May 2023 – Page 2 – Peace Corps Worldwide

“It’s time to embrace community-led conservation . . ., ” Audrey Moreng (Fiji)

May 17 2023

“. . . vs. the colonial kind” (a commentary) by Audrey Moreng (Fiji 2018-2000) 15 May 2023 Conservation NGOs often enter countries like Fiji and advise local and Indigenous communities on how to protect their land and sea territories, or worse, acquire land and preclude the traditional residents from it. More NGOs are embracing community-led conservation, though, and we must embrace this, a new op-ed by a former Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji argues. “Fiji does not need new ideas on how to protect their ‘iqoliqoli’ (marine areas). Instead, Fiji has a lot to teach the rest of the world,” the author writes. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay. When I lived on the remote island of Beqa, in Fiji, I watched as foreign-based NGOs entered villages and told Fijians how to live their lives, saying things like . . .

Does Peace Corps Refute False Information? Evidently not.

May 16 2023

When an errorous statement is published about the Peace Corps and our experience knows the statement is not true, what should the response be? A professor had written a book about federal agencies and included the Peace Corps with glowing praise, but he also wrote that only men were sent to Puerto Rico for Outward Bound Training. I had no success in convincing him to include that women also went to Puerto Rico for that vigorous training. More recently, an RPCV friend explained to me that she had received an inquiry from a student in Europe writting about the history of Peace Corps. He had learned in a conference that Peace Corps had intervened in the Netherlands in 1962 and stayed for ten years He later said it found the same information in an AI website. That statement about Peace Corps is not true. It was time to query . . .

Need Help Writing Your Peace Corps Book?

May 16 2023

Book Helpline is a small international book editing company who have helped RPCVs writers. The company is over 10 years old and has worked with hundreds of authors from all over the world in both fiction and nonfiction. Among the writers have been a former political prisoner in Brunei, a government minister in Zambia, and a homeless Englishman in Thailand. Book Helpline editors are experts in developmental editing—Is the story right? Is it interesting, consistent, logical, and easy to follow?—and copy editing, where grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice are corrected. They also evaluate a client’s work and suggest one or both types of edits depending on the material and the author’s goals. Today they have editors in the US, UK, and the Netherlands. Contact: Judith Henstra judith@bookhelpline.com

The Volunteer Who Created Compelling Novels out of Her Family’s Oral History — Mildred Taylor (Ethiopia)

May 15 2023

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) Mildred Taylor served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia, 1965-67, after having graduated from University of Toledo in 1965. She was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1943, and is the great-granddaughter of a former slave who was the son of an African-Indian woman and a white landowner. After returning to the U. S. following her Peace Corps experience, she earned a MA degree in journalism at the University of Colorado where she was instrumental in creating the Black Studies Program as a member of the Black Alliance. Mildred’s works are based on oral history, told to her by her father, uncles and aunt. She said that without her family, and especially without her father, her books “would not have been.” She’s stated that these anecdotes became very clear in her mind, and in fact, once she realized that adults talked about the . . .

Israel Collier advocates for Roma minorities in Moldova

May 15 2023

POSTED BY TIM WOMBLES Israel Collier (Moldova 2014-16) never saw herself on the other side of the world in Moldova, advocating for the ethnic Roma population and speaking Romanian, Moldova’s official language, but she always envisioned a life of service. Growing up across from Beaumont High School in north St. Louis, Collier inherited a sense of empathy for others from her dad, who was a mentor to many fatherless children in the neighborhood. “We shared our father with them,” Collier says. “That was foundational for me.” It was in that spirit of service that Collier enrolled at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, earning her BS in biology with a minor in chemistry. While at UMSL, Collier worked as a mentor for multicultural students, volunteered at clothing drives and tutored in French and biology. “I had every intention to become a physician,” Collier says. But while she was in medical school . . .

Vieve Radha Price (Vanuatu) – Founder and Co-Director of TÉA Artistry

May 14 2023

My Career Choice An Interview In Woman Around Town Vieve Radha Price is living proof that our past experiences inform our futures. Before she launched TÉA Artistry, she worked with Nitestar, a theatre company specializing in HIV prevention education and adolescent reproductive health, and then joined the Peace Corps (Tanna, Vanuatu 2000-02), using theatre performance programs that taught young people about sexual health. Returning home, she received the Sargent Shriver Peaceworker fellowship and completed two master’s degrees, one in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, and another in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. She subsequently worked at Search for Common Ground in Washington DC before founding TÉA Artistry. With TÉA Artistry she is able to focus on contemporary issues, truly making this venue a “theatre for social change.” Talk about perfect timing! The company’s new production Being Chaka, will run from May 6 through . . .

RPCV Thomas Tighe (Thailand) — President & CEO Direct Relief

May 13 2023

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Matt Losak(Lesotho 1985-87) Thomas Tighe has served as President and CEO of Direct Relief, a nonprofit humanitarian medical organization, since October 2000. Since Tighe’s arrival, the organization has provided cash grants of more than $170 million and furnished more than $9 billion in essential medicines, equipment, and supplies to support health services for low-income people in over 100 countries and all 50 U.S. states, where the organization conducts the country’s largest nonprofit charitable medicines program. During Tighe’s tenure, Direct Relief has been named among the world’s most innovative nonprofits by Fast Company, has been rated by Forbes as being 99 percent efficient or better in fundraising since 2001, won the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation, the CECP Director’s Award, the Esri President’s Award for GIS innovation, the Office of the Surgeon General’s National Leadership and Partnership Award, and became the first U.S. nonprofit to . . .

Exploring the Peace Corps’ sixty-year history in Thailand

May 12 2023

Peace Corps in the news Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964-66) by Samantha Rose Thaiger Latest News The Peace Corps is a United States agency established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to promote peace and friendship worldwide. Peace Corps volunteers have been working in Thailand since 1962, assisting Thai government agencies in various fields. Currently, they operate in two main projects: Teacher Collaboration for Development and Youth Development. Over 5,500 volunteers have worked with Thai communities for more than 60 years, but their work was halted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This year, Peace Corps volunteers returned to Thailand and underwent a 10-week training programme before being dispatched to 29 provinces across the country. Their swearing-in ceremony coincided with the 60th-anniversary celebration of Peace Corps cooperation in Thailand. It is always exciting and impressive when encountering foreigners who can communicate excellently in the . . .

Peace Corps Volunteers touched many lives in eSwatini

May 11 2023

US EMBASSY CHARGE D’AFFAIRS EARL MILLER: “Peace Corps Volunteers touched many lives in eSwatini.” MBABANE: His Excellency Earl Miller, the United States Embassy Charge d’Affaires has hailed the impact that the Peace Corps Volunteers had in the Kingdom of eSwatini. (formerly named Swaziland ) Speaking during the swearing-in of eight(8) Peace Corps Volunteers, Miller said eMaswati have expressed of their wonderful experiences with the Peace Corps. “Everywhere I travel in Eswatini, I meet people who tell me how Peace Corps Volunteers touched their lives. Senior Government policy and decision makers, civil society leaders, teachers, health workers, students of all ages, talk of their wonderful experiences with Peace Corps Volunteers.” said the US Embassy Charge d’Affaires as quoted by the Government online platforms this week.

PC Response Volunteer Nancy Nau Sullivan (Mexico) writes mysteries

May 11 2023

RPCVs in the news • MICHIGAN CITY, IN — The Lubeznik Center for the Arts presented “Read Between the Crimes: An Evening with Two Mystery Writers” from 5 to 8 p.m. CDT May 5 at 101 W. Second St. Local writers Nancy Nau Sullivan (Mexico 2013-14) read excerpts from her newest book and participate in a question-and-answer session for LCA’s May First Friday event. Sullivan invented the life and times of Blanche Murninghan in her four-part mystery series, which debuted with “Saving Tuna Street” in 2020. Sullivan’s other titles in this series include “Trouble Down Mexico Way,” “Mission Improbable: Vietnam” and “A Deadly Irish Secret,” which will be released July 11. A former newspaper journalist, Sullivan taught English in Argentina, in the Peace Corps in Mexico and at a boys’ prison in Florida. • Nancy has also published The Last Cadilac: A Memoir [2016].

To Die On Kilimanjaro by John Coyne (Ethiopia)

May 10 2023

I posted an earlier version of this essay on this site in 1997 To Die On Kilimanjaro When I first visited the Blue Marlin Hotel in Malindi, Kenya, in the summer of 1963, it was after my first year of teaching at a PCV in Addis Ababa. The hotel was located on the edge of the Indian Ocean and crowded with British families in the final days before Kenya’s independence from Great Britain. We were the only Americans in the hotel. I didn’t return to Kenya or the Blue Marlin until the early ’70s when the hotel was now filled with German tourists and the few English-speaking tourists gravitated to one end of the bar. It was there traveling through Africa and writing for Dispatch News when I met a British couple and their two little girls. Phillip and April were ‘on holiday’ as the English like to say. Phillip . . .

A LESION OF DISSENT by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia)

May 09 2023

A Lesion of Dissent by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia 1966-68) Self Published July 2011 216 pages $0.99 (Kindle) A searing liaison in the sacred chambers of Egypt’s ancient pharaohs as Israeli warplanes rain down terror… frenzy and vengeance as rioting Arabs storm through the strafed streets… and Paul Rhodes’ journey of exile through post-colonial Africa and Asia has just begun. Buffeted by the smuggling, black market deception and patriotic fervor that marked those continents’ passages to independence in the tumultuous Sixties, Paul is impelled country by country to the wild counter-culture havens of San Francisco and a stunning, fateful confrontation with the military powers that stand between him and the woman he cannot forget.

Cornell University revisits Vicos, Peru

May 08 2023

Cornell was involved with the community of Vicos, Peru in the ’50s and the ’60s. Decades later, the Vicos community invited Cornell University to return and evaluate what happened with the Cornell innovations after so many years. In the sixties, Cornell University also trained Peace Corps Volunteers to work in Peru. I believe this report should be a model for all RPCVs and Peace Corps staff. It simply, at the request of the host community, reviews and reports what worked and what did not. That is what, I believe, Peace Corps should do. A half-century later, Cornell revisits a small Andean village By Bill Steele July 23, 2009 More than 50 years ago, a Cornell mission to a small village in the Andes introduced social changes that made a profound improvement in the life of the village. Today, echoes of that mission are still visible and may help the community . . .

WHY WE TELL STORIES by Arthur Dobrin (Kenya) and Kenyan Dorcas Kiptoo

May 08 2023

Two Westbury, New York, residents , Dorcas Kiptoo and Arthur Dobrin, who both have a long history with Kenya, will read from their new children’s book, “Why We Tell Stories,” on Thursday, June 1 at 7 pm at the Westbury Memorial Library, 445 Jefferson Street, Westbury, NY. Dorcas Kiptoo, a Kenyan, came to the US in 2010 seeking a better life for herself and her three daughters. After arriving she heard about the Dobrin family and their connection to Kenya, and the Kiptoos ended up living with the Dobrins in Westbury for three years. Arthur and Lyn Dobrin had been Peace Corps Volunteers in Kenya in the 1960s, lived there again in 1975 and then led numerous educational safaris through Adelphi University. Both Dobrins have written books related to Kenya. Why We Tell Stories–with tales such as ”Why Goats Don’t like Leopards,” “Why Hyenas Walk on Stilts,” and “Why There . . .

Review | THE CALL: The Spiritual Realism of Sargent Shriver

May 07 2023

The Call: The Spiritual Realism of Sargent Shriver by Jamie Price 336 pages SSPI Press March 2023 $11.49 (Kindle); $22.00 (Paperback) The Call looks at the role of the spirit in the life and work of one of the most accomplished American peacebuilders of the 20th twentieth century, Robert Sargent Shriver (1915-2011), founder of the Peace Corps and architect of the War on Poverty. Author Jamie Price knew Shriver personally and served as the Founding Director of several programs dedicated to understanding and advancing Shriver’s approach to leadership and peacebuilding. The Call is an imagined dialogue between Sargent Shriver and the character of Didymus about the role of the spirit in Shriver’s efforts to build peace. Its title alludes to the pivotal moment when Shriver received the phone call from his brother-in-law, the newly-inaugurated President John F. Kennedy, asking him to be Director of the as-yet-nonexistent Peace Corps. . . .

Archive - May 2023