You probably all know by now that my wife and I served in the Peace Corps together. At the request of your Breadlines editors, I’ve passed along a collection of mass emails I sent home periodically over our two-plus years in Moldova. They begin with our time in the capital city, Chisinau, where our primary sites were located. Unfortunately, the letters I wrote from the village, where we lived during our three months of pre-service training, are not in my possession, as they were hand-written to individuals. So, in order to fill in some of the blanks, I’ll give you a little background here first.

We worked in the Organizational Development program, the scope of which was similar in many respects to the sort of development VISTAs do. The difference is the level of technical sophistication and existing infrastructure. I worked at the Independent Press Association, a collection of independent community newspapers and journalists from around the country. Tamar worked with the environmental movement of Moldova, which I think is self-explanatory. Basically, we worked to build capacity in our organizations through strategic planning, fund raising, professional skill development, and improving infrastructure.

We were sworn is as volunteers August 21, 1998, and finished up on June 21, 2000. The effect of those two years on both of us was profound, and cannot be summed up easily. I won’t even try. But the following letters may give you some insights or indications of the effect of this experience.

-Glenn Puckett