The Peace Corps Fund announced today the launching of a new website, PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org. The site offers visitors a virtual community of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), their families and friends, international professionals and all who share the belief that global understanding contributes to world at peace. PeaceCorpsWorld.org is a project of the Peace Corps Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the Third Goal of the Peace Corps—to increase the understanding of the world on the part of Americans and to continue to be of service to others. The site was officially launched on March 1, 2009—the anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps by President John F. Kennedy.

"In 1961, the Peace Corps began an American service tradition offering assistance to people around the globe, face to face, village by village," said John Coyne, a novelist and lead creator of the site who served in Ethiopia in the early ’60s. "In the age of the Internet, PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org puts the far flung Peace Corps community, with its vast experiences and lively perspectives, in one place at the click of a button."

PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org is an outgrowth of the website PeaceCorpsWriters.org that began in 1989 as a newsletter for and about Peace Corps writers. This new and expanded website is designed to provide personal and professional resources to Peace Corps Volunteers and returned Volunteers, to share news and information about, and of special interest to, the Peace Corps community, to assist the members of the Peace Corps community bridge cultures as they fulfill the Third Goal of the Peace Corps, and to tell the unique stories that come from the Peace Corps experience.

According to site designer and publisher Marian Haley Beil, a PCV in Ethiopia in 1962-64, "we hope to build a network of people who are well traveled, know the global community, have crossed cultures, shared traditions, speak local languages and have worked for international understanding. Peace Corps Worldwide is a bridge to connect all global citizens, and enables us to provide a wide variety of resources to those in our Peace Corps community."

The site will also feature regular columns by experts on careers, education, government service, personal finance, travel, health, the environment, the arts, food, current affairs, news and opinion.

The site is a project of the Peace Corps Fund, a non-profit organization that supports the Third Goal of the Peace Corps: that returned Volunteers should bring the international understanding they’ve gained home to America and share it with their fellow citizens.