Kingston High grad Analiese Amato prepares to…
Kingston High grad Analiese Amato prepares to live her dream in the Peace Corps
Analiese Amato in an undated photo. (Photo Provided)
By Diane Pineiro-Zucker | dpineiro-zucker@freemanonline.com | Daily Freeman
PUBLISHED: January 22, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. | UPDATED: January 23, 2023 at 10:21 a.m.
KINGSTON, N.Y. — Kingston High School graduate Analiese Amato's "pipe dream" is about to be realized.
On Feb. 13, she will be among the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to overseas service since the agency's global evacuation in March 2020. The Peace Corps evacuated nearly 7,000 volunteers from more than 60 countries at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency's first volunteers returned in March 2022 and its 2023 volunteers are made up of both first-timers and returnees who were evacuated in early 2020, according to a Peace Corps spokesperson.
Upon finishing a three-month training, Amato, a 2018 Kingston High graduate, and other volunteers will collaborate with their host communities on locally prioritized projects in one of Peace Corps' six sectors — agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health or youth in development — and all will engage in COVID-19 response and recovery work.
Amato, 22, said she will serve as an agriculture volunteer in Panama. She expects to complete her three-month training and said she will probably reach Panama in May. The Kingston native is a graduate of Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore with bachelor's degrees in global studies, sociology and writing.
Amato is the daughter of Jodi and Gregg Amato. Her parents and brothers, Connor, 24, and Matthew, 21, live in Kingston.
"Since I was in high school I've kinda of been really interested in learning more about the world." the Kingston native said recently as she prepared for her move to Panama. "I gravitated more towards world history. Global studies was my major in college and I'm really looking forward to the program," she said.
"I think Kingston was a big part of this journey for me," Amato added. "And I think the experiences that I had in school and the support I've had from community members just was incredible."
Kingston High was where Amato said her interests became focused "in this world direction and this peace direction." While in high school in 2017, she attended the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Bogotá, Colombia. Also while in high school, in addition to making the honor role more than once, she played lacrosse, basketball and field hockey.
As a high school student, Amato said she "had the idea of the Peace Corps in my mind but I never knew anyone who actually went, so it was kinda something that was scary to me."
After graduating college, Amato said she was still "a little up in the air" about where to go next. "I knew I was interested in still getting out into the world (but) COVID kind of messed up all of my plans."
She had hoped to study abroad and to travel to Japan. "That didn't work out because it was 2020," she said, "and so the Peace Corps was something I applied to going into my senior year. It was kind of a pipe dream for me."
Once she reaches Panama, the self-described "lifetime learner" expects to keep on learning. "There's a lot to learn from people of different cultures, different backgrounds, people that live in a very different space. … Talking to different people and seeing different life experiences and cultures has always been very interesting and something that I don't want to just read in a book. I want to talk to people and experience that for myself. So I think that was the major draw."
In Panama, Amato will be a "business-advising agriculture promoter," she said. Before she can begin that work, however, she'll be completing "intensive" training and beefing up those Spanish skills she learned at KHS, she said.
"From what I understand, a lot of the role is kind of working with these more rural agricultural communities (and) making sure they're food secure," Amato said. "Kinda talking to them about their needs and projects they want to do and making sure that we can make that reality. I'll be learning a lot about what I'll be doing when I get there."
She'll be living in a host family in Panama that is already farming the land and the exact nature of her work will be "very location dependent," she said.
Agency spokesperson Erin Curran said that "every project that the Peace Corps works on, in every sector and in every country … has been identified as a need from that host community. So, when we talk about sustainability or projects that Peace Corps volunteers work on that's a huge piece of it because the Peace Corps isn't coming into a country with ideas about what we think is best. We are there to work alongside those community members to really help them, to assist them, with the needs they have already identified in their own communities."
Currently, the agency is recruiting volunteers to serve in 56 countries around the world at the request of host country governments, to connect through the Peace Corps' grassroots approach across communities and cultures. Volunteers have already returned to a total of 45 countries around the world.
The Peace Corps sends volunteers to serve as conditions permit, according to a press release. Curran said Americans interested in "transformative service and lifelong connections" may apply to serve at www.peacecorps.gov/apply. Applicants must be 18 years old or older.
For more information about the Peace Corps, visit peacecorps.gov, or follow Peace Corps on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Diane Pineiro-Zucker