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 The North Carolina Peace Corps Association
           "Bringing the World Back Home"

With the approach of the 50^th Anniversary in 2011, the North Carolina Peace Corps Association is collecting Stories of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers’ experiences and publishing them on our web site.

Your story is your story and only you can give us the details, the lasting impressions, the comedy, the drama, the action, the tragedy, and the emotion of your story. Alternatively, perhaps you have many stories, which together would be about two hundred words, the desired length. Listed below are some ideas for starters, choosing one, more or none write your essay, your story and submit it to Ruth Sappie rsappie@bellsouth.net Home Phone 919-821-3711 or Emily Coble csmith9899@aol.com Home Phone 919-231-6874 for publishing on the NCPCA Web Site or post on the blog. Remember it does not matter if your story happened fifty years ago, fifty months ago, fifty days ago or fifty minutes ago, your story is your story, and remains unique, interesting, and important to all of us.

· In considering what you might write about, think about some incident, which made you aware
that becoming a PC Volunteer was the best or worse experience that ever you have ever had.

· What lasting impression do you have of your host country?

· How has your Peace Corps experience formed your ideas about foreign policy, the third world, poverty or learning a second language?

· What impressed you most about the women or in your village?

· What did you learn from the children and what did they learn from you?

· How did you decide to become a Peace Corps Volunteer and why do you recommend that others might consider joining Peace Corps?

· How did the experiences that you had as a young volunteer influence your life’s work?

· What was a typical day in your life as a Volunteer like?

· What was your family’s reaction to your volunteering for two years in the Peace Corps?

· How did you re-adjust to life as a RPCV?

· How do you carrying out the Third Goal of Peace Corps now that you have been a Volunteer?

Now please tell us your story as we celebrate Fifty Years of Peace Corps! Thanks Emily Coble
 

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know. The only ones among you who will be truly happy will be those who have sought and found how to serve."

—Albert Schweitzer

Calling All Peace Corps Volunteers in North Carolina!

In 2011, Peace Corps will celebrate its 50^th anniversary.  Since 1961, the Peace Corps has shared with the world America's most valuable resource – its people. Since that time, more than 195,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation. 

The world has changed since 1961, and the Peace Corps has changed with it. With 7,876 Volunteers in 70 posts serving 76 countries, today's Peace Corps is more relevant than ever.  As a former Volunteer, you are a part of our country’s history, the best part that believes Americans can use their skills to make a difference in the lives of people around the world. And as the best of North Carolina, we are asking you to share your unique experience of living life to the fullest in the spirit of community service as a Peace Corps Volunteer. 

Here is an excerpt from the journal of Caroline Chambre, a North Carolinian who served in Burkina Faso from 2002-2004, called “Saying Goodbye”:

“Don’t forget us.” For me, this was a request that was impossible to respond to; I did not know how to find the words to make them understand that I could never forget them or their kindness—that these people will always have a special place in my heart for opening up their village and their customs to me.

• The beauty of the Peace Corps, of this experience, is realizing that I have much more in common with a group of African villagers than I ever thought possible. John F. Kennedy, in creating the Peace Corps, said that one of its goals would be to foster a cultural understanding between peoples all over the world. To me, that goal, beyond any work I did in Burkina Faso, is the one I am most proud to have achieved.

How can you tell your story? The North Carolina Peace Corps Association, in coordination with the National Peace Corps Association, is planning a series of activities beginning in 2010 that will honor, inform, and celebrate the unique experience of former Peace Corps Volunteers from our state and those currently living here. Working with our extended Peace Corps family, we will take this opportunity to share, reconnect, remember, reach out, celebrate, and look ahead.

Visit this webpage often as we update our activities.  We hope you will be a part of the celebration!