Susan E. Greisen

What a poignant question during these turbulent times. And so what’s the Peace Corps got to do with it, you may ask?
I was recently interviewed and asked this question for the WorldView magazine that was published in the Winter 2024 edition. This magazine sponsored by the National Peace Corps Association is supported by those of us who have served abroad, including Peace Corps Volunteers.

This topic was not randomly chosen. The world is experiencing the highest level of violence since World War II, with armed conflicts simmering, enduring, or raging in Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine, to name just a few. In 2022, more than 2 billion people were displaced by violence according to the United Nations. In 2023, the Global Peace Index noted that the number of conflict-related deaths rose last year by an astonishing 96%.
Here is the editor’s summary of my interview and what the Peace Corps has to do with it.

Susan Greisen (Liberia 1971-73) of the Friends of Liberia affiliate group has no doubt that Peace Corps Volunteers have had an impact on peacebuilding efforts in her former host country. Though Peace Corps was not present during Liberia’s brutal civil war, which lasted from 1989 to 1997, many RPCVs (returned Peace Corps Volunteers) remained engaged with people and programs in the country, offering support from abroad that continues today.
“My village was destroyed. The people were destroyed. So in some ways I look back on my experience and think that all the good I had done is gone,” Greisen says. Nonetheless, she says, “One of the very first Volunteers who returned to Liberia after the war, said to me, ‘Susan, when we came back 20 years later, they said, We remember the schools you built, the roads you constructed and the clinics you supported. We remember the Peace Corps.'”

Certainly, the bombs and bullets of war leave lasting scars on the people and the environment. But it is the Peacebuilding efforts that endure in the hearts and minds of the people, so that after the war, they still have hope and an openness to build a better future.

In this same magazine edition, it was announced that Friends of Liberia (FOL) won the annual Loret Ruppe award for Outstanding Community Service as we demonstrated the impact that we not only continue to make with the people of Liberia, but also within our own communities as we serve back home.

This award recognized FOL for our publication of Never the Same Again, an anthology of gripping stories to celebrate Peace Corps Liberia’s 60th anniversary. A group of FOL members traveled to Liberia in 2022 to present a copy of our book to the U.S. Ambassador in Monrovia and to the National Library of Liberia. All proceeds from the book benefit current humanitarian programs in Liberia. You may purchase our anthology on this website or where ever fine books are sold.

Let me know what you think with an applause or comment below. I’d love to hear from you.