The Peace Corps

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 . . .

5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in March 2023 These magazines pay for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; they are a mix of literary and genre magazines. Not all of them are open through the month. Fantasy Magazine Fantasy is an award-winning fantasy and dark fantasy magazine, open for general submissions (i.e. submissions from all writers) for the first week of March. They’re open to submissions from BIPOC writers through 2023. All dates are subject to change. Reading period: 1-7 March 2023 for general submissions; BIPOC submissions open through 2023 Length: Up to 7,500 words for fiction, up to 6 poems Pay: $0.08/word for fiction, $40/poem Details here. (Also, Fusion Fragment will open for science fiction and SF-tinged literary fiction during 24th-31st March; send stories of 2,000-15,000 words; pay is 3.5 Canadian cents per word, up to CAD300. The submission portal will open during the reading period. And MetaStellar will be open for flash fiction submissions through March; they . . .

An editorial from the Norristown, Pennsylvania Times Herald February 15, 1962 WHEN THIS ADMINISTRATION entered office, one of its most novel proposals was for creation of the Peace Corps. The idea was, and is, that numbers of dedicated young people with particular talents and education would be sent to underdeveloped countries to aid them in becoming responsible nations. Members of the Corps would, so far as possible, live with the people, and accept a more or less comparable standard of living. The proposal was nonpartisan — and it was met with a nonpartisan response. Members of both parties greeted the plan with enthusiasm — and other members of both parties shook their heads in doubt. In any event, Congress approved, and the President appointed his brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver, to take over, on a non-paid basis. That happened about a year ago. Now numbers of Peace Corps young men and . . .

The Fabulous Peace Corps Booklocker by Jack Prebis (Ethiopia 1962–64) For a short period of time in the very first years of the Peace Corps all Volunteers were given booklockers by the agency. The lockers were meant to provide leisure reading for the PCVs and then to be left behind in schools, villages, and towns where they served. There is some mystery as to who first thought of the lockers and one rumor has it that the idea came from Sarge Shriver’s wife, Eunice. It is believed that the books were selected for the first locker by a young Foreign Service officer. A second selection was done in 1964, and that same year Jack Prebis was made responsible for the 3rd edition of the locker that was assembled in the fall and winter of 1965. JC DEVELOPING THE Peace Corps booklocker was the best job I ever had. As sometimes . . .

A Peace Corps Test In the early days of the Peace Corps there was a Placement Test given to all applicants. Actually it was two tests. A 30-minute General Aptitude Test and a 30-minute Modern Language Aptitude Test. The areas of testing were in Verbal Aptitude, Agriculture, English, Health Sciences, Mechanical Skills, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, World History, Literature, United States History and Institutions, and Modern Language Aptitude. One-hour achievement tests in French and Spanish were also offered during the second hour. The instruction pamphlet that accompanied the tests said that the results would be used “to help find the most appropriate assignment for each applicant.” For those who missed the opportunity to take the tests, which were given — as best I can remember — from 1961 until around 1967, I am including a few of the questions. Lets see if you could still get into the Peace Corps. . . .

KENNEDY SETS UP U.S. PEACE CORPS TO WORK ABROAD Creates Pilot Plan and Asks Congress to Establish a Permanent Operation RECRUITS TO GET NO PAY President Aims to Have 500 on Job by the End of ’61 — Training Will Be Pushed Kennedy Sets Up Peace Corpse Of Volunteers to Work Abroad WASHINGTON, March 1 — President Kennedy issued an executive order today creating a Peace Corps. It will enlist American men and women for voluntary, unpaid service in the developing countries of the world. CONTINUE READING: PDF BYLINE By PETER BRAESTRUP Special to The New York Times.

Happy 62nd Birthday to the Peace Corps! Happy Peace Corps Week! And happy 62nd birthday to Peace Corps today. The agency has organized a number of events in celebration of our community’s birthday this week, such as tonight’s Franklin H. Williams Award Ceremony, which I look forward to attending. Also, I’m thrilled to see several Peace Corps posts across the world have been hosting events — including tomorrow’s Connect with Sri Lanka event. We have already seen many of you online and look forward to more engagement over the coming days. Peace Corps Week kicked off in earnest yesterday with a powerful “Connect with the World” event led by Peace Corps Director Carol Spahn, who presented a compelling vision of Peace Corps’ place in a rapidly changing world. Director Spahn discussed the path ahead, refocusing on Peace Corps’ strengths to “address power inequities, professionalize service, improve sustainability, link youth leaders to opportunities, and enhance locally-led development.” A . . .

As for Marjorie. She returned to Peace Corps HQ from Puerto Rico with Ruth Olson and Tim Adams and went to work with Betty Harris and Sally Bowles to put out the first issue of The Peace Corps Volunteer. It was, of course, an appropriate job, as Coates Redmon states it in her book on the early days of the agency, Come As You Are: The Peace Corps Story, since Marjorie was the first returned Volunteers. In a memorandum to Sargent Shriver–attached to an Evaluation Report on Morocco (1963) done by Ken Love–and written by the legendary early Peace Corps Director of Evaluations, Charlie Peters, Charlie wrote, “Marjorie was as sensitive and as intelligent a Volunteer as we ever had in the Peace Corps.” The lesson that was learned by the Peace Corps was that “even the best young people can be damned silly at times.” At the Peace Corps HQ the feeling was that the agency had weathered this early . . .