Peace Corps Voices

Short Synopsis

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, this hour-long radio documentary will portray experiences of volunteers from every decade, in every region, using audio they recorded while serving. The archive recordings from the field will be complemented by contemporary interviews with the returned Peace Corps volunteers and with historians who've written about the Peace Corps.    

Description/Treatment

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps in 2011, this one-hour radio documentary will describe the impact of service on returned Peace Corps volunteers by combining audio recordings they made in myriad different countries, in each decade of the Corps' history, with contemporary interviews with them. From Ghana in the 1960s to Nepal in the 1990s to recent service in Benin, these recordings will present a national non-commercial radio audience with the voices of those who American volunteers met, lived with and, in one case, married. The project aims to offer an aural tour and history of the Peace Corps with a focus on how living and working abroad influenced the volunteers in their future endeavors.

Authors of Peace Corps books, including Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Stanley Meisler, will contribute their expertise. Their perspectives will provide context for the volunteers’ stories and will offer insight about the changing role of the Peace Corps in American foreign policy. Two returned Peace Corps volunteers are serving as humanities consultants on the project, to ensure the stories depicted are culturally sensitive and to help select content that best reflects the diversity and extent of Peace Corps service.

Good Radio Shows, Inc., a New Mexico non-profit with experience producing, distributing and sponsoring national radio documentaries, is the fiscal agent for independent producer Amy Mayer. Mayer has worked at two National Public Radio affiliate stations, has earned awards for a public affairs program she hosted for four years and for her reporting and commentaries. She’s based in western Massachusettsand her work has aired nationally on NPR News programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. She has also produced for Marketplace, Living on Earth, Only A Game and Justice Talking and her print credits include the New York Times, Boston Globe and Real Simple. Award-winning public radio journalist Tanya Ott, news director at WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama, will edit the program. Working with industry public relations and marketing professionals, Mayer will seek to place the documentary on public radio stations in Massachusetts and throughout the country, augmenting the broadcast audience with an extensive internet presence including a dedicated website, blog, Facebook page and Twitter feed. To date, the following public radio stations or networks have expressed preliminary interest in airing the documentary: WGBH-Boston, WNPR-Hartford, WBHM-Birmingham, Vermont Public Radio, and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Participants in the documentary include: a member of the very first Peace Corps cohort, sent to Ghana in 1961, who toted a portable reel-to-reel recorder; a woman who served in Sierra Leone and recorded children singing Kumbaya in 1969; a couple who married in Burkina Faso, she a Peace Corps volunteer and he a local resident; a man who trained teachers in Peru in 1970 and learned Spanish from AlejandroToledo—a past president and current presidential candidate in Peru; a current Wisconsin Public Radio marketing employee who recorded scenes from village life in Nepal; a business volunteer who worked with women in Ukraine; and a farmer in Amherst, Massachusetts who worked with children in Togo to produce a hip hop video condemning brush fires. In addition to the recordings these volunteers made in the field, I will use archive audio from the 1961 Rose Garden ceremony in which President Kennedy bid farewell to the very first volunteers (audio will come from the JFK library in Boston). When the Peace Corps expanded into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics in the 1990s, President Bush held another Rose Garden ceremony, and I hope to use that audio as well.

Mass Humanities has committed $5000 to the project, which has an overall budget of $28,650 (including an expected $13,650 in-kind). Additional funding from the Lotte Schreiber Pinkus Fund is pending, though the amount is not yet known.