Peace Corps

[close] This group examines literature relating to community capacity building and development. Members are encouraged to explore the role of the development worker and the different pieces and directions of the development process.

[close] Brought to you and moderated by the Peace Corps Peru Diversity Task Force team, this book club values the importance of reading, processing, and discussing diverse literature amongst peers with diverse identities of their own. We strive to share the stories and works of those who are marginalized or not brought to the forefront enough through celebrating them in this book club.

[close] A group for all of the Peace Corps Macedonia volunteers who are part of the Sci-Fi & Fantasy book club!

[close] “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” - Lilla Watson Peace Corps and International Development is problematic, and as a returned volunteer, I have been wanting for some time to critically re-examine my overseas experience, to think through its explicit and implicit power dynamics. How do issues of race, class, gender, colonialism, and geopolitics inform the "do-gooder" mentality of volunteer and paid international development work, and what does that mean for its impact on volunteers, host communities, and others? Change begins with learning, and that is why I wanted to start this group where we could read, discuss, and share centered on thought-provoking books that bring a more critical perspective to Peace Corps and ID organizations. One goal is to create a syllabus to be shared with future or returned Peace Corps Volunteers as well as others, something akin to Ibram X. Kendi's anti-racist syllabus for Ralph Northam. What would we imagine for Peace Corps and ID organizations if we incorporated a true grappling with our place in the world, this work, its dynamics, and discourses of improvement?