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Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2020-059
Sally Herman Poland served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey from 1964 to 1966 in an urban community development project. Poland attended training at Portland State College. In Turkey she was stationed in Ankara and worked in Gulveren, a low-income neighborhood. In her interview she describes how she involved residents in starting a community center, library, and nursery school. She also describes Peace Corps' publicizing her as the 10,000th volunteer to complete service since the program's start in 1961. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, February 25, 2020. 3 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-072
Ria O'Brien (now Edens) served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali from 2003 to 2005 in the water and sanitation sector. She did her training near Bamako, Mali, where she learned French and the Bamanankan tribal dialect. O'Brien lived in a Bamanan village with a host family and surveyed the needs of the village before starting her project. After a dialogue with the villagers, they decided on building a new well near the school. O'Brien recounts the building of a device used to lower her down into existing wells so she could assess soil composition and water levels. During this process, she began seeking funding for the well and training the villagers to build it. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, February 23, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2018-013
Brenda Brown Schoonover served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Philippines Group One from 1961 to 1963 as a 5th and 6th grade English teacher. She began training at State College Pennsylvania and then continued her language and cultural training in-country at Los Banos in a group of 128 volunteers. In the Philippines, she was stationed in the town of Magarao in the Bicol Region where she worked in the elementary school and established a community library. In her interview, she describes the warm relations she enjoyed with host country nationals. While interacting with students, teachers, and other host-country nationals, she says she learned valuable lifelong lessons in cross-cultural sensitivity -- lessons she believes have served her well throughout her subsequent career as an American diplomat. After completing her teaching assignment, Schoonover continued working as a Peace Corps staffer in Tanzania and at the Peace Corps office in Washington, D.C., and eventually became a foreign service officer. President Bill Clinton appointed her Ambassador to the West African nation of Togo, and she served there from 1997 to 2000. Interviewed by Ivan C. Browning, April 6, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-033
Patricia Matisz Smith served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia from 1973 to 1975. She attended training in-country at Tuaran with a group of 14 teachers. In Malaysia, Smith was stationed in Kota Kinabalu in the state of Shah. She worked as a high school science teacher at Sekolah Menengah Kerajaan Likas, a government high school in Likas. In her interview, she describes the challenges of teaching within a school modeled on the British educational system, and how she enjoyed traveling to other nearby countries on school breaks. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan C. Browning, 12 February 2017. 1 digital file.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-047
Rosemary Calhoon Takacs served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay from September 1988 through December 1990. She applied to the Peace Corps while she was working as an accountant and auditor, and accepted an invitation to work with small business and agricultural cooperatives. Takacs was among 40 volunteers who trained in-country on both the Spanish and Guarani languages, local culture, and business and cooperative laws of Paraguay. Following a coup that overthrew President Alfredo Stroessner’s government, her job focused solely on cooperatives licensed by the Ministry of Agriculture, which required her to draw heavily upon her auditing skills. Twenty-five years later, Takacs took a position with Peace Corps Response in Guatemala (August 2015 through February 2016) where she worked in small villages organizing farmers to sell their goat milk. She instructed the villagers in hygiene, contamination testing, marketing, and accounting. She also assisted in goat vaccination rodeos and studied their diets to improve milk output. 1 digital audio file. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan C. Browning, July 14, 2016.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-038
Susan Dill Bernstein served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco from June 1964 to June 1966. She applied to the Peace Corps with many other students while still in school. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, she accepted an invitation to teach English and physical education. She was part of a group of 30 volunteers who have remained close through the years. The group initially trained in Princeton, New Jersey, for two months and then trained in-country for another month. Bernstein's only concern about her placement in Morocco was that she not be the only volunteer in town. She and another volunteer, James ("Jim") David Bernstein, were assigned to a high school in Taza. Jim provided transportation to the school for her on the back of his Lambretta scooter. They fell in love and were married during the second year of their assignment. Before she was married, Susan lived at the Le Dauphine hotel with French nationals who also taught at the high school. She enjoyed the meals that were provided for breakfast and dinner each day and came to love Moroccan cooking. 1 digital audio file. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan C. Browning, May 14, 2016.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-009
Thomas (Tommy) H. Boyd served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine from March 2010 to December 2012. With a background in youth development programs and teaching, Boyd was part of the 38th group of volunteers to serve in Ukraine and trained with a cluster of five volunteers in Semenivka. The highlight of his training was the opportunity to live with a Ukrainian family. Boyd was the only volunteer stationed in the small town of Rudky. He lived with a grandmother who was an excellent cook. He worked in the Rudkivska Secondary School where he was the only non-Ukrainian on the faculty, and set up creative after-school programs, including a "Candy for Cigarettes" exchange project run by students. Boyd also served as a Peace Corps Response volunteer in Kyiv from April 2013 until February 2014, when all volunteers were evacuated from the country due to safety concerns. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, October 20, 2015. 1 digital audio file.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2020-006
Christian Erek Porter served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 2011 to 2013 as a management consultant in the environment sector. He did his language and cross-cultural training at Dedza University and in a village in central Malawi. Porter lived in a Tongan village near Nkhata Bay on Lake Malawi during his service as a management consultant to the Nkhata Bay Honey Cooperative. During the interview he tells how he spent the first four months of his assignment doing market research by traveling to grocery stores all over the country, watching Malawians choose which honey to buy, and talking to them about their choices. He then, with buy-in from the co-op's directors, put in place modern business practices and trained the directors on how to sell co-op honey at premium prices to return maximum profits to the honey farmers. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, August 26, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2020-003
Katherine Ackerman Porter served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 2011 to 2013 as a community health adviser. She did her language and cross-cultural training at Dedza College of Forestry and in Mkomeko, a village in southern Malawi. During the interview she tells how she supplemented her language skills with creative gesturing and dance. Fighting through malaria issues, Porter worked with Malawian counterparts in Dwambazi Rural Hospital and with a women's sewing group to help with its marketing efforts. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, September 25, 2019. 1 digital audio file. Note: The interview date given in the introduction is incorrect.