Anne Janeway: Connecting SIT and the Peace Corps

March 20th, 2024   |   Uncategorized

This Women’s History Month, we’re spotlighting some of the impactful women of World Learning, School for International Training, and The Experiment in International Living. This series seeks to showcase their extraordinary journeys and indelible contributions to our more than 90-year history. Each of them, in their own way, has helped us create a more sustainable, peaceful, and just world.

As an alum of The Experiment in International Living, Anne Janeway went on to impact World Learning in multiple ways: as a group leader, a trainer, a director, and more.

In 1957, Anne’s curiosity and social conscience as a student at Smith College led her to Finland with The Experiment in International Living. She then went on to lead several Experiment groups in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. After college, she taught at a school in India before moving to California to start a graduate degree.

But starting in 1961, The Experiment’s headquarters, then in Putney, Vermont, became an early site for preparing Peace Corps volunteers for placements overseas. Anne was persuaded to leave her graduate studies to help design and teach orientation sessions and trainings for the volunteers, especially those bound for Asia. She then became director of training in 1962, preparing more than 20 groups of volunteers for placements in Afghanistan, Iran, India, and Pakistan.

Anne was then tapped to be associate director (and later program director) for the International Career Training, known today as Programs in Intercultural Management or PIM. In this role, her impact on the pedagogy of the training was significant as she integrated key elements of cross-cultural awareness and technical management skills using experiential learning approaches.

Among her students are two U.S. ambassadors and countless country directors of international programs for nonprofits, U.S. government branches, and United Nations agencies, as well as many professionals and educators in the humanitarian and peacemaking fields.

Central to her worldview have been her experiences in India, a country she calls a second home and where she is integrally connected to a spiritual community and several schools and grassroots organizations. Through her unique blend of kindness, spiritual wisdom, and tolerance, Anne has created enduring relationships with all her students and colleagues worldwide who, long after her retirement, frequently visit her Dummerston, Vermont, home even today.

We wish to thank Lou Witherite and Maisie Crowther from World Learning’s Alvino E. Fantini Institutional Archives who generously volunteered their time to provide the research and photo for this story.