Interview with Lucas Arribas Layton, September 13, 2023

Interview Summary

Lucas Arribas Layton has spent most of his career with Peace Corps in varying capacities. After graduating from college, he joined Peace Corps and served as a Family Hillside Farming volunteer in a rural community in the Intibucá Province of Honduras from 2001-2003. Once completing service in Honduras, he went to graduate school where he met his wife, and rejoined Peace Corps, this time as a part of a married couple serving as high school teachers in Mozambique from 2009-2011. Specifically, Lucas taught English and computers and his wife taught biology and French in a Portuguese medium high school. Upon returning to the United States, they both ended up working for Peace Corps headquarters in Washington DC where Lucas supported the Peace Corps response program. In 2017, Lucas was sent to Micronesia as Director of Programing and Training for Micronesia, where he was charged with, amongst many roles, overseeing volunteer pre-service and in-service trainings as well as coordinating with the local governments to set up volunteer positions until the Peace Corps Micronesia program suddenly shut down in 2018, which Lucas also discusses in his interview.

Interview Keyword

Peace Corps volunteer Many Faces Peace Corps staff Peace Corps Response Honduras Mozambique hillside farming Spain Spanish-American Harvard University Pasadena, California Cambridge, Massachusetts Peace Corps Director of Programming and Training for Micronesia Portuguese John F. Kennedy Tegucigalpa staging Miami agriculture water sanitation small business community development Santa Lucia Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator (LCF) Technical and Cross-Cultural Facilitator (TCF) farmer pig farm vegetable garden shared house battery powered radio volunteer cohort Catholic Church dry community host family indigenous crops indigenous medicine HIV AIDS lectures Women’s Voices in Agriculture Conference youth forum on agriculture and environment institutional racism Spanish colonialism Stanford University International Education Peace Corps Mozambique Zobue/Zóbuè/Zobwe, Tete Province girls’ camp English Club Chewa language Chichewa Internet cafe South Africa World Cup Portuguese colonial history Tanzania subsistence agriculture high school teachers War of Independence with Portugal professional high school Teacher Training Institute Health Training Institute USAID World Bank Peace Corps Headquarters Peace Corps Programming Specialist Pompeii Trump Peace Corps Country Director

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Interview Usage

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