Esselstyn). I met Gene Stone at a party in Thurston Clarke’s (Tunisia 1968) apartment on the upper West Side of New York years and years ago. He was just back from the Peace Corps and working as an editor, and I was trying to write fiction full time. We eyed each other with equal amounts of suspicion. Editors are always (and I know this from being married to one) cautious of “would . . .

Review | THE FALLEN by Edna G. Bay (Malawi)

Apr 12 2023

The Fallen: A Novel Edna G. Bay (Malawi 1965-68) Peace Corps Writers December 2022 220 pages $9.50 (paperback) Reviewed by Eugénie de Rosier (Philippines 2006-08) • Edna G. Bay served in the Peace Corps in Malawi in the 1960s. She has published a handful of academic books about Africa, and “The Fallen” is her first novel. Naïve, 30-year-old American Anna Moretti knows little of her mother’s death, an accident in east Africa’s Malawi, where her parents were development workers with the Peace Corps. Her dad, silent about her mother and Malawi for three decades, has just died, after raising Anna alone in the U.S., and she receives her mother’s African diary from her grandfather. Still dissatisfied with unanswered questions about how and why mother died, Anna flies to Malawi to locate and interview her parents’ friends, and learns her dad was accused of his wife’s murder, and was to be tried . . .

The Volunteer Who Published Nationally on Wealth Inequality in the U. S. | Robert H. Frank (Nepal)

Apr 11 2023

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1966-68) Robert H. Frank served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, 1966-68. Afterwards, he received a B. S. in Mathematics from Georgia Tech University in 1966, then an M. A. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, followed by a Ph. D. in Economics from UC Berkeley in 1972. Until 2001, Robert was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. For the 2008-09 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. He contributes to the “Economic View,” a column that appears every fifth week in The New York Times. Alongside these academic achievements, Robert was the chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences from 1992 – 1993, and a Professor . . .

Labor of Love | Dan Edwards (Nepal)

Apr 10 2023

Dan Edwards, a retired US senior administrator and Peace Corps Volunteer, has published a book titled Railways in Nepal, which enriched Nepal’s railway history April 10, 2023 The Rana Rule was a golden era for introducing modern technology to Nepal. Despite political setbacks, Rana monarchs implemented several social changes and brought modern technologies to the nation. At a time when many Nepalese political leaders, intellectuals, and experts are unaware of Nepal’s century-old railway history, Dan Edwards, a retired senior US bureaucrat who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal (1966-68) has reminded Nepalis of the long history in a great detailed archival talk. Edwards has made an enormous contribution to Nepal’s history by publishing Railways in Nepal. Based on archival research and images, the book combines the history of transportation and technology into one package, revealing many unknown truths about Nepal’s railways. A significant number of people from . . .

Sellwood, Oregon couple and volunteers spend Januarys helping in Africa

Apr 10 2023

By Elizabeth Ussher Groff “Small Steps to a Better World” is the motto of a Sellwood couple who travel to the African country of Ghana every year for three weeks in January. It is not a vacation – but they do arrive back refreshed and inspired by their work there. Upon returning this February, in a letter sent to their local donors, they wrote: “With four borrowed motorcycles and a work truck, five U.S. and many local volunteers were in action for an intensely productive three weeks in northern Ghana.” Lisa Revell, who also teaches a popular “Better Bones & Balance” exercise class at Woodstock’s Trinity United Methodist Church on the corner of S.E. Steele and Chavez Blvd (formerly 39th) – and her husband David Stone, a former Duniway music teacher, and now a PPS substitute teacher – have made their annual trek to Ghana nearly every January for all . . .

“And then Sarge said to me . . .” | Judy Guskin (Thailand)

Apr 08 2023

Judy Guskin (Thailand 1961-64) can rightly claim to be the “mother of the Peace Corps.” In the fall of 1960 she was a young married graduate student studying comparative literature at the University of Michigan when, with her husband, Alan, she heard John F. Kennedy speak on the steps of the Student Union and introduce the concept of a peace corps. Kennedy had arrived late at Ann Arbor that chilly October night and had not expected to speak, but a word-of-mouth rumor had spread around campus that he was spending the night at the University before campaigning in Michigan and over ten thousand students gathered around the Union building. Leaving his car and walking up the Union steps, Kennedy paused to say a few words to the students. It was late and cold and the crowd was edgy, having waited for him all night. Now, after 2 a.m. in . . .

Archive - April 2023