Global minds, local impact: Whatcom County is home to many returned Peace Corps volunteers, along with people who value community service and volunteer work.
During her service with the Peace Corps in Azerbaijan from 2006–2008, Bellingham resident Dana Carr strived to create a safe space for young Azerbaijani women during Camp GLOW, or Girls Leading Our World. Amid a backdrop of rustic cabins in the forest during the summer months, the young women would discuss – first in English, then in Azerbaijani — about their physical and mental health and how to navigate their future in a patriarchal society.
In the mid-2000s, some women in Azerbaijan wore a hijab to counteract the lingering Soviet Union culture of secularism, Carr said.
“Some of the women I worked with in Azerbaijan critically thought about their culture and defied strict gender roles by covering their head with a hijab,” Carr said. She also received a bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University in 2004. “They wore the hijab to express their femininity and to reclaim the head cover for men to treat them with respect.”
Other Peace Corps volunteers, or PCVs, who currently reside in Whatcom County, recalled the bond they shared with their elder women mentors on site — and how that has shaped their current leadership style.
“My host mother, Sister Wil, was incredibly special,” said Hilary Schwandt, a public health professor at Western’s Fairhaven College. She also grew up in Bellingham. “I lived with her for three months at the beginning of my service.”
Schwandt volunteered in Jamaica with the Peace Corps from 2002–2004, teaching English to mostly primary school students and to some adults.
Sister Wil did not dance because of her religious beliefs, but she always encouraged Schwandt to express herself through dance whenever she felt like it in her home. “Clap yourself,” said Sister Wil with delight at Schwandt’s dance moves.
A wife of a deceased chief made a lasting impact on Katherine Freimund, a PCV in a small Senegalese village where she first worked as a community development agent, and then at the U.S. embassy in Dakar. Serving in Senegal, West Africa from 1987–1990, Freimund is currently the executive director of the Whatcom Literacy Council in Bellingham.
“Instead of remarrying to become the wife of someone else, she insisted on staying single — retaining power in the village as ‘wife of the chief’,” Freimund said. “I learned a lot from this woman.”
The toughest job you’ll ever love
The Peace Corps is an independent agency within the U.S. government. Created by President John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps’ mission is to promote world peace by sending American volunteers to interested countries to assist with development projects.
PCVs aspire to leave a legacy in the lives of community members they collaborate with on local projects. Volunteers aim to build relationships, exchange culture and knowledge and help transform lives for generations during a 27-month stint that includes three months of in-country culture and language training, along with two years of service.
“Volunteers give the tools and skills to community members so that they can continue Peace Corps projects on their own,” Freimund said.
Graduates from Western have a long tradition of serving as PCVs in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
“Western has a strong Peace Corps reputation,” said Jerry Smith, Western’s Peace Corps recruiter. He also served as an agricultural statistician in Niger, West Africa, from 1985–1987. “The service ethos runs deep with students, and Peace Corps service continues to thrive at Western.”
The Peace Corps ranked Western in 2024 as the No. 1 school in the nation among medium-sized schools of between 5,000–15,000 students in all-time volunteers. Western has sent nearly 950 Peace Corps volunteers around the world since the program’s establishment in the early 1960s.
“The Peace Corps is a transformative experience,” Smith said. “I tell Western students their service will change their perspective of the United States and how they see the world.”
Western’s educational strengths include renowned undergraduate programs in environmental science and education training from the Woodring College of Education, Smith said. These fields of study align well with Peace Corps work sectors like agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health, and youth in development.
“Western prepares students well for the Peace Corps through education that encourages students to think for themselves, remain curious, and to seek out answers to their questions directly from primary sources,” Schwandt said.
A call to public service
Thirteen Western alumni are currently serving as PCVs including Laurel Finlay, a March 2024 anthropology graduate now based in Khao Chamao, a district of Rayong province in eastern Thailand. As a youth in development volunteer, she spends the majority of her days in the classroom teaching students ages 7–16 conversational English and life skills.
“This experience has taught me how to be a good neighbor, friend and community member,” Finlay said. “I have learned to push past discomfort, adapt and not to take myself too seriously.”
Warren Burroughs, a June 2022 Western alumnus with a bachelor’s degree in political science and government, completed his Peace Corps service in Rakiraki, Fiji, in April 2025. As a PCV, he contributed to the grassroots development of a rural Fijian village by constructing a footpath to improve accessibility, as well as supporting public health in a community of 180 residents.
“I heard about the Peace Corps at the right time in the right place,” Burroughs said. “On a hike on the Oyster Dome trail, a new friend shared her aspirations of joining the Peace Corps. I remember feeling a strong conviction.”
Burroughs said he wanted a job after graduation where he could meet people from a different culture and to connect with a small community on an intimate level. He is now preparing to move to Washington, D.C., to attend Georgetown University for a master’s degree in international development policy.
“My Peace Corps experience has taught me important soft skills such as teamwork, facilitation and resilience,” he said. “I can’t underscore resilience enough — I feel like I am capable of doing anything now.”
When doing press earlier this year for the 2019 documentary, “A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps,” filmmakers Alana DeJoseph and Shana Kelly acknowledged that Peace Corps has received criticism for perpetuating “white savior” dynamics, not providing adequate training for volunteers and not seeing a long-term impact in a two-year service period.
While Freimund said she had an idealistic Peace Corps experience in Senegal and is still in touch with her host family, she acknowledged not all PCVs have positive experiences because of political situations, safety concerns and personal struggles during their service.
Making a difference at home
Many returned Peace Corps volunteers, or RPCVs, now live in Whatcom County, currently working in many nonprofit and service organizations throughout the county, Smith said.
“Peace Corps instills in individuals who serve a sense of giving back that emanates when they return home to the United States,” Smith said.
Many people living in Whatcom County value community service and volunteer work, Freimund said. While she said she’s not surprised there’s a large number of RPCVs living and working in Whatcom County, many people — besides PCVs — intentionally move to Bellingham and environs because of its strong sense of community.
“Volunteering is a part of the fabric of the Bellingham community,” she said. “The values of Peace Corps volunteers align with this spirit, but that’s already here in Bellingham.”
Nonprofits in Whatcom County work together, Carr said. “That feels very Peace Corps to me.”
Many Western professors and community members throughout Whatcom County have told Smith, Western’s recruiter, that their Peace Corps service overseas helped them determine and pursue career goals that they had no idea existed before joining the Peace Corps.
“My Peace Corps experience changed my life,” Schwandt said. “I learned a lot about myself, our nation, and Jamaica in the Peace Corps. My experience truly made me a better person with a wider informed lens of the world and set me off on a wonderful path to a public health career.”
Peace Corps in a changing world
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration have left their mark on the Peace Corps in the 2020s.
In March 2020, the Peace Corps evacuated nearly 7,000-plus volunteers in more than 60 countries back to the United States, Smith said. Volunteers began returning to service overseas in March 2022, with around 3,600 PCVs in the field right now.
During his first term, President Donald Trump proposed to cut the agency’s $400 million budget and neglected to appoint staff. In his second term, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, reduced the headcount at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., in April 2025.
“I was hoping the current administration would leave the Peace Corps alone,” Schwandt said. “That did not happen; however, the cuts to the Peace Corps were quite minimal compared to the complete dismantling of USAID.”
Senate Republicans reached an agreement with the White House in July to preserve funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global HIV and AIDS relief program — the Peace Corps’ largest external partnership with the U.S. government. This is good news for many Peace Corps programs in Africa, Smith said.
But this year alone, the Peace Corps has closed country programs in Ethiopia and Mozambique due to security concerns. The agency has also paused incoming cohorts — a group of volunteers who begin their service together — to Cameroon, the Kyrgyz Republic, South Africa and Tanzania. The cohort cancellations will not impact current agency operations in those countries.
“When you serve as a Peace Corps volunteer, you are a diplomatic representative of the United States,” Freimund said. “I think it would be challenging to be serving and have the current administration cut the State Department and USAID — typically offices whose staff would be colleagues of Peace Corps representatives.”
The DOGE job cuts in Washington, D.C., have had no impact on overseas services to date, Smith said.
“Federal government funding for Peace Corps is stable, and is still going strong and recruiting, placing and supporting fully all volunteers in the 60 countries Peace Corps is in,” he said.
But the DOGE downsizing means more work for those who remain on staff with the Peace Corps in D.C., leaving volunteers with less support, Schwandt said.
“The current administration’s values are in direct opposition to what the Peace Corps encourages: understanding, learning and serving those from countries other than your own,” Finlay said. “There has definitely been fear and uncertainty, but at this moment the current administration’s policies have had very little impact on the work I do in my community in Thailand.”
Despite the obstacles of the past five years, Burroughs said he is optimistic about the Peace Corps’ future.
“The Peace Corps has bipartisan support and has continued to support communities throughout many previous institutions,” he said. “Even after COVID, when the program had to evacuate all volunteers, it returned, still strong.”
— By Catherine Skrzypinski
Returned Peace Corps volunteers in Whatcom County gather every other month for a potluck. If RPCVs in Whatcom County are interested in meeting up, they can join the WhatsApp group “Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Group of Whatcom County.”
Catherine Skrzypinski was a communications intern at the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s.
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Editorial: America will miss AmeriCorps,” June 4, 2025
• “Nonprofits, municipalities regroup after AmeriCorps setbacks,” June 4, 2025