Posts tagged peace corps volunteers
Life is calling. How far will you go?
Peace Corps Volunteers Katy Todd and Melissa Bernard are working with local Togolese community members to promote women’s empowerment by organizing the third annual national women’s wellness and empowerment conference. Throughout the five-day conference, 30 women will participate in seminars and activities to enhance their personal development and entrepreneurial skills. Seminar topics will include family planning, maternal health, nutrition, food security, social entrepreneurship and financial literacy.
“The conference helps women realize their potential to become leaders and role models, and to have a positive impact on those around them,” said Bernard. “Participants leave equipped not only with valuable information, but with confidence in themselves and a belief that they can make a difference.”
Today, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day by highlighting the great work our Volunteers are doing around the world to support gender equality and celebrating all the women Volunteers who’ve gone where people told them girls couldn’t go!
This photo was taken in the small village of Ain Chaib, Morocco, just east of Agadir, on my host grandmothers farm. It is early morning and Jdda (grandma) is sitting on a grain bag, sifting through argan nuts as she pours them into a hand operated grinder made of stone. I return to the U.S. in two weeks and she is making Argan Oil for me to take back to my family in America. She wants me to remember her and the two years we spent together on her farm. She is the only grandmother I’ve ever known.
- Peace Corps Business Development Volunteer Leslie Mansour
A Peace Corps Volunteer helped create this beautiful reading area for a library in her Dominican Republic community
Basket weaving in Senegal - 2009
(Source: peacecorps.gov)
Some of the great food-related photos shared with us in our of today’s Peace Corps Week theme, Invite the World to Your Table!
Tomorrow’s theme is Foster Global Citizenship.
This fits today’s Peace Corps Week Theme “Invite the World to Your Table” so well, we had to reblog!Your Ecuadorian Fruit Education
Lesson #1: TaxoOne of my New Year’s resolutions and goals of year numero dos in Peace Corps is to try more Ecuadorian fruit. It’s not as if I don’t eat a bastante amount of fruit here, I really do. I just usually stick to the basics like mango, pineapple, papaya, grapefruit and oranges. I’ve tried other fruits here of course but I don’t usually buy them on my own… but that’s all about to change! I have a brand-spanking new blender with a juicer too! It would be a complete waste not to use it and to not aprovechar my time down here with trying delicious tropical fruits. So, get ready for installment one in your Ecuadorian fruit education!
Up first is taxo. I’m not sure what taxo is called in English or if there even is an English translation. It’s a strange yellow fruit that’s about 3 inches long and shaped like some large gorilla finger or a fat stumpy cigar. When you cut it open, the insides look like a pomegranate or maracuyá with the orange, gelatinous fruit surrounding many small black seeds. Taxo is basically only used in juices but as the lady at the fruit stand tells me, you can also cut it open and chupar (suck) the fruit out. According to my awesome Peace Corps cookbook, it’s also used as a topping for ice cream but since I had no ice cream around the house, I settled for making juice.
I cut them open, scooped out the insides and put it my blender with a bit of water. After blending for a bit, you simply strain out the seeds and bam, you have jugo de taxo! I added some sugar to the juice primarily because I’ve integrated here and you can’t drink anything without copious amounts of sugar added and secondly because taxo does have a slightly sour taste that needs some sweetness added. Overall, not my favorite Ecua-fruit and it probably wouldn’t be my first juice choice but taxo definitely has an interesting flavor and unlike any fruits I would typically eat in the States.
(Source: peacecorps.gov)
Join the global celebration of Peace Corps service!
Peace Corps Week celebrates how Peace Corps Volunteers make a difference in host countries around the world and in the United States, commemorating the date President John F. Kennedy signed the executive order to establish the Peace Corps—March 1, 1961.
Don’t miss your chance to support world peace and friendship by furthering the Peace Corps Third Goal of helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans! Learn more @ www.peacecorps.gov/pcweek
Happy National Peanut Butter Day! In honor of the tasty, buttery spread, do some miles for Feeding America and the World Food Programme today! #EveryMealMatters
…especially those with peanut butter.
We hear from Volunteers all the time that peanut butter is a must-have during service! Did you eat a lot of it when YOU served?
