April 24, 2005: Headlines: COS - Turkmenistan: Nashua Telegraph: This is one of the thank-you drawings sent to Guli Maira of Hollis by children in Turkmenistan who have used an education center set up with funds donated in memory of her son, Shiv Maira, a Peace Corps volunteer who died in 2000.

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Turkmenistan: Peace Corps Turkmenistan : The Peace Corps in Turkmenistan: April 24, 2005: Headlines: COS - Turkmenistan: Nashua Telegraph: This is one of the thank-you drawings sent to Guli Maira of Hollis by children in Turkmenistan who have used an education center set up with funds donated in memory of her son, Shiv Maira, a Peace Corps volunteer who died in 2000.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-181-108.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.181.108) on Thursday, April 28, 2005 - 1:22 pm: Edit Post

This is one of the thank-you drawings sent to Guli Maira by children in Turkmenistan who have used an education center set up with funds donated in memory of her son, Shiv Maira, a Peace Corps volunteer who died in 2000.

This is one of the thank-you drawings sent to Guli Maira by children in Turkmenistan who have used an education center set up with funds donated in memory of her son, Shiv Maira, a Peace Corps volunteer who died in 2000.

This is one of the thank-you drawings sent to Guli Maira by children in Turkmenistan who have used an education center set up with funds donated in memory of her son, Shiv Maira, a Peace Corps volunteer who died in 2000.

Hollis man’s legacy lives on through education center in Turkmenistan

By STACY MILBOUER, Telegraph Staff
Published: Sunday, Apr. 24, 2005

When 21-year-old Shiv Maira arrived in Turkmenistan as a Peace Corps English teacher in the summer of 1995, he was filled with as much hope and optimism as his young, eager students.

The residents of the former Soviet state were poor and had lived under a communist regime. They were hungry for knowledge that might improve their futures. And their teacher, just recently graduated magna cum laude from Wesleyan University, was equally voracious about leading them to that knowledge.

For a year, Shiv wrote letters home sharing with his parents some hardships, but mostly the joy, of living in this foreign land, learning the language and most important, the progress of his students.

Shiv is dead now. He never did finish his time in Turkmenistan because his first bout with mental illness caused him to be sent home. But for that sweet year before the beginning of the end, there was the joy of helping others and the promise of a good future for everyone.

He wrote home that this assignment was a hardship posting in the Peace Corps, and that up to half of the volunteers leave early because of the tough living conditions. He wrote he wasn’t complaining about the shortages of food, fuel and supplies, and the empty stores, but was in fact “telling it like it is. . . . The stores are empty, the people are shells, and the life in CIS countries is bleak. . . .

“But enough griping,” he wrote. “I’m enjoying the adventure. . . . I love the kids and see them making progress in their study of English. Teaching is going well. My students, though slow, are picking up after only a couple of weeks. I feel that teaching will always be a useful skill and am happy to watch myself grow in that department. . . .

“The school is small and simple and old, but grand in its own way. (There are) 500 students (mostly children of farming and factory workers).”

Less than a year after he arrived in Turkmenistan, Shiv was sent home because of the onset of what would become severe mental illness. Right after Sept. 11, 2001, the Peace Corps pulled out of Turkmenistan. But it was up and running again by 2002, and Peace Corps volunteer Juleah Berliner from Connecticut came to do the job Shiv once did.

Berliner and other teachers saw the need “for a place to teach English without the constraints of school – no curriculum to follow, a classroom designed and always available for English learning. And not pressure to teach older, restrictive methodologies.”

So with the approximately $6,000 from a memorial set up in Shiv’s name after his death, the Sayat Community English Resource Center was funded, according to his mother, Guli Maira. There are currently 160 students enrolled in the program, with a Peace Corps volunteer and three local teachers to run it.

“What I love about the center would fill pages and pages,” Berliner wrote to Guli. “. . . We try above all to break students from the memorize and repeat model they’ve learned and to push them to think for themselves. . . . I know inside each of them is an imaginative person who recognizes exactly who they are and what makes them special.”

Guli said Shiv would have been thrilled.

“When he was sick,” Guli said, “he’d always say when he recovered, he wanted to go back to Turkmenistan to teach English.”






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April 24, 2005: This Week's Top Stories Date: April 24 2005 No: 576 April 24, 2005: This Week's Top Stories
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April 24, 2005:  Special Events Date: April 24 2005 No: 574 April 24, 2005: Special Events
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RPCVs: Post your stories or press releases here for inclusion next week.

Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000  strong Date: April 2 2005 No: 543 Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong
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Story Source: Nashua Telegraph

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Turkmenistan

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