“Estab­lished by Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy in 1961, the agency has sent more than 240,000 vol­un­teers to 141 nations around the world. Six decades on, its mis­sion remains large­ly the same – to work with local com­mu­ni­ties to devel­op sus­tain­able solu­tions for chal­lenges in the health­care, edu­ca­tion, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, agri­cul­ture, and envi­ron­men­tal sectors.”

Read more from Condé Nast Trav­el­er as they chron­i­cle the expe­ri­ence of six gen­er­a­tions of women who served in the Peace Corps.

After grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana Cham­paign in 1971, Car­ol enlist­ed in the Peace Corps. ​“It was the sev­en­ties and we believed that we had to change the world. We had gifts that oth­er peo­ple didn’t have, so it was just the right thing to do” says Carol.

On assign­ment in Cos­ta Rica, Car­ol and her hus­band Alan Bar­ney (a botanist) worked for the fledg­ling Cos­ta Rican Nation­al Park Ser­vice. ​“As an the only archi­tect in my group, we were select­ed to assist the nation­al parks sys­tem. They were already very cog­nizant that they had an incred­i­bly diverse envi­ron­ment. The park ser­vice didn’t have a staff or a bud­get, so they asked the Peace Corps to send staff. My oth­er Peace Corps group mem­bers were land­scape archi­tects, botanists, biol­o­gists, and park planners.”

The mis­sion of the Park Ser­vice was to pro­tect and pre­serve Cos­ta Rica’s amaz­ing­ly diverse and threat­ened ecol­o­gy. Carol’s projects includ­ed a mas­ter plan for coral reef pro­tec­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion at Par­que Nacional Cahui­ta, restora­tion of the his­toric hacien­da at Par­que Nacional San­ta Rosa and work­er hous­ing at Par­que Nacional Vol­can Poas.