Peace Corps Exhibition honors former volunteers who call Hawaiʻi Island home
A group of former Peace Corps volunteers who call Hawaiʻi Island home gathered at the exhibition to talk story about their time in the corps.
By Emily Thornton.
Among the many events at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo during Peace Corps Week, Feb. 26-March 1, an informational exhibition was on display at Mookini Library. The Peace Corps Exhibition showcased historical materials of the Peace Corps such as training schedules, curriculum, government documents, rosters and bios of the volunteers, photos, and more.
Su-Mi Lee, an associate professor of political science, with the help of library staff, created an educational billboard and display showcasing the development of the Peace Corps and some important work they have accomplished.
Lee is UH Hilo’s expert on former Peace Corps volunteers, currently working on a project with her poli-sci students and members of the local community to collect biographical stories of those who are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers with ties to Hawaiʻi Island.
The biographical inquiry and the library exhibition are significant to UH Hilo because Hawaiʻi Island was chosen as a primary training location for thousands of Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s and the university’s precursor—University of Hawaiʻi-Hilo Branch—contributed greatly to that training. Many of those Peace Corps volunteers, who spent years abroad, returned to Hawaiʻi Island, contributing to local communities with lives of service.
“I first came here as a Peace Corps trainee at the old Hilo hospital, we trained there and I went to Indonesia and I was there for two years,” says former Peace Corps volunteer Bill Sakovich, a lecturer at UH Hilo well known in the community for being a swim coach at Waiakea High School. “Came back to Hilo and was working with directing training programs after that.”
Sakovich, who is helping Lee with the biography project, met up last week at the Mookini Library exhibition with several other former Peace Corps volunteers and supporters from the local community.
“I taught English as a foreign language at a teacher training college in Thailand,” says Hawaiʻi Island resident Julie Countess. When asked what she is most proud of in her Peace Corps work, she says, “I have seen videos from Thailand and from the town where I was, which was just a tiny little town, and [now] it’s a bustling city. Signs are in English everywhere, so I figured we must have done a good job if people could write the signs and read the signs.”
Jon Countess, a former Peace Corps volunteer who served in the Marshall Islands, recounts the small island he was sent to where he taught English at an elementary school. “People on the island wanted to start a food co-op and they asked me to do that so I stayed for a third year. Helped them learn a little bit about what a co-op is and how everybody has to contribute and then I raised money for it.”
When asked about the training process, Countess says he was in one of the last groups to train on Hawaiʻi Island in 1971. “We were flown over to Hilo. I lived in the old nurses’ quarters over by Rainbow Falls. We had five hours a day of language training then we had one or two hours a day of cross-cultural awareness.”
The library exhibition showed extensive information on the training program for the Peace Corps, including inspiring maps, documents, and other interesting items.
Artem Sergeyev, a UH Hilo alumnus and a recent Peace Corps volunteer, joined the group at the library.
“I was basically working side by side with a Macedonian English teacher from grades two all the way to nine,” says Sergeyev. He says his biggest accomplishment during his Peace Corps service was “taking the connection with Hawaiʻi to the kids in Macedonia. I know that they will always remember the things I taught them about Hawaiʻi.”
Sergeyev says the process to get into the Peace Corps took about nine to 12 months and the Peace Corps shipped him out a few months after he graduated. His service was from 2018 to 2020, but on March 20 of 2020, he and his fellow volunteers were evacuated from Macedonia due to the pandemic.
The events of Peace Corps Week at UH Hilo were organized by the Department of Political Science in collaboration with UH Hilo’s Office of International Student Services and Intercultural Education, Mookini Library, the Big Island Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and the East Hawaiʻi Rotary Action Group for Peace.
Rotary member Charlene Iboshi attended the meet-up.
“She is the connector of this group: UH Hilo, Rotary International, County of Hawaiʻi, and Returned Peace Corps volunteers,” says Lee. “As a member of Big Island Rotary Clubs Peace Group, she promotes the recently renewed partnership between Rotary international and Peace Corps. Under that umbrella, she gathered all relevant parties and made sure that UH Hilo was mentioned in the mayor’s proclamation on Peace Corps Week.”
Tim Hansen, a member of the Rotary Club of Hilo Bay and executive assistant to the mayor of Hawaiʻi County who also is a lecturer in UH Hilo’s political science department, joined the group at the library. He brought along the proclamation signed by Mayor Mitch Roth last year recognizing the role of Hawaiʻi Island in training Peace Corps volunteers.
In both his Rotary and county work, Hansen is involved with peace initiatives around the island. This includes Peace Pole Project installations, which are not Peace Corps projects per se, but former Peace Corps volunteers often collaborate with local governments around the world on installation of poles in locales where they served and/or have settled. There are many Peace Poles installed on Hawaiʻi Island.
“The work of the Peace Corps internationally in promoting peace and well-being is a good fit with the Peace Poles and Peace Week in September,” says Hansen. “It’s a wonderful time to go around the island to visit the peace poles.”
Related stories
Learn more about Associate Professor Lee’s Peace Corps project:
The following story is about the first video interview in a series of five with former Peace Corps volunteers who settled down on Hawaiʻi Island. The project is produced by Associate Professor Lee and her political science students. Links to the other interviews can be found in the post:
Story by Emily Thornton, an English major at UH Hilo.
