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.
""You will be rewarded when you read it, and you will
have in your personal library a book unlike any other written on the
subject of the peace corps, and one destined to be cited source for
all coming Peace Corps books."--Peacecorpswriters. org" --
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.
