Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2003-024-001
Mari-Jo Woolfe (nee Decker) served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador from 1964 to 1966 in a variety of roles. She completed language training at UCLA, then spent four weeks in Puerto Rico, where she stayed with a family and practiced teaching. Her program was for TOEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) in secondary schools but the project was designed with the expectation that the Peace Corps volunteer would use that as a base for community development. Her first year, Woolfe was assigned to a girls' high school, where she was minimally involved. She also worked as a nurse's aide in a local hospital, and tutored an evening program to adults in English. In her second year, Woolfe relocated and replaced a departing volunteer in a school for the blind, supervised an AID funded school lunch program, and working with a local women's knitting group. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, May 20, 2002. 3 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).