A legacy of play, long after Peace Corps service

Post Peace Corps service, Lins eventually rejoined Peace Corps as a recruiter. “I couldn’t imagine a better job,” he says. He loved talking about Peace Corps to potential applicants and loved interviewing them—sizing them up to help determine placement and sector, and answering questions and, eventually, being able to nominate applicants to programs where they’d be the best fit. “It changed in the mid-2000s, but when I first started, recruiters were part of the whole life cycle of the Volunteer.” Being that integral to the health of the agency by selecting and placing qualified applicants started a little fire in Lins. At the time, his partner was also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) who’d served in Uganda. Her stories of serving in Africa added fuel to that little fire and, although the relationship ended, Lins ultimately decided to recruit himself.

In 2014 he re-upped as a Volunteer and went to live in Tanzania. This time, he worked in the Health sector. HIV and AIDS were an increasing problem in Tanzania at the time, and Lins worked in his community to raise awareness of HIV prevention and treatment while also contributing to the livelihoods of people living with HIV and AIDS. “We did projects that crossed sectors,” he explains, and describes a grant from Feed the Future that allowed his community buy and plant trees. The trees were purchased from HIV+ people, and the project achieved multiple goals—increasing awareness of HIV and AIDS, bolstering the environment with new trees, and increasing the livelihoods of people with HIV and AIDS.

From Volunteer to recruiter...

Christopher Lins dedicated years of his career to Peace Corps as a two-time Volunteer and a recruiter for the agency. So, when he retired on disability due to a diagnosis of stage 4 terminal appendiceal cancer (inside joke to Lins’s Peace Corps Paraguay and Tanzania cohort—he points out that his cancer has “nothing to do with my lifestyle—meaning my liver, skin, and lungs are fine.”) he did something he’d been doing for decades: he gave more to, and through, the Peace Corps.

Lins says he’d always been about service to others, and a trip to Mexico and Guatemala during his college years opened his eyes to that humanity crossed borders and languages and cultures. As a student at Reed College, in Portland, OR, in the late '80s and early '90s, Lins was politically active. He noted that the political landscape in the U.S. didn’t represent him or his ideology, so he chose to join the Peace Corps as a chance to represent what he saw as the American ideals that were important to him. As he says, “I joined the Peace Corps to help show the world that people are people and governments are governments.” Going to Paraguay as a Community Economic Development Volunteer in 1996 not only gave Lins the opportunity to show his vision and version of American values to his community there, but also gave him a deep love for the mission of the Peace Corps, and set his life’s course—a course on which Peace Corps would, ultimately, prove to be a critical part.

And from recruiter to Volunteer again...

This second stint with Peace Corps also showed Lins how life for Volunteers had changed since his first Peace Corps service. The internet had exploded in the interim, as had the ease of connectivity through cell phones, but Lins also saw how much more diverse the Volunteer corps had become. He noted, too, that there was more emphasis on in-service trainings for Volunteers and their counterparts, which contributed positively to the sustainability of community projects. In short, his time in Tanzania cemented Lin’s love for the agency and the Peace Corps mission.

When he returned to the United States after his time in Tanzania ended, Lins picked up his old recruiter hat and began recruiting again. He also became involved in the “Friends of” groups for both Paraguay and Tanzania. As affiliates of the National Peace Corps Association, these groups link RPCVs from various countries with one another and other interested individuals to maintain connections to countries of service. These groups often also raise money for projects in their country of interest—sometimes by funding existing Volunteer projects, and sometimes by creating and funding stand-alone projects.

Cementing a legacy

Lins was still working as a recruiter when he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Eventually, he retired on disability.

This is the point where many people would find contentment in relaxing. Not Lins. Instead, he got to work building a legacy. “Peace Corps isn’t a funding agency,” he points out. “Money for projects has to come from outside sources.” He realized that with a gift of $10,000, he could make a real difference in communities in his former service countries.

Working through both the Friends of Paraguay and the Friends of Tanzania groups, Lins pinpointed communities in both countries that could use the funding for playgrounds—a relative rarity for the kids of both places. “Nobody asks for handouts,” Lins notes. “We share a common planet, and we share common issues.” Playgrounds help kids be kids but also can act as community spaces to gather—moms around the world trade stories and information with other moms on playgrounds, after all. Dads chat with other dads as they kick soccer balls to their kids or push them on the swings. It’s in these spaces that communities are born, ideas for municipal improvements hashed out—all as kids get a relatively rare opportunity to play in a space created just for them.

Though he’s no longer working for the Peace Corps, Lins remains a steadfast advocate for the agency. “I believe in the mission and the three goals,” he says. “I also believe that Returned Peace Corps Volunteers are the best people in the world. They go on to do amazing things.” He’s right, of course. And the best part is that he doesn’t have to look farther than in a mirror to find the proof.

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