Peace Corps Philippines, the US government’s volunteer program in the country, is set to have a comeback by January 2023 after it was suspended in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Carol Spahn, US Peace Corps CEO, said 60 volunteers “will arrive and work for two years at the invitation of host communities across Luzon and the Visayas in the project sectors of education, youth development, and coastal resource management.”
“This group will be one of the largest that the US Peace Corps has organized since resuming overseas operations in March 2022,” said Spahn.
She said that by September 2023, “I expect more than 120 volunteers will be working alongside community members in the Philippines.”
Donald James Gawe, executive director of the Philippine National Volunteer Service Coordinating Agency, said the US Peace Corps had the highest number of deployment and volunteer in-service in the Philippines before the pandemic.
Since 1961, over 9,300 Peace Corps Volunteers have worked alongside Filipino community members in support of government and community development priorities.
For more than six decades, Peace Corps Philippines staff and volunteers have served as co-teachers, youth development facilitators, and environmental experts, or filled other roles requested by the Philippine government and host communities.
In a statement, Spahn maintained that the new batch of American volunteers “will be among the first to implement the agency’s new climate change initiative that will support over two million hours of volunteer and staff service and help identify and initiate strategies that can contribute to local governments’ climate adaptation plans.”
