Fall 2010 - National Peace Corps Association

50th AnniversaryTIES THAT BINDA look at multigenerational Peace Corps familiesby Kristina J. Owens and Wendy A. OwensWithin the span of 50 years,it is inevitable that thePeace Corps would makean impact on two or more generationsof Peace Corps Volunteers. Beingsecond-generation Returned PeaceCorps Volunteers (Kristina: Bolivia2000 to 2002; Wendy, Paraguay 2000to 2002), Peace Corps has alwaysbeen part of our lives. Our father,Robert ‘Bob’ Owens, was a Volunteerin Peru from 1970 to 1973 and metour mother, a native Peruvian, duringhis service. We grew up hearing allhis stories, and of course the story ofhow they met on a boat going downthe Amazon. Not only did we hearabout the Peace Corps, we also visitedPeru several times while growingup. Those typical childhood lectureson eating our vegetables “becausemillions of children in the world aredying of hunger” actually held someweight in our household! As the 50thanniversary of Peace Corps comescloser, we wondered whether therewere other families like ours, wherePeace Corps has become a tradition.We decided to ask our fellowReturned Peace Corps Volunteers(RPCVs) some questions viaNPCA’s online communityand Facebook, including whythey joined the Peace Corps,how influential the relative’sexperience was on theirdecision and how their PeaceCorps experience was differentor similar to their relative’s.Many RPCVs immediatelyjumped into this interestingdiscussion.What we found was bothwhat we expected—and didn’texpect. We thought we wouldfind a few families like ours,but surprisingly there were evenmore multigenerational Peace Corpsfamily combinations, including:• Father or mother served as aVolunteer, married a host countrynational, one or more childrenserved 20-30 years later.• Father and mother servedtogether, may have even hadchildren while in service.Children served 20-30 years later.• Father or mother served aftertheir children did because theywere inspired by their children’sexperience.• Grandmother and granddaughterwho served at the same time.• Families where a parent not onlyinspired children to serve but theirown parents, uncles, aunts, niecesand nephews to serve as well.These online discussions remindedus that Peace Corps Director AaronWilliams (Dominican Republic 67-70) currently has a son serving, andthat Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 81-83) ispart of four generations of PeaceCorps volunteers. Radelet-Hessler’saunt first served in Turkey from 1963The authors as children visiting Machu Picchu with their parents.to 1965, her grandmother then servedin Malaysia from 1972-1973, andmost recently her nephew served inMozambique (07-09). The parentsof NPCA Vice President Anne Baker(Fiji 84-87) served in Romania from2001 to 2003. The multigenerationalPeace Corps family, it seems, is aliveand well.We found that across thegenerations the reasons for joiningremained essentially the same: theopportunity to help others, to travelthe world, to learn a new language.The first generation respondentsdid not necessarily feel they directlyinfluenced their children or relativesin their decision to join the PeaceCorps—but by talking about theirexperiences or by taking them back totheir Peace Corps sites they certainlyinspired them.Many of us “Peace Corps babies,”second generation Peace CorpsVolunteers, have strong memoriesof our parents and relatives tellingstories of their time in their PeaceCorps countries. Our home, forexample, was filled with exoticsouvenirs and there was a constantparade of visitors from allover the world. The same wastrue for Donna Shanor (CostaRica 10-12), who said abouther father, “He always had aperson from another countryto introduce us to that he hadmet through Peace Corps.”Curiosity about communitiesbeyond our own was certainlyencouraged. My sister and Ibecame passionate about globalissues such as poverty, humanrights, and the environment.We realized we had a differentperspective of the world thanmost children but never reallyBob Owens40 WorldView Fall 2010 National Peace Corps Association