offers lessons on stories, letters, photos, and study units from experiences of Peace Corps volunteers across Africa. Topics include folk tales and patterns in them, racial prejudice in South Africa, life in a village of Tanzania, traditional healers and HIV/AIDS, the meaning of wealth, sharing and generosity, what it takes to be a hero, time and punctuality, perspectives of different cultures, and water.

features lessons about stories, folk tales, poems, and letters from the experiences of Peace Corps volunteers. Examine writing style and techniques: vivid images, powerful descriptions, balanced sentences, parallelism, and more. Read folk tales from Togo, Macedonian, Romania, and Russia; learn about structure and patterns in the tales.

Over two dozen lessons address stories, letters, and folk tales that focus on Peace Corps Volunteer experiences in Asia and the Pacific islands. Topics include arranged marriages, learning a new language and culture, different cultural perspectives, rural Mongolian nomadic culture, cultural and economic complexities in China, learning to speak Chinese, what constitutes a good job, resolving contrasting values between cultures (Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea).

This site teaches students about access to water in Kenya, Ghana, and their own community as they read stories by Peace Corps Volunteers.

invites students to conduct research and then simulate a Lesotho village water committee that is designing a water supply system to improve living and health conditions.

This site explains to students how they can collect data about the role of water in celebrations around the world, organize it in a retrieval chart, and use the information to create learning stations for a Water Day Celebration.

provides lessons about stories, letters, and folk tales from experiences of Peace Corps volunteers in rural and urban areas of Central and Eastern Europe. Topics include folk tales, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, fear of certain numbers, transition from a state-controlled system to a democracy, school in Ukraine, the importance of speaking another language, storks and cultural icons, and family traditions as macrocosms of larger cultures.

shows the dramatic contrast between the rainy and dry seasons in West Africa and helps students define and identify the features of climate. They apply this knowledge to the study of how climate affects people and the environment.

helps students explore the literary elements of a Tanzanian folktale, connect its message to contemporary Tanzanian life, create original conclusions, and thematically illustrate the folktale using oil pastels.

provides lessons around stories, letters, poems, and folk tales from experiences of Peace Corps volunteers. Topics include the geography and cultures of the Dominican Republic, hurricanes, hero worship, conducting interviews, Paraguay, the risks of a one-crop economy (coffee), how best to use one's time in different cultures, why service to others matters, and the common good.

introduces students to the concepts of perspective, culture, and cross-cultural relations. The guide is designed to help students recognize and appreciate differences in perception among individuals and cultures, define culture and recognize its role in developing perceptions of ourselves and others, challenge assumptions, promote cross-cultural awareness, and provide opportunities to practice the behaviors that make cross-cultural communication possible.

explores agricultural practices in Madagascar and analyzes the effects on the people, the environment, and the endangered lemurs. Students then create technology-enhanced presentations.

is based on essays and photos provided by Peace Corps Volunteers. It asks students to create narrative cartoons that illustrate the lives of a young people in an African country.

Many students, especially students with limited English language skills, have difficulties determining the difference between narrative and expository texts. This unit will use vignettes written by Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Lesotho and Madagascar to compare these types of texts. As final products, students will write both a narrative essay and an expository essay. This unit was piloted with high school second language learners.

offers students the chance to learn the value of water by reading stories by Peace Corps Volunteers in Kenya and Ghana. They compare their own community to what they learn from reading.

This site asks students to discover how the need for water can be felt, seen, and heard in the song, voice, craft, religion, and ritual of a culture. They then capture this sense of water in a narrative poem.

This unit is designed to facilitate students' understanding of daily water use through reading stories from Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Kenya (East Africa) and Ghana (West Africa). As a product of this unit, each student will make a book comparing daily uses of water in America, Kenya, and Ghana. An overall goal is to develop students' understanding of the similarities and differences in water use among the people of Kenya, Ghana, and their own community. Grades 1-2 (Can be adapted to Intermediate Grades 3-5)

uses essays and photos provided by Peace Corps Volunteers to help students create a photomontage that focuses attention on environmental issues in the United States and Africa. Students challenge themselves to ask the question, What is the photograph communicating?

presents 10 stories written by Peace Corps authors. Lesson ideas and student work accompany the stories, which are set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Poland, and Papua New Guinea. Stories and accompanying materials are designed to strengthen students' reading and writing, inspire students to create their own personal meanings and narratives, and broaden students' perspectives of the world and themselves.