The Peace Corps

    Peace Corps Continues to Strengthen Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response Work with Release of New Report November 10, 2021   Today, the Peace Corps released a Sexual Assault Advisory Council (SAAC) report outlining recommendations for the agency to further strengthen its Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response (SARRR) program. In April, Acting Director Carol Spahn requested that the SAAC, an independent advisory council established by Congress, examine the group’s last five years of recommendations and provide updated guidance on how the agency can bolster its systems to mitigate risk of sexual assault and provide victim-centered and trauma-informed care to survivors. “I am very grateful to the Sexual Assault Advisory Council members for their service. These leaders are at the cutting edge of their respective fields and have come forward at a time when we are called to help tackle an issue that is all too pervasive – both here . . .

This week, we celebrated a special moment in Peace Corps history. It was on November 2, 1960, that John F. Kennedy first gave a name to the idea that would become the Peace Corps. Running for president, in a speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, he declared, “I am convinced that the pool of people in this country of ours anxious to respond to the public service is greater than it has ever been in our history.” We know what it means to meet historic moments. Since March 2020, we have seen how the Peace Corps community has met unprecedented times with an unparalleled response. From working to support evacuated Volunteers to helping amid the COVID-19 pandemic, from advocating for a better and stronger Peace Corps to helping refugees, we’ve seen time and again how Peace Corps ideals make an impact. Just last week, the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee convened . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steve  Kaffen (Russia 1994-96)   from The Hill 10/30/21 by Daniel F. Runde, Opinion Contributor     The Peace Corps celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic there are currently no Peace Corps volunteers serving abroad. As the Peace Corps program practices resiliency and adapts to a post-COVID landscape, it should also use this moment to answer long-existing questions that can redirect the Peace Corps to a more impactful and relevant future. About the Peace Corps The book “The Ugly American” caused a sensation in foreign policy and national security circles when it was released in 1958. It painted Americans as arrogant, out of touch, and insensitive to the needs of the rapidly de-colonizing developing world. It was so influential that then-Senator John F. Kennedy bought 99 copies of the book and gave it to every other Senator to read. “The . . .

No Ghosts in the Graveyard: The Life-Time Adventures of A Small- Town Oregon Boy by Bob Crites (Brazil 1964-66) Independently Published 2021 428 pages $12.99 (Paperback)     When Bob Crites was in the seventh grade in Drain, his social studies teacher Art Biederman showed the class pictures of his summer travels. It sparked what would become a lifelong passion for helping children in other countries. Crites would grow up to help feed school lunches to children in Brazil, form a charity to provide scholarships for children in Brazil and Tanzania, and bring one young athlete to Oregon, where she trained for the Olympics. Crites recently self-published his memoirs, “No Ghosts in the Graveyard: The Life-Time Adventures of a Small-Town Oregon Boy” on Amazon. Crites was born in 1940 in Drain on a farm that had been in his family since his maternal great grandfather Augustus Hickethier founded it in . . .

  Mildred D. Taylor (Ethiopia 1965-67) is our Peace Corps Writer of 2021. Millie is also the winner of the 2021 Children’s Literature Legacy Award presented by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a significant and lasting contribution to literature for children. Her numerous works include “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” (Dial, 1976) and “All the Days Past, All the Days to Come” (Dial, 2020). “Taylor’s storytelling shows how courage, dignity, and family love endure amidst racial injustice and continues to enlighten hearts and minds of readers through the decades,” said Children’s Literature Legacy Award Committee Chair Dr. Junko Yokota. Mildred’s story(s) Mildred Taylor was born in Mississippi, grew up in Ohio, and now lives in Colorado. A childhood of listening to family stories told by . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Kay Dixon (Colombia 1962-64)   Tales from student immigrants in Spokane share their hardships and triumphs  By Shawn Vestal shawnv Spokesman-Review Sun., Oct. 24, 2021 Meet the Author Victorya Rouse, author of “Finding Refuge: Real-Life Immigration Stories from Young Readers,” will be featured at an event for The Spokesman-Review’s Northwest Passages Book Club on Nov. 9 at the Montvale Event Center. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the event starts at 7. Proof of vaccination required for entry. Click for more information. • When Fedja Zahirovic fled with his family from the Bosnian War to Spokane in the 1990s, he was “confused and angry,” uprooted from all he’d ever known, and didn’t know the language or the culture. The first steps in his American education occurred at the Newcomers Center at Ferris High School. “It was a safe place,” he said this week. “It was a . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’  from Jim Wolter  (Malaysia 1961–66) . . .    We also celebrate, Bob Hoyle (Philippines 1962-63), another RPCV life well-lived. One of the stories Bob loved to tell about Sarge Shriver was of the time Sarge was Ambassador to France and Bob was working with Palestinian Refugees (an emotionally draining experience). Bob was courting a woman (not his eventual wife Karen) working in London. Bob and she decided to meet in Paris for a long weekend. Bob saved to take her to the best restaurant in Paris (I don’t recall the name). During lunch, Sarge and his entourage entered and Bob, wanting to impress his date, said, “There’s Ambassador Shriver.” She said something to the effect, “It couldn’t be. How do you know?” He told her, “I know it’s him. I met him when he came to visit Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines. He actually . . .

  WorldView magazine, published by National Peace Corps Association, earned both an EDDIE and OZZIE in the 2021 FOLIO Magazine awards. These awards recognize magazine editorial and design excellence. WorldView earned EDDIE top honors for a series of articles in the Summer 2020 edition that tell the stories of Peace Corps Volunteers who were evacuated from around the world in 2020. These stories capture the Volunteers’ experiences and the communities in which they were serving, and the unfinished business they left behind. The magazine earned OZZIE top honors for the cover of the Fall 2020 edition, featuring an illustration by award-winning artist David Plunkert. With a dove of peace inside a cage-like COVID-19 molecule, the cover asks: “What’s the role of Peace Corps now?” Plunkert’s work has appeared in the pages and on the covers of The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, and elsewhere. The awards were presented on October . . .

  Glowing red lines split their faces. Shock-red hair and clothes warn people to flee their approach. They are plague birds, the powerful merging of humans and artificial intelligences who serve as judges and executioners after the collapse of civilization. And the plague birds’ judgement is swift and deadly, as Crista discovered as a child when she watched one kill her mother. In a world of gene-modded humans constantly watched over by benevolent AIs, everyone hates and fears the plague birds. But to save her father and home village, Crista becomes the very creature she fears the most. And her first task as a plague bird is hunting down an ancient group of murderers wielding magic-like powers. As Crista and her AI symbiote travel farther from home than she ever imagined, they are plunged into a strange world where she judges wrongdoers, befriends other outcasts, and uncovers an extremely personal . . .

  In early 1911, Isabel Cooper, 17, and her 15-year-old brother, Frederick. they leave their Georgetown home after the sudden death of their Mexican mother. They are determined to find their father, a college professor who – like many American leftists – had joined the Mexican revolution a few months earlier. They travel by train, stagecoach, and wagon, at first put off by what they see of turn-of-the-century American South. But they soon learn of the quiet dignity of their mother’s homeland. After an ugly incident not of their making, they escape the federales with the help of Pepe, a lad of many talents. He leads them to refuge with a ragtag militia on its way to join Carranza’s Army of the North, commanded by a woman known as La Maestra. • After service in the Peace Corps in Colombia, Jerome Adams went to work for The Charlotte (NC) Observer, . . .

  He is talented: able to secure work, develop schools, and convince others to aid these selfless efforts, especially in education. And he is responsible: responsible to the farmers in the co-ops he led, responsible to the students he taught, responsible to the volunteers he prepped and supported, and responsible to his family above all. His work touched the lives of thousands. — Will Newman, former Director, Peace Corps/Nepal.   In this enthralling memoir, Ambika Joshee explains his life experiences through a reflection of his own memories and candid storytelling. Joshee provides a unique perspective into each of his life stages, growing up in a remote village in Nepal and the struggles of his childhood days studying under dim kerosene lamps, looking back at the lessons learned from his mother through the lens of a retired person, understanding the cross-cultural difficulties faced by American Peace Corps volunteers from the perspective . . .

I once flew to  New York on a plane across the aisle from Secretary of State Colin Powell, and we chatted a bit about my job at State, mostly in relation to the World Health Organization. When the plane arrived at LaGuardia airport, I was a bit stunned to see that the Secretary was being greeted by our ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kilpatrick. They greeted each other seemingly warmly. I don’t know, but this may have been the occasion of his controversial speech justifying the invasion of Iraq.  He didn’t tell me that was the purpose of his trip.

  New York Times bestselling author Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1965-67) reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote’s never-published final novel, Answered Prayers–the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote’s ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his “swans.”   “There are certain women,” Truman Capote wrote, “who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.” Barbara “Babe” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and startling way possible. Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote . . .

  Cohen Film Collection is working on a restoration of “A Walk on the Moon,” by the late Raphael D. Silver. The 1987 drama, about a Peace Corps volunteer who travels to a Colombian village, stars Kevin Anderson and Terry Kinney. The restoration was part of an agreement with filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver, Raphael D. Silver’s wife, who died last year. The story Everett Jones (Kevin Anderson) is a Peace Corps volunteer, bubbling o’er with idealism. To his surging delight, he learns he has been assigned to a remote, backward Colombian village. When Anderson arrives, he is confused by the cynical attitude of his predecessor (Terry Kinney). Even more confusing–though it won’t be for long–is that the villagers greet the ebullient Anderson’s arrival with silent, sullen indifference.