Book description
President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961.
In the fifty years since, nearly 200,000 Americans have served in 139
countries, providing technical assistance, promoting a better
understanding of American culture, and bringing the world back to the
United States. In Voices from the Peace Corps: Fifty Years of Kentucky
Volunteers, Angene Wilson and Jack Wilson, who served in Liberia from
1962 to 1964, follow the experiences of volunteers as they make the
decision to join, attend training, adjust to living overseas and the
job, make friends, and eventually return home to serve in their
communities. They also describe how the volunteers made a difference in
their host countries and how they became citizens of the world for the
rest of their lives. Among many others, the interviewees include a
physics teacher who served in Nigeria in 1961, a smallpox vaccinator who
arrived in Afghanistan in 1969, a nineteen-year-old Mexican American who
worked in an agricultural program in Guatemala in the 1970s, a builder
of schools and relationships who served in Gabon from 1989 to 1992, and
a retired office administrator who taught business in Ukraine from 2000
to 2002. Voices from the Peace Corps emphasizes the value of practical
idealism in building meaningful cultural connections that span the
globe. Angene Wilson is professor emeritus of education at the
University of Kentucky, where she was chair of the secondary social
studies program from 1975 to 2004. She is the author of The Meaning of
International Experience for Schools and coauthor of Social Studies and
the World: Teaching Global Perspectives. Jack Wilson spent more than
thirty-five years in public service, beginning as a Peace Corps
administrator in Sierra Leone, Washington, DC, and Fiji, and continuing
as an administrator of environmental protection programs in Ohio and
Kentucky. The Wilsons live in Lexington, Kentucky.
