Additional information
by Alvin J. Hower (Author), Prima Guipo Hower (Author), P. David Searles (Foreword by)
March 1, 2021, Peace Corps turns sixty. Its mission-to teach a skill and to spread the Peace Corps brand of goodwill around the world-still resonates. In No Greater Service, author Alvin J. Hower highlights its relevance yesterday, today, and the years to come. This memoir offers a stirring, personal, vivid, and action-packed account of a Peace Corps volunteer's remarkable life in the underserved areas of the southern Philippines. With curiosity, empathy, and wry humor, Hower creates a distinct Peace Corps photo memoir. An avid photographer, he produced more than 5,000 images of everyday people and the awe-inspiring beauty of a nation of 7,641 islands. He was a teacher and social worker in General Santos City, and a management consultant for a mission school in the remote mountains of Lake Sebu, Surallah, working and living with the indigenous T'boli people featured in the August 1971 National Geographic Magazine. No Greater Service also serves as a history of his host country, providing information about its complex customs and traditions as well as the notable stories of Filipinos he met and their fascinating updates fifty years later. At times hilarious, others sad and grim, it also shares a love story of his romantic alliance with a Filipina girl.
Author Biography
Alvin J. Hower and his wife, Prima, are 2019 Empowerment Awardee for Outstanding International Community Service to the Filipino-American Community. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines for five-and-a-half years. He and Prima created The Hower-Bates Library Network in 2004, a network that has sent more than 50,000 books to thirty libraries in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Hower has two children and three grandchildren. This is his debut book.
