Feel free to add your own pages. (More information below.)

Dear RPCV,

For the first time in its almost fifty year history, the volunteers themselves are happy to announce the creation of a wiki based website dedicated to collaborative work.

http://www.PeaceCorpsWiki.com/

An institutional memory of this complex organization is being built day by day creating a bridge to an exciting future. This is an effort, lead by recently returned volunteers, to positivity develop the concept called Peace Corps – the history of Peace Corps and the projects that volunteers have done in over 139 countries around the world, ever since Kennedy announced ‘And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’

There are now a handful of administrators volunteering their time to the project and regular users (both registered and anonymous) have added almost a 1,000 pages of contributions.

However, we still need your help!

The ultimate goal is to have everything cross referenced, searchable, and freely available to anyone interested in the Peace Corps; countries, cities, sectors, volunteers – all relating to the Peace Corps service and its history for the past 47 years. We’re hoping that eventually volunteers would be able to read what progress has been made in Tamali, Ghana (for example) in the past 40 years. Which volunteers were stationed there? What did the Education volunteers have to do differently in The Gambia then Education volunteers in Senegal, Guinea or Mauritania? What projects did volunteers in Malawi work on 10 years ago, were any in Mzuzu?

You are even encouraged to create a page about yourself! What country did you serve in? What projects did you work on? What was in like serving in Venezuela in 1962, or being one of the 21 total volunteers who served in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 2000-2002? We even made it easy for you – on the main page is a ‘Add Volunteer’ box – just type in your name and the hard part is done for you!

Served in Farafenni, The Gambia or Gyumri, Armenia? Want to make a page about your town or village? Please do. Think the page for your country of service needs a few pictures? Welcome to upload them and post them. (As of now we’re using roughly the same standards as Wikipedia) The page for Ukraine has pictures of what the electrical outlets look like!

You can’t break PeaceCorpsWiki – anything can be fixed or improved later. Don’t be afraid to edit – anyone can edit almost any page, and we encourage you to be bold! You do not need to register as a user to contribute; anonymous legitimate edits/suggestions are welcome.

More than 190,000 people have answered the call to serve, and the PeaceCorpsWiki site provides the tool necessary to capture and disseminate this valued knowledge. You are welcome to join us and contribute your first-hand knowledge to this collective public information exchange.

Thank you,

-Mike Sheppard RPCV / The Gambia (‘03-’05) http://www.PeaceCorpsJournals.com/ http://www.PeaceCorpsWiki.com/

I have a brand new blog at  http://wlerik.wordpress.com/   It is not Peace Corps focused, but I am planning to post a short video there that I am making with some Guatemalan footage. 

For the time being, here are some of my best black & white photos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUtts0fI6bQ