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Love from volunteer lifts leader

Without the Peace Corps, the Hokule‘a’s navigators might never have learned the ancient wisdom that guided the traditional voyaging canoe around the globe, following signs in the stars, wind and sea.

“The knowledge would have died if it weren’t for a Peace Corps volunteer by the name of Mike McCoy,” said Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet, who came to Honolulu to mark Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month just as the Hokule‘a sailed up the Potomac to the nation’s capital.

“We dive so deeply into the culture of our host nations, we come to understand their traditions and appreciate them in ways that maybe even their own citizens may not,” she told an audience at the East-West Center on May 20, many of them returned volunteers.

Founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps is still going strong. Nationwide, applications jumped to a 40-year high in 2015, with 23,000 people vying for 2,500 positions. The University of Hawaii at Manoa made the list of top volunteer-producing colleges, with 14 alumni signing up that year.

The surge was propelled by a new option allowing applicants to choose their destination and job, although half continued to check the box “wherever I’m needed.” The online application was also streamlined to just an hour.

McCoy was part of the early waves of volunteers heading to the island of Satawal in Micronesia in 1969. There he got to know a cultural treasure, Mau Piailug, who had learned the art of celestial navigation as a boy. The Peace Corps volunteer stayed for four years and wound up marrying Piailug’s niece.

He later invited Piailug to Honolulu and introduced him to the Polynesian Voyaging Society, where Piailug taught a new generation the lost art that had brought their forebears to the islands.

The Peace Corps has sent more than 220,000 volunteers abroad since its founding, including 1,426 from the Aloha State. This year 29 volunteers from Hawaii are stationed around the globe.

Emma Broderick, 26, returned to Honolulu in January after two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga, where she worked with elementary teachers of English. She said the experience opened her eyes to new ways of thinking, in particular the contrast between America’s individualist approach and the collectivist culture of the kingdom of Tonga.

“It’s not about what you think the school needs,” she said. “It’s about what everyone agrees upon. I really enjoyed that aspect of trying to rally the troops.”

The Peace Corps can be a tough job. There were 15 volunteers in her cohort in Tonga, and just 11 ended up completing their tour, she said.

In a world where more people have access to cellphones than latrines, the leading request is for help with English education, Hessler-Radelet said. As the language of medicine, the Internet and commerce, it can be a passport to a job.

Volunteers perform a wide range of tasks in the 63 countries where they serve, from working with victims of child trafficking in the Philippines to improving soil management practices in Zambia.

New initiatives include the Global Health Service Partnership, which sends physicians and nurses to teach in developing countries. Their stays can be shorter than the standard two-year tour.

About 7 percent of volunteers are over age 50. A Hawaii resident, Arthur Goodfriend, set the record as the oldest volunteer when he finished his tour in Hungary at age 87 in 1994. A current volunteer is on track to break that record when she turns 88.

Four generations of Hessler-Radelet’s family have served in the Peace Corps. Her aunt led the way, volunteering in Turkey in 1964, followed by her grandparents who spent two years in Malaysia as retirees. Hessler-Radelet and her husband volunteered in Western Samoa in 1981-83, where she worked as a teacher, and her nephew was an HIV educator in Mozambique.

In Samoa, Hessler-Radelet read stories to her host family’s daughter every night, and the little girl read back to her, building up her English in preparation for junior high. Her host father had never gone to school a day in his life, but urged his kids to study hard so they wouldn’t end up in poverty like him.

When Hessler-Radelet returned 30 years later, she found her host mother tilling the same plot of land. Her host father had died. The little girl, taking his advice to heart, rose to become one of her country’s top lawyers.

“He had a heart of gold and nine children, and every single one of them went to the university,” Hessler-Radelet said.

“We often come back from Peace Corps thinking, I don’t know if I had any impact — that fish-farming project, the fish all died,” the Peace Corps director deadpanned. “That’s not what it was really about. It’s about developing relationships of trust, helping people dream big dreams.”