Tag Archives: National Peace Corps Association

Op-Eds for Ukraine

February 15, 2023 djarmul Leave a comment

As the world prepares to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, on Feb. 24, few Americans are better qualified to comment than Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served there.

These RPCVs lived and worked alongside Ukrainians. They learned the local language. They care deeply about what’s been happening, as do many of us who served in Moldova and other countries affected by the conflict. Some of us also visited Ukraine during our service.

This past week, I helped train a group of Ukraine RPCVs how to write op-ed articles to share their stories. I joined with Dylan Hinson, an RPCV who served in Namibia, in teaching the workshop organized by the RPCV Alliance for Ukraine and the National Peace Corps Association.

This video of my presentation is excerpted from the larger program. If you’re interested in learning more about writing effective op-eds, check out my earlier post. A short YouTube video features Dylan encouraging RPCVs to become op-ed authors.

The Ukraine RPCV group and our Friends of Moldova organization both continue to assist Ukrainians affected by the conflict. Especially as Russia prepares to launch a new military offensive, please consider donating to their life-saving work.

Top photo: The Odessa Opera House, which we visited in 2018.

Once More, With Feeling

May 25, 2021 djarmul 1 Comment

“What’s it like to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in your twenties and then again decades later? David Jarmul takes a deep dive into that topic in his recent book, Not Exactly Retired: A Life-Changing Journey on the Road and in the Peace Corps. He ‘teases out a striking contrast between his service in Nepal 35 years ago and in Moldova in the age of Trump,’ says Marco Werman, host of The World on public radio.”

So begins an online article in the Spring 2021 issue of WorldView, the magazine of the National Peace Corps Association.

Accompanying it is an article from Champa describing how “many of us were not what Moldovans expected a Volunteer would look like. Together, we showed them that ‘American’ includes many kinds of people. As Peace Corps looks to its future, its Volunteers need to fully reflect our country’s diversity.”

Versions of both articles also appear (without all of the photos) in the magazine’s new printed edition, shown below.

They’re Not ‘Shitholes’

September 3, 2020 djarmul Leave a comment

That agency is the Peace Corps, in which I served twice as a volunteer.

On Wednesday, the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) highlighted on LinkedIn a talk I gave recently arguing the Peace Corps is way too focused on “development” and not enough on helping Americans and others to learn about each other.

No one is better situated than Peace Corps Volunteers to explain to their fellow Americans that developing countries are not “shitholes” — or to help people around the world see the realities of our own society.

Moreover, it’s their mission to do this. according to the agency’s three goals. One goal is to assist economic development, the other two are to promote cross-cultural understanding. Yet the Peace Corps now devotes almost all of its attention and resources to the first goal, even though returned volunteers say the other two end up mattering the most. This approach makes less sense now than ever before, as some politicians whip up fear about “the other.”

Peace Corps Volunteers can help Americans recognize that foreigners, including Muslims and people of color, share many of their own dreams and are not their enemies — and they can do so while maintaining the agency’s nonpolitical, bipartisan tradition.

NCPA has posted my 5-minute talk on YouTube. I hope it will help spark an overdue conversation about the agency’s programming after the pandemic eases and volunteers return to the field. I also discussed some of these issues in an earlier post and in my recent book, Not Exactly Retired: A Life-Changing Journey on the Road and in the Peace Corps.

The talk was part of NPCA’s “global ideas summit” (also on YouTube), which raised many interesting questions about the future of the Peace Corps — an organization I love and want to see have a bigger impact.

I welcome your comments.

(Top image from Olivia Prentzel’s Peace Corps blog.)

Our Digital Divide

January 11, 2017 djarmul 3 Comments

Are today’s Peace Corps volunteers over-connected? That’s the question I explore in this article just published by WorldView, the international magazine of the National Peace Corps Association. (A digital image of the article follows, with a link to a PDF version.)