ThirdGoal.com Close of Service

I decided to close down one of the websites I developed in 2005 called www.thirdgoal.com. Andrew Meyerson of www.thirdgoal.org has built a nice website and has some good momentum. I’m providing him the .com domain to drive more traffic to his .org for the Peace Corps’ 50th Anniversary. Here’s what I wrote about the closing on Thirdgoal.com:

Dear ThirdGoal.com Friends,

It is with mixed emotions that I inform you that ThirdGoal.com will no longer be accepting exciting stories from Peace Corps volunteers or fielding curious questions from prospective volunteers.

I created ThirdGoal.com in February 2005 “out of a desire to provide Peace Corps volunteers a free, easy, and independent way to share their stories with the rest of the world, not just Americans.”

In that time, more than 200 people have visited the site to either write about their own Peace Corps experience or ask questions of others. I am both grateful and proud of the community and content ThirdGoal.com has helped facilitate. In many ways, the time I spent volunteering to develop and manage ThirdGoal.com was more sustainable than the brief time I spent serving in Guyana.

The time has come for ThirdGoal.com to reach its “close of service” (a Peace Corps term for “Thanks for serving, now it’s time for you to go home”) and to be replaced with a new wave of anxious, passionate, and energetic volunteers. One of those volunteers is Andrew Meyerson, who served in Morocco from 2005-2007 and recently launched ThirdGoal.org.

Andrew has created a wonderful website at ThirdGoal.org to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps in 2011. Similar to ThirdGoal.com, ThirdGoal.org is focused on collecting the best stories, photos, and videos of the 200,000 Peace Corps Volunteers who have served since 1961. In 2011, he hopes to publish a coffee table book with the best content and donate all of the proceeds from the sale of the book to help fund Peace Corps projects around the world.

I support Andrew’s efforts and was looking for a way to contribute toward his momentum. I realized it was time for me to pass on the ThirdGoal.com domain.

Starting November 15, 2010, all traffic to ThirdGoal.com will be redirected to ThirdGoal.org. The content of ThirdGoal.com will be moved to thirdgoalarchive.jasonpearce.com. This new home will serve as an archive of the great content and questions its visitors have submitted over the years. The site will no longer accept new articles or comments.

If you submitted content to ThirdGoal.com and wish to share it with ThirdGoal.org, Andrew would love to hear from you. Please visit his site to share your story, photos, or videos of your experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Thank you all for participating in ThirdGoal.com.

Sincerely,

Jason Pearce (Guyana, COS 2002)