Peace Corps Worldwide

This Colorado ‘solar garden’ is literally a farm under solar panels By Kirk Siegler This year, the garden produced more than 8,000 pounds of produce, while the panels above generate enough power for 300 local homes. When Byron Kominek ( Cameroon 2004-06) returned home after the Peace Corps and later working as a diplomat in Africa, his family’s 24-acre farm near Boulder, Colo., was struggling to turn a profit. “Our farm has mainly been hay producing for fifty years,” Kominek said, on a recent chilly morning, the sun illuminating a dusting of snow on the foothills to his West. “This is a big change on one of our three pastures.” That big change is certainly an eye opener: 3,200 solar panels mounted on posts eight feet high above what used to be an alfalfa field on this patch of rolling farmland at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains. Getting to . . .

President Biden announces key nominee for US ambassador to Palau     In a statement from the White House, Joel Ehrendreich, is a  Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Palau. Mr. Ehrenreich is an American diplomat who has served as the director of the Office of Japanese Affairs at the State Department since 2022. He is the nominee to serve as the United States ambassador to Palau. On March 21, 2023, his nomination was sent to the Senate. His nomination is pending before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Early in his career, Ehrendreich served in the Peace Corps in Niger from 1985 to 1987. He is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Counselor. He served as director of Regional and Security Policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Prior to that, he was a senior operations officer . . .

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • My site as a Peace Corps Volunteer was in a village in the foothills of the Andean Mountains, called La Plata. It was located at about the 4,000 ft. level, and had about 3,000 residents.  One afternoon, there was a knock at my door. When answering it, I was greeted by three campesinos dressed in traditional garb with ruanas over their shoulders. They said that they were from the village of La Union, which was accessed only via a three hour bus/horseback ride up the mountains, and that their Mayor had recently given them permission to build their first school.  Would I come up to see its potential site? We agreed to meet in one week’s time if they could provide a horse for me. On the appointed time and date, we met at a road-head and rode up a steep mountain trail to . . .

Why Finding the Right Image Can Be So Challenging March 20, 2023 By Ben Berman (Zimbabwe 1998-2000) I place the six-pack of beer on the counter. The clerk looks up at me, then down at the beer, then back up at me, then leans in and says, I thought I was gonna have to ID when you first walked in, but now that you’re up close I can see all the gray hairs on your head. I’m not sure whether to be flattered that he thinks I look twenty years younger than I actually am or upset that he’s noticed that I am starting to go gray. Although, after I get home and examine my head in the mirror, I realize that there is something about the word, gray, that feels off—as though it is too generic a word to capture the intricate blending of complementing colors sprouting from my head. Later, at . . .

Once Again The Torch is Passed There is a new Kennedy associated with Irish affairs. With a nod to the past and a move toward the future, President Joe Biden recently selected 42-year-old Joseph Kennedy III as the latest Special Envoy to Northern Ireland. Who is this newest Kennedy? What does he confront in his new role? This generational passing of the family torch could impact the province’s future – and his own. Kennedy is the grandson of Senator and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, assassinated while running for president in 1968. His great-uncle, SenatorTed Kennedy, played a crucial role leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), including supporting the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement (which provided an advisory role for the Republic’s government in Northern Ireland’s government). His great-aunt, Jean Kennedy Smith, U.S. ambassador to Ireland in the 1990s, was likewise an influential peace process player. And his father, Rep. Joe . . .

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 . . .