A naturalized U.S. citizen serves with Peace Corps Response

A woman stands in a patterned dress in front of the ocean — Neneh is currently serving as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer in Fiji.

While serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer is all about fostering intercultural relationships, one Peace Corps Response Volunteer discovered that service also allowed her to give back to the United States, the country that provided refuge to her family decades prior.

When Neneh W. was just ten years old, her family fled the 1997 conflict in Sierra Leone. Neneh’s family escaped aboard a French naval ship that transported evacuees to Guinea, where they stayed for about a month before resettling in America. Her parents initially believed the move would be temporary and hoped to return to Sierra Leone within a few months. However, as the conflict worsened, they applied for temporary protected status (TPS) to extend their stay.

In her second home, Neneh eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in public health. She was determined to give back and serve the Texan community that had welcomed her family. She worked at a nonprofit in Fort Worth, helping refugees and immigrants navigate the U.S. healthcare system. She went on to work in environmental health and achieved a significant personal milestone: becoming a U.S. citizen.

A woman in an orange shirt takes a video call from her smartphone — Neneh takes a work call during her service in South Africa.

Neneh continued her professional service journey with a nonprofit organization that focused on strengthening health systems within state health departments. It was during this time that her desire to contribute on a global scale deepened. This passion ultimately led her to apply to serve in a year-long Peace Corps Response position as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist in Durban, South Africa (2022-2023).

“[Service] symbolized my dedication to contributing to health systems strengthening in Africa—a cause I am passionate about,” Neneh shared.

As a naturalized citizen, Neneh also hoped to represent America’s diversity, while staying true to her identity. In her Response Volunteer assignment, Neneh supported an organization that provides technical assistance to South Africa’s local health departments that work to end HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. She applied her previous experience with process improvement, data management, and analysis to better understand the country’s complex public health systems, and more specifically, South Africa’s current HIV and teen pregnancy challenges. Her contributions included supporting capacity-strengthening workshops, dashboards development, and digitizing paper-based surveys to enhance the organization’s efficiency and streamline data collection.

Neneh credits her Response Volunteer duties for cultivating a deeper personal understanding of effective programming and what it truly means to make a difference. Neneh valued how the organization’s work was guided by “a collective sense of purpose beyond our individual efforts.”

Two women stand in front of a photo booth set up outside with palm trees in the background — Neneh and Ellen F., who served in South Africa together, had the opportunity to meet up when Ellen visited the South Pacific for a research project.

In addition to her weekly work with staff at her organization, Neneh was able to foster important connections with Peace Corps in-country staff and fellow Volunteers. She hopes that by sharing her unique experience as a Sierra Leonean-American, she has helped others understand what it’s like to become an American citizen.

Neneh credits her experiences as a Response Volunteer in South Africa for helping her find her true calling: service. She decided to serve again with Response, this time in Fiji, for another 12 months as a Business Process Analyst at a government ministry. Having never been to that part of the world, she admitted that “adapting to a new environment and understanding cultural nuances while finding my place in the office and community will undoubtedly present challenges.”

Despite her initial nerves, Neneh’s previous service experience in South Africa provided valuable preparation for her assignment in Fiji: “My honed data analysis abilities developed through collaboration with my counterpart, Nomonde, stand as a cornerstone,” she explained.

A new position, country, and culture bring uncertainty even to an experienced Response Volunteer, but Neneh is taking it all in stride, saying: “I recognize that stepping out of my comfort zone is where real growth occurs.”

We can’t wait to hear how Neneh’s ongoing service experiences continue to shape her.