Peace Corps Volunteers Return to Georgia
Tbilisi, Georgia – On February 21, Peace Corps/Georgia welcomed back 18 American Peace Corps volunteers to serve alongside community members throughout the country.
Volunteers have not served in Georgia since they were evacuated in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event marked the first time in the Peace Corps’ 60-year history that volunteers were evacuated from all posts worldwide. Since that time, Peace Corps/Georgia staff have continued to engage with our partners through Virtual Service engagements, providing professional development opportunities to partner schools and organizations, and through developing and sharing technical resources in the fields of education, youth development, organizational strengthening, and project management.
“We are so excited to witness this historic return of volunteers to Georgia,” said Peace Corps Georgia Country Director, Jeffrey Goveia. “The work of Peace Corps in Georgia relies on volunteers working alongside and with Georgians in schools and organizations to help achieve the development outcomes that Georgians desire. We look forward to the return of volunteers and the formation of new partnerships and new relations throughout the country.”
At the request of the government of Georgia, volunteers will engage in the English and Youth Engagement for the Future and Individual and Organizational Development projects. They will collaborate with local public schools and organizations to increase English language proficiency with youth, help enhance teaching practices with counterparts, foster youth development activities with host communities, contribute to organizational development with partner NGOs and municipal entities, and support employability and entrepreneurship skills development of individuals.
For decades, Peace Corps has engaged in last mile, critical global health work for decades and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Regardless of the sector they work in, all Peace Corps volunteers engage in some form of COVID-19 response and recovery work, as either primary or secondary projects. Together, they will work alongside community members to strengthen systems to help respond to challenges exacerbated and exposed by COVID-19.
The agency has issued invitations for Volunteers to serve at 52 Peace Corps posts and remains flexible to the evolving conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
About Peace Corps: Peace Corps is an international service network of volunteers, community members, host country partners and staff who are driven by the agency’s mission of world peace and friendship. At the invitation of governments around the world, Peace Corps volunteers work alongside community members on locally prioritized projects in the areas of education, health, environment, agriculture, community economic development and youth development. Through service, members of the Peace Corps network develop transferable skills and hone intercultural competencies that position them to be the next generation of global leaders. Since President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961, more than 240,000 Americans have served in 142 countries worldwide.
About Peace Corps Georgia: In 2021, the Government of Georgia invited Peace Corps to establish a program in Georgia. The first group of 21 volunteers arrived later that year to teach English alongside Georgian English teachers. In 2004, the program was expanded to support organizational development. More than 900 Americans have served in Georgia, exchanging skills with their Georgian counterparts, supervisors, and community members, sharing American culture, and bringing Georgian culture back home with them to the United States.
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