Archive - 2023

In honor of Women’s History Month, Bennett College is highlighting one of its notable and influential alumna, Carolyn Robertson Payton. Payton, a 1945 graduate of Bennett College, made history when she became both the first African American and first female  director of the Peace Corps in 1977. As director, Payton paved the way for Black women and people of color. She believed in diversifying Peace Corps volunteers and worked tirelessly to bring young people on board, aiming to attract more Black and Hispanic volunteers. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter, Payton was also the first psychologist to take on the role of Peace Corps Director. After graduating from Bennett College with a degree in home economics, Payton earned her Master of Science degree in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her doctorate in counseling and school administration from Columbia University Teachers College. Born in Norfolk, Va. in 1925, Payton’s . . .

On this day–March 21, 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Sargent Shriver to be the first Director of the Peace Corps. To celebrate this anniversary, we’re pleased to announce the publication of a new book about Sargent Shriver. The Call: The Spiritual Leadership of Sargent Shriver explores the ways in which Shriver’s signature leadership style was fueled by his deep spirituality. Shriver’s approach to public service, while rooted in his devout Catholic faith, is an example for anyone who has felt the deeply human impulse to serve others. Written as a “true conversation that never happened”, the book is an imagined dialogue between a meticulously constructed Sargent Shriver and a fictional interviewer named Didymus. The book’s author, our Founding Director, Jamie Price, worked closely with Shriver for over 20 years. Informed by hundreds of Shriver’s speeches, philosophers and theologians who inspired him, and real-life conversations between Shriver and the author, The Call presents a . . .

The first book to draw on the Peace Corps experience was written by Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana 1961), who had volunteered for the Peace Corps in 1961 after having been an Associated Press reporter. That book, To the Peace Corps, With Love (1965), detailed a year of Zeitlin’s life in Ghana as a PCV. Two years later, in 1967, Simon & Schuster published An African Season, by Leonard Levitt (Tanzania 1963-65), another journalist. This memoir covers Levitt’s first year (1964) of living and teaching in a rural upper-primary school in Tanzania. In 1969, Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) published what is considered by many to be the classic Peace Corps memoir: Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Thomsen, who had a farm in the state of California, became a Peace Corps farmer in Ecuador at the age of 44, and lived out his life in that country. Paul Theroux served in Malawi from 1963 to 1965 and . . .

Interviewed by Heidi Eliason Lucinda Jackson–Palau 2016 Lucinda Jackson is the author of two memoirs: Just a Girl: Growing Up Female and Ambitious, about her struggles to succeed in the male-dominated work world, and Project Escape: Lessons for an Unscripted Life, an exploration of freedom after leaving a structured career. Jackson is a PhD scientist and global corporate executive who features on podcasts and radio and has published articles, book chapters, magazine columns, and patents. She is the founder of LJ Ventures, where she speaks and consults on energy, the environment, and empowering women in the workplace and in our Next Act. Connect with Jackson or find her books at: www.lucindajackson.com. Who or what inspires you to write?  I get inspired by having something to say. I feel this burning concept or thought inside me and I just have to get it out! It is this need to express myself, to make sense of something, . . .

  In the late Nineties, shortly after I had taken over the job of manager of the New York Recruitment Office for the Peace Corps, I got a call from a reporter at the New York Observer newspaper. I thought he was calling to ask me about the Peace Corps and to write an article about the agency. Well, in a way he was, but he started by asking if I knew anything about the murder of a young PCV woman in Tonga in 1975. The reporter’s name was Philip Weiss and he didn’t realize he had stumbled on an RPCV who was fascinated by the history of the Peace Corps and obsessively collected PCV stories. Phil Weiss was also obsessed, but by the murder of this PCV in Tonga. In 1978, when he was 22 and backpacking around the world, he had crashed with a Peace Corps Volunteer in Samoa named . . .

The Peace Corps: Early Years by Gregory A. Barnes (Sierra Leone 1961-63) Friends Press 252 pages February 2023 $6.00 (Kindle); $12.00 (Paperback)       One of the most exciting developments in the United State of the 1960s was the founding of the Peace Corps: so ambitious, so popular, and so emblematic of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. Many thousands of Americans responded, volunteering to serve in the developing countries of the world, and Greg Barnes was among them—part of a group forever to be known as Sierra Leone One. Ultimately he worked as both volunteer and staffer from 1961 to 1966. Here are his memoirs of his time as volunteer in Sierra Leone and as staff member in both Nigeria and Washington. Titles of the initial chapters show some of the chaos reigning at the Peace Corps in its early days: Here We Are, So Take Us, a translation from “We’ve . . .

Peace Corps Volunteers return to Armenia by Siranush Ghazanchyan Last night, Peace Corps Armenia welcomed a new group of 16 American Peace Corps Volunteers to serve alongside the Armenian people in different regions of the country. This is the first group of Volunteers to arrive in Armenia since they were evacuated in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, Peace Corps Armenia staff and former volunteers have continued to engage with schools and community groups through Virtual Service and training activities.   “We are very excited to witness this historic return of Volunteers to Armenia,” said Peace Corps Armenia Country Director, Joanne Fairley. “I know that the Volunteers will bring great passion and energy to their projects, and I am sure they will form new partnerships and friendship with the Armenian people.” At the request of the government of Armenia, Volunteers will work in schools and community groups . . .

Observations and commentary on American politics and culture. Tuesday, March 7, 2023   Public Service, continued: The Peace Corps  . . . Ask what you can do for your country. My wife Patti and I owe so much to our service in the Peace Corps. It inspired a lifetime of public service that began in Ethiopia during the late 1960s.  — U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, Co-Chair of the Congressional Peace Corps Caucus. I have encountered dozens of returned Peace Corps volunteers over the years. They have something in common: An uncommon commitment to public service. They are a self-selected cohort. Some entered the Peace Corps in midlife or as retirees, but most entered the Peace Corps as a young person, typically after college and before settling into the burdens and joys of career, family, home, mortgage–those entanglements that Zorba in the movie Zorba the Greek called “the full . . .