Rahama Wright served in the Peace Corps in Mali from 2002 to 2004. Photo courtesy of Rahama Wright.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival presents The Peace Corps at 60 and Beyond: A Towering Task Screening & Panel Discussion Thursday, March 4. The panel discussion will envision the Peace Corps’ next chapter in a lively conversation featuring several prominent Returned Peace Corps Volunteers: Carol Spahn, acting director of the Peace Corps; film director Alana DeJoseph; Smithsonian curator emerita Rayna Green; and social entrepreneur Rahama Wright.
“This pivotal moment in Peace Corps history, severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, allows us to look back on 60 years of world peace and friendship, while also looking forward to the future of the Peace Corps,” said Jim Deutsch, curator at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. “In 2011, the Folklife Festival commemorated the agency’s 50th anniversary with a program that featured Peace Corps volunt
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers continue to show up for one another
You are here Feb. 18, 2021
When Volunteers around the world were evacuated last year due to COVID-19, the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) Alliance for Ukraine
, quickly mobilized to provide support to those who found themselves returning abruptly from their service in the Eastern European country.
When Peace Corps Volunteers return to the United States after their service, many stay connected to their host countries. Some travel to visit their old host families, others donate to host country causes, and many choose to join affiliate groups made up of other returned Volunteers.
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/10/29/whats-wrong-with-the-peace-corps/
The American Interest
What’s Wrong with the Peace Corps? Ryan Rommann
“I am a Peace Corps Volunteer.” Like 98 percent of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, I was proud to declare this and believe my two-year service was worthwhile. I grew professionally and personally, and I did some good. But the program is broken in many ways.
More than 210,000 Americans have served as volunteers in 139 countries since the program’s founding in 1961. John F. Kennedy envisioned the Peace Corps as a call to service for qualified Americans to venture abroad and help developing countries. It represented an idealized world of humanitarianism in a time of Cold War tensions and racial segregation. Today, more than a half century later, neither the sentiment nor the program has changed. If the program is to improve and meet its admirable ambitions, we must rigorously evaluate, adapt and abandon some of the core bel