The Peace Corps

Updated January 22, 2021: Peace Corps reports that President Biden has appointed Carol Spahn as Acting Peace Corps Director. I wrote to Director Olsen about the transition planning and who would be “in charge” at Peace Corps until the new Director is confirmed.  Here is her response: Thank you for reaching out. The transition from one Executive branch administration to the next is a hallmark of our constitutional democracy. We have a succession plan in place to ensure a smooth and effective transition for the incoming administration. Our plan was shared previously with the General Services Administration (GSA), in accordance with government-wide guidance, and members of our Agency Review Team (ART). I can now share with you the name of the staff member who will be stepping in as our Acting Director pending an appointment by the new Administration. I am pleased to say that our ART members have been . . .

Note from the editor: At this time of year, The New York Times’ Travel desk usually publishes its lavish 52 Places to Go list, a compendium of suggestions for the destinations that are especially worth visiting in the coming year, accompanied by show-stopping photography. But this year, that was out of the question. Instead of its traditional list of destinations, the Travel desk asked readers about locales with special meaning to them. This is what Teresa Gotlin-Sheehan (Burkina Faso 2012-14) had to say.     Burkina Faso is a West African country of desert and baobab trees, where more than 60 languages are spoken. I had heard rumors of an abandoned cliff village, like Mesa Verde in the United States, not far from my host community. When a friend came to visit, we set off on a three-day bike tour to visit and view the Niansogoni Cliffs and the Sindou . . .

  Please read the entire E-Newsletter, published Thursday, January 7, 2021. This violence cannot stand. Yesterday was a horrific day for our country. A violent mob stormed the United States Capitol, smashing windows and looting offices. They sent members of Congress and their staffs scrambling for their lives, barricading into offices and chambers, and huddling beneath chairs. Explosive devices were found. One of the extremists who stormed the building was fatally shot. Three other people died in related incidents. And today a Capitol Hill police officer who was assaulted by extremists died. We condemn these acts of violence and chaos in the strongest possible terms. The Peace Corps community is committed to building peace and friendship. When we are sworn in as Volunteers, we take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This was an attempted coup by domestic terrorists. Symbolically . . .

The man in a widely circulated news video from Wednesday’s ambush on the United States Capitol is Thomas Baranyi, a 28-year-old from New Jersey who served in the Peace Corps as recently as last year. In the video interview with a reporter from WKRG, a CBS affiliate, Baranyi holds up… The video has been taken down!  

Alana DeJoseph has made her award-winning documentary about the Peace Corps available for college and secondary school teachers. RPCV teachers, this is a great opportunity for you to tell your Peace Corps story to your students and also, with the film, tell the story of the agency. • Director of the film, Alana DeJoseph, writes: The feature documentary A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps is going to school! We are developing lesson plans for middle schools, high schools, and universities to teach the history of the Peace Corps through the lens of various fields of study. And we would love to take advantage of the expertise so many RPCVs have. So, we are asking RPCV professors (current and retired) from the following fields of study to connect with us at info@peacecorpsdocumentary.com to help us make these lesson plans the best they can be! Areas of study: – International Studies . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Janet Lee (Ethiopia 1974-76)   Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl BY JONATHAN C. SLAGHT (Russia 1999–2002) $28.00. Farrar, Straus & Giroux NONFICTION   Slaght is a wildlife biologist with a singular mission, to conserve an elusive and enormous raptor in the eastern wilds of Russia. The book is an ode to the rigors and pleasures of fieldwork in hard conditions. — NY Times OWLS OF THE EASTERN ICE – National Book Award longlist 2020 – New York Times Notable Book 2020 – Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2020 – The Times Nature Book of the Year 2020

Yale Undergrad Drops Out of School For Peace Corps Response Assignment By Divya Kumar Tampa Bay Times When Jackson Willis was a junior at Yale University, he regularly scouted postings for Peace Corps positions. Many required a college degree and professional experience. One night, on a whim, he applied for an opening that excited him — to work on youth unemployment in Guinea. He didn’t expect to hear back, but the Peace Corps called to say a position had opened. Yale granted Jackson a one-year leave between his junior and senior year to serve with the Peace Corps Response working in the politically destabilizing youth unemployment crisis in Guinea, West Africa. There, his team operated the country’s leading employment incubator and small business accelerator, testing the limits of social franchising for both emergency and long-term employment gain. Willis, 24, had already signed up for his senior year classes and moved into . . .

  Dear A Towering Task family, We know it had been a few months since we last wrote, and in case you missed our recent email, we wanted to make sure you get this one. We have been very busy, as you can see from our updates below. We also have work yet to do to make sure that the story of the Peace Corps reaches far more people. It’s a story of success and challenges, of relationships and common purpose. We want to express our deepest gratitude to you and the rest of the Peace Corps community for helping us make it through this challenging year and sharing this story of the Peace Corps. Your continued support is humbling. In solidarity, Director Alana DeJoseph & the Documentary Team Updates on our documentary Click here to play the trailer Here’s a snapshot of the past few months: Over 7,000 viewers: We’re thrilled to have reached so many . . .

  The Peace Corps recently awarded the 2020 Franklin H. Williams Award that honors returned Peace Corps Volunteers of color who continue the Peace Corps mission through their commitment to community service and who further support the agency’s third goal of promoting a better understanding of other peoples and the countries they served through this work. The award was named for one of the first staff of the agency, former Peace Corps regional director for Africa, and U.S. ambassador to Ghana, Franklin H. Williams. And, what many people don’t know is that while this ceremony resides at Peace Corps HQ in Washington, D.C., the very first awards were given in 1999, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. It developed from an idea by RPCV Recruiter Leslie Jean-Pierre (Guinea 1994-96.) Leslie was a community development and health Volunteer in Guinea and he strongly believed that something . . .

  UPDATE:  Sunday Night, December 27, 2020. President Trump has signed the measure which funds the government through September 2021. The bill also provides  pandemic aid. A government shutdown has been averted. The National Peace Corps Association reports the budget includes funding for the Peace Corps and will: “Maintain level funding for the agency at $410.5 million, as it makes plans to begin redeploying Volunteers in 2021; this was the route recommended by the House of Representatives.”                          

This short letter was posted yesterday by Rick Steves on his Travel Blog. It is a perfect Christmas Season Story. The writer is George Gorayeb, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, and now a realtor in Annapolis. George is an Arab-American Christian whose family emigrated from Syria. _____ Hello Rick,  In this season of gift-giving, I would like to share a personal story about the humblest yet most-appreciated gift that I have ever given to anyone.  Back in the spring of 1972, I was blessed to be serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, high school English teacher in Marrakesh, Morocco, in North Africa. One day, a half dozen of us volunteers went hiking in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains. This scenic mountain range separates the city of Marrakesh from the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. For half of the year, these mountain peaks are covered in . . .

The First Christmas Card, 1843  

  by Mark Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) This holiday season has me reminiscing again about my first Christmas in Africa. As I stare blankly out the window I am transported back to 1970 and my humble room in the Adjakpo family compound in the village of Agu-Gadzapé, Togo. After three months of living there as a Peace Corps Volunteer and learning how to fit in where I would never really fit, the Christmas season was upon us and I began raising questions about what to do for Christmas. Everybody in our congested compound, which was always vibrantly alive with people doing their daily chores and what they had to do to survive the poverty that engulfed them so profoundly, liked the idea of doing something to celebrate Christmas. But, they all said they had no money to do anything. They did, however, tell me how nice it would . . .

  by Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70) On Christmas Eve my family gathered at my grandmother’s house on Jane Street in Detroit, Michigan. Her Christmas tree glittered with multicolored bubble lights. The uncles sat in the small living room, my aunts and grandmother tasted and talked in the kitchen. Cousins played with the wooden blocks and the Indian doll in the wooden toy box in the den. Sometimes there were new babies to hold. I was 22 the first time I could not attend, as I was a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Somalia, and  I wanted to at least send a Christmas gift to Grandma Carter. Newspaper cones of tea, alcohol for the tilly lamps, or the blue and green patterned cloth for sale in my village did not seem worth sending across two oceans. However, when my neighbor showed me what she gathered from distant trees, I realized I could . . .

UIC grad Bernice Heiderman, 24, was living her dream as a volunteer in Africa. She died of malaria, which the agency’s inspector general said was easily treatable with proper care. By Stephanie Zimmermann Chicago Sun Times   Serving in the Peace Corps had been Bernice Heiderman’s dream since high school. When the north suburban resident finally got accepted during her senior year of college, she wept with joy at the news, her family says. But just 18 months into her tour, the 24-year-old volunteer from Inverness was dead in a spartan hotel room in the East African island nation of Comoros, the victim of what her family calls a “preventable tragedy.” They say Heiderman endured a painful death from malaria that went undiagnosed by a local Peace Corps physician as well by a medical officer in Washington, even though the disease is endemic in Comoros. On Friday, the family filed . . .