Archive - March 2015

Patrick McClanahan (Mozambique 2010-12) joined the Peace Corps in September 2010, shortly after graduating from Penn State with a degree in physics. While in Mozambique, he taught 11th grade math in the village of Machanga along the banks of the Rio Save. His service was cut short by a reaction to the antimalarial medication mefloquine. The effects of this drug left him unable to work for months after returning to the US and they still affect him to this day. When Patrick returned home, he quickly learned that his experience with mefloquine in the Peace Corps was not unique, nor even unusual — but it was preventable. There are safer options to the drug, and since returning it has been his goal to protect future Volunteers from the harm that he and countless others have experienced. The following is a note that Patrick sent me. For Patrick it began last . . .

One afternoon back in 1963 novelist Mark Harris received a telephone call from Sargent Shriver inquiring whether he’d be interested in writing a special report about the Peace Corps. Mark gladly accepted, then waited five months while his loyalty and sanity were investigated (been there, done that), and then he went overseas  to West Africa where he wandered around for ten days in a country he later called ‘Kongohno’ and he also  wrote his one-and-only Evaluation Report for Charlie Peters. Mark Harris retells all this in a book entitled, Twentyone Twice published in 1966. The book has two sections. One is about getting through security, the second is about Africa. The fictional name that he used of the West African country he visited is Kongohno…I’m not sure of the actual country, but I believe it was Sierre Leone. Old timers in the Peace Corps might know the real name of the country Mark Harris visited as a Peace Corps Evaluator in . . .

The death of Father Ted Hesburgh brought back to mind a story I heard about Father Ted and Warren Wiggins that happened in the early days of the agency. As we all know, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, “Father Ted” who transformed the University of Notre Dame into an academic power during his 35 years as president, died last week. Father Ted was also a key figure in the creation of the Peace Corps. In 1997 I interviewed the late Warren Wiggins about his role in the early days of the agency. For those who do not know, Warren, with Bill Josephson, wrote “A Towering Task” which was a working paper that they sent to Sargent Shriver in early ’61 as Sarge was in the beginning stages of designing the agency. Wiggins came “on board” then, and eventually became the Deputy Director. When I interviewed Warren in 1997, I asked him . . .

Attending the announcement of Let Girls Learn in the East Room of the White House today were Peace Corps Director, Carrie Hessler-Radelet, and these ‘old hands’ from the Glory Days of the agency. Former Senator, architect of the agency, CD Ethiopia, Harris Wofford, Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Colombia RPCV Maureen Orth, and former Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan photo courtesy of Maureen Orth

Dear Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, Today, I am delighted to share that as part of the U.S. government’s commitment to girls’ education, First Lady Michelle Obama and the Peace Corps have formed a powerful collaboration called Let Girls Learn to expand access to education for girls around the world. I invite you to watch a special message from the First Lady to all Peace Corps Volunteers-and the staff who support them-worldwide. While we know that educating girls is essential to healthy and thriving communities, globally, 62 million girls are not in school, and barriers to adolescent girls completing school are particularly significant. In some countries, fewer than 10 percent of teenage girls complete secondary school. The Peace Corps’ collaboration with the First Lady will start this year in 11 targeted countries: Albania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Georgia, Ghana, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Togo, and Uganda. Under Let Girls Learn, we will . . .

Thanks to Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) for the ‘Heads Up’ news on this new program for girls’ education that the President and the First Lady, along with the Peace Corps Director, Carrie Hessler-Radelet, will announce this Tuesday afternoon in the East Room of the White House. This program–Let Girls Learn–will help adolescent girls across the world receive an education. The Let Girls Learn initiative will build on a United States Agency for International Development campaign launched last year to provide an education to the more than 60 million girls not in school. It focuses on empowerment and leadership, health and nutrition and protection against gender-based violence protection and forced marriages, among other issues. The Peace Corps will look for ways to overcome the barriers that prevent girls from completing their educations, including the cost of a uniform, school fees, lack of textbooks, Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet told reporters. The . . .

Your Monday Briefing By ADEEL HASSAN John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps in an impromptu, 2 a.m.address at the University of Michigan, three weeks before he was elected president. He signed legislation creating the organization on March 1, 1961, less than six weeks after his inauguration. Fifty-four years later, this is Peace Corps Week. The organization has 6,818 volunteers working in 64 developing countries, less than half the record high of more than 15,000, reached in 1966. But sweeping changes to the application process last year – like allowing volunteers to select their country of service – increased the number of candidates by more than 70 percent. Today’s Peace Corps volunteers are mostly female (63 percent), unmarried (94 percent), white (75 percent) and youthful (only 7 percent are over 50). Education is its biggest focus, followed by health services. Forty-five percent serve in Africa, and 23 percent in Latin America. California . . .