World Wise Schools Handbook

The following exerpts were taken from the World Wise Schools Handbook for Educations and Volunteers, a Peace Corps publication.

World Wise Schools Handbook for Educations and Volunteers

Welcome to World Wise Schools, the Peace Corps' innovative education program that seeks to engage U.S. students in an inquiry about the world, themselves, and others in order to broaden perspectives; promote cultural awareness; appreciate global connections; and encourage service.

We are truly excited about your interest in expanding students' knowledge about other peoples and places, and we hope that your correspondence will be as fun and interesting for you as it will surely be for your students.

It is our hope that, through your participation in this program, we can not only enrich students' reading, writing, research and analystic skills, but we can also fulfill Peace Corps' goal of "strengthening U.S. understanding of the world and its peoples."

By corresponding with a Peace Corps Volunteer, students will gain insight about what it is like to live and work in another country. WWS participants often find that by increasing awareness of cultural diversity around the world, students come to value the rich heritage and broad representation of peoples within their own community.

The Peace Corps Act of 1961 defined the Peace Corps' mission - to promote peace and friendship by making available willing and qualified U.S. citizens to interested countries to achieve the following three goals: to help the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained workers; to promote a better understanding of the United States among the people whom Volunteers serve; and to strengthen U.S. understanding of the world and its people - to bring the world back home.

It is the "third goal" of the Peace Corps that inspired the creation of World Wise Schools, a program that seeks to engage U.S. students in an inquiry about the world, themselves, and others in order to broaden perspectives; promote cultural awareness; appreciate global connections; and encourage service.