Former Peace Corps Volunteers Share Strong Spirit of Service

CABOT— Established by President John F. Kennedy in 1960, the Peace Corps organization has been a longtime pillar of volunteer organizations, serving international communities with the mission of promoting world peace and friendship through community-based development and intercultural understanding.

Peace Corps Week 2025 is February 23 to March 1. This year’s theme, ‘Tales of Transformation,” celebrates the changes individuals and communities can experience when the power of human connection is shared worldwide. It highlights intercultural exchanges, big and small, that lead to positive growth and sustainable change for all involved.

In alignment with this theme, Cabot residents and RPCVs Karen Larsen and Dana Glazier provided further insight on Cabot’s longtime spirit of community service. There are currently eight Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) living in the small town of Cabot. Being that the town has a population of less than 1,500, this is an incredible percentage when compared to the national average. Ranging in age from late twenties to mid-seventies, these individuals met organically through volunteer opportunities related to the recent floods in the area.

Glazier served in Niger from 1980 to 1982, volunteering in range management research with farmers in nomadic tribes. Larsen served in Bulgaria from 1996 to 1998 as an English teacher and became involved in community needs assessment and humanitarian efforts for the elderly and children.

Historic flooding in July 2023 and 2024 devastated many towns in and around the Northeast Kingdom. Both Larsen and Glazier were quick to extend a helping hand, recognizing that volunteer efforts would be critical in the coming months.

“It was terrible for all of the well-documented reasons. And there was so much need in the aftermath of that. And, of course, one of the probably more obvious things that needed to happen really quickly was rebuilding some of the primary roads and infrastructure and getting temporary bridges in, that sort of thing,” Larsen said.

According to Larsen, a call went out from both the select board chair and the gentleman acting as the major emergency coordinator for volunteer flaggers to work with the road crew.

“So, Dana and I just basically showed up, you know, on one of those organizing sort of afternoons to say, you know, we can assist with traffic management. I work full time down in Montpelier. So, what I would do is come down and work in Montpelier for a few hours and then spend my afternoons and evenings on the road crew, weekends too.”

Larsen continued, “so, Dana and I found ourselves, one of us north and one of us south on a given staging area as the road crew and the contractors were putting things back together. And as a result, we got to know each other a little bit better through that effort. A very unique way to meet, but a noble way to meet for sure.”

Larsen described the long hot days, passing the time conversing with her assigned partner Glazier. It was through these conversations the pair discovered their mutual history serving in the Peace Corps.

While both Larsen and Glazier credit the Peace Corps for providing invaluable experience and skills, their humanitarian spirit has surprisingly local origins.

Glazier credits his mother and father for instilling in him this spirit of service early on. “I look at my mother. I know all the Girl Scout songs because my mother was a Girl Scout leader and she participated. We lived across from a prison and she would organize females from the local college to go in and dance with the inmates, because it was important to her that these inmates had contact and did things. And my father, I remember he has a very, very rare blood, A negative. He would drive to Maine from Massachusetts if someone needed blood. I think of all the coaches in my life. I just think that it was ingrained in me to think about the Peace Corps. I think the Peace Corps may have augmented the way with which I participate in my community.”

Similarly, Larsen cited her background as a driving force. “I had one of those truly inspiring social studies teachers when I was in high school. So we were looking at the programs of John F. Kennedy and sort of that concept of ‘ask not what you can do.’ So that was the seed of the initial idea when I was probably 16.”

Larsen said it wasn’t until she finished with her university degree that she fully committed to the idea. Teaching high school history in northern Maine, Larsen then began to seriously think about the idea of serving, and traveling.

“I had come out of a household where internationalism was a thing, in that my dad was working for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. So that concept of finding a place to contribute in a global context, for me anyway, felt important. And the Peace Corps, again, with that sort of 16-year-old inspiration and then the idea of looking for not necessarily a change, because I started in the Peace Corps again as a teacher as well. But as a way to broaden service into the international context, that felt like an interesting way to pursue that,” Larsen said.

Both Glazier and Larsen recalled details of their time with the Peace Corps. “I served in Bulgaria and Macedonia for two and a half years. I was posted initially to Bulgaria in 1996, shortly before the transitions that hallmarked so much of the post-Soviet bloc began. So what I got into initially or what I thought I was getting into changed radically over the course of the next two years. I continued to teach but also got involved in humanitarian relief coordination. That’s a longer story but was reflective of the times and the circumstances of the communities that I was working in,” Larsen said.

Glazier utilized his degree in agriculture, conducting range management research such as grass studies and assisting communities in implementing best practices. “I would work with nomads, the Tuareg and the Wodabe and work with them in terms of how or what we thought were best practices were going to maybe help them with their herding. Both the Tuareg were livestock herders, camels, sheep, goats, and the Wodabe were pretty specifically cattle. And so we were working with them in terms of trying to find the correct balance between grasslands and cattle, goats or sheep per acre or per hectare.”

Glazier then worked with USAID and USAID subcontractors like Africare throughout the African continent, after returning to graduate school to get a degree in resource and agricultural economics.

Larsen returned from the Peace Corps and completed her masters in Public Affairs with a concentration in international development. She then worked on a number of short-term contracts, working with CARE International in Mozambique, living in Kyrgyzstan for a time, then being attached to the United Nations Development Project doing landmine and unexploded ordnance removal.

Fellow Peace Corps team member Erin Curran best characterized Glazier’s and Larsen’s years of both local and international service, saying “both individuals not only served in the Peace Corps, but also have continued their dedication to service in communities by being active members of Cabot, showcasing how the ideals of Peace Corps service can benefit U.S. communities long after service abroad has ended.”