History of Volunteers For Peace

During the summer of 1968, Peter Coldwell, President of Volunteers For Peace, participated in international short-term voluntary service projects (workcamps) in Hungary and Czechoslovakia through a program sponsored by the Unitarian-Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) in Boston. Peter's experiences that summer and in the ensuing years that he spent abroad, coupled with his frustrations with the state of the world, motivated him to create an American international workcamp organization. 

Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Serice / United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organizqation

The value of working on a common project, both helping a community and forming ties with other volunteers struck him as something more Americans should have a chance at. He began corresponding with workcamp organizations in Eastern and Western Europe in 1978 after moving to Vermont with his wife, Penny. Both Peter and Penny felt that workcamps were a direct way to work for peace through international communication and voluntary service.

Soviets Meet Americans at 1982 Volunteers For Peace international voluntary service project (workcamp) in the village of Belmont, Vermont.

In 1982, Volunteers For Peace was formed as a Vermont non-profit corporation for the purpose of "promoting peaceful relations among nations" and was accepted as a member of the Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service (CCIVS) at UNESCO in Paris. VFP's original sponsors included seed money from the US Information Agency (then part of the US State Dept.), the Peace Development Fund and the Field Foundation. The Board of Directors was and still is composed of former volunteers and individuals committed to promoting voluntary service projects. 

During the summer of 1982, VFP's first outgoing volunteers were recruited and sent to workcamps in Poland, Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, the former U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia. VFP also hosted its first domestic voluntary service project (workcamp) in Mount Holly, Vermont with 19 volunteers from 11 countries.

Soviet and American volunteers at a State Farm project in the Ukraine, 1987

In the 1980's, Volunteers For Peace was heavily involved in the exchange of volunteers between the former U.S.S.R and the U.S., promoting citizen exchange and peace during the heart of the cold-war era. In the summer of 1985, VFP received grant money through the President's International Youth Exchange Initiative, administered by the United States Information Agency (USIA) to initiate several conservation based bilateral workcamps in the USA with partner organizations in France and West Germany.

Over the past 28 years, VFP went from organizing local to regional to national domestic voluntary service projects and grew from sending hundreds to thousands of volunteers to partner organization's projects abroad. VFP's domestic projects have been in partnership with the USDA Forest Service, National Park Service, various affiliates of Americorps, Habitat for Humanity, dozens of non-profits and environmental and community action groups including Challenge Alaska, Gesundheit! Institute, Solarfest, SPROUT, Mendocino Ecological Learning Center, and Emergency Communities.

 

"VFP is not going to turn the world around, but it will give lots of people experiences that will truly educate them on the way things are all over the world". -Peter Coldwell December 7, 1983

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