Archive - 2011

The new Peace Corps PSA has just come out. Allison Price, press office for the  Peace Corps, gets something right. Thank you, Allison. It is ( the PSA) on the mark. The right tone and message. Wow.  I’m stunned. Peace Corps Releases New TV Public Service Announcement WASHINGTON, D.C., January 6, 2011 – The Peace Corps has released a new television public service announcement (PSA) designed to increase awareness of service opportunities overseas.  The 2011 TV spot coincides with the agency’s 50th anniversary and portrays, with humor and poignancy, the life of a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer (RPCV) who spent two years living and working with a community overseas.  Click HERE to view the television PSA. There are two versions of the PSA.  The original is a 60-second spot, while there is also an edited 30-second version.  Both feature a string of short conversations that unfold throughout a volunteer’s daily interactions as . . .

IN EARLY 1960, Maurice (Maury) L. Albertson, director of the Colorado State University Research Foundation, received a Point-4 (precursor to USAID) contract to prepare a Congressional Feasibility Study of the Point-4 Youth Corps called for in the Reuss-Neuberger Bill, an amendment to the Mutual Security Act. The Youth Corps was “to be made up of young Americans willing to serve their country in public and private technical assistance missions in far-off countries, and at a soldier’s pay.” Then in late 1961, Public Affairs Press in Washington, D.C. published, New Frontiers for American Youth: Perspective on the Peace Corps written by Maury Albertson, and co-authored with Andrew E. Rice and Pauline E. Birky. The book was based on their Point-4 study. According to the authors, “The roots of the Peace Corps idea . . . stretch wide and deep, . . . .” They were referring to a number of volunteer programs that were early instances . . .

The recent reports how the FBI had subpoenaed information on the social media website Twitter about Julian Assange and several other prominent people connected to WikiLeaks, includind an Icelandic lawmaker brought to mind when the FBI was investigating RPCVs. This was all during the Vietnam era. The Committee of Returned Volunteers (CRV)–the first national organization of RPCVs organized in 1965 actively opposed the Vietnam war. Their copious writings–newsletters, information kits, analytical papers–portrayed the goals of U.S. foreign policy as exploitative. The true function of the Peace Corps, they believed, was to mask this imperialism by putting a warm and friendly face on America’s presence overseas. CRV members were among the marches showered with tear gas at the 1968 Democratic convention, and in 1970 they occupied the Peace Corps building in Washington for 36 hours to protests the student killings by National Guardsmen at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, as well as . . .

[On December 9, 2010, four of the First Response Action Coalition members met with several Peace Corps officials in Washington, D.C., including the Deputy Director and Chief of Staff.  Peace Corps shared several ways that they are moving forward with items on the 7-Point Plan, including a form of the Survivor Bill of Rights.  Peace Corps committed to follow-up with materials and updates.  Here is a report from that meeting, written by Casey Frazee.] It was a cold, snowy day in Washington, D.C. when four members of the First Response Action Coalition, the volunteer board which manges First Response Action, met with Peace Corps officials at Peace Corps’ headquarters. Representatives from the Office of Medical Services, Safety & Security and the Office of Special Services were in attendance as well as the Chief of Staff, Deputy Director and an official whose position is focused on examining Volunteer and staff sexual assault . . .

This comes to me from Casey Frazee of First Response Action advocates for a stronger Peace Corps response for Volunteers who are survivors or victims of physical and sexual violence. They envision a Peace Corps with policies that reflect best practices in all areas of training, prevention and response. For more information email firstresponseaction@gmail.com • ABC News has been working on several news pieces related to Peace Corps incidents of sexual assault, rape and Kate Puzey, the Volunteer who was murdered in 2009.  The show is scheduled to air next Friday 1/14 on 20/20 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time.  They will also have companion pieces posted on their website, which you can check out here: http://abcnews.go.com/2020.  Coalition members and First Response Action supporters participated in interviews with ABC, which will be part of the show next week.  None of the Coalition members have seen the finished piece, so we welcome . . .

The Peace Corps actually ‘started’ the day after Kennedy inauguration. Kennedy telephoned Shriver and asked him to form a presidential Task Force “to report how the Peace Corps could be organized and then to organize it.” Shriver telephoned Harris Wofford and they rented two rooms for offices in the Mayflower Hotel, downtown in Washington, D.C. They were the “Task Force.” They began to call people they thought might know something about international development and living in the developing world. One name led to another. Shriver says that he had no long-term, premeditated vision of what the Peace Corps might be. “My style was to get bright, informative, creative people and then pick their brains.” The first official meeting  of the Task Force was scheduled for February 6. Kennedy had requested a report from Shriver by the end of February. Shriver would later say, “I needed help badly.” On Sunday night, . . .

Scratch any RPCV or PCV and they’ll tell you the three goals of the Peace Corps. While the wording varies from one publication to the next, these are the goals: (1) Contribute to the development of critical countries and regions; (2) Promote international cooperation and goodwill toward the country; (3) Contribute to the education of America and to more intelligent American participation in the world.  Now, those are the stated goals, and I know that they have been tweaked with by staff and PCVs over the last 50 years. For example, “living at the level of the HCNs” is often stated as Goal # 2. But the question is, who came up with these goals and why three? Well, at the famous Mayflower Hotel in the winter months of 1961 when the task force of Shriver/Wofford/Wiggins/Josephson and a handful of others began to draft the proposal to give JFK that would define . . .

Here’s one you won’t know: What’s the earliest mention of the Peace Corps in the movies? No, it is not Volunteer! It isn’t Airplane in ’78. From http://www.vocaro.com/trevor/blog/ I learned it was from Pink Panther and way back in 1963. Playing a supporting role in the film was Robert Wagner, better known to today’s audiences as Number Two from the Austin Powers series. In one scene Wagner casually mentions the Peace Corps. Moments later, David Niven enters and also drops the Peace Corps name as if it were common knowledge. This might even have been the very first reference to the Peace Corps-ever-in mainstream popular culture. Perhaps even more surprising is how nonchalantly the Peace Corps is mentioned, as if everyone knows what it is. Check it out!  

Thanks to Bob Chudy (Korea 1972-77) who told me this fact the act of signing the Peace Corps Bill took place at Hammersmith Farm, a Victorian mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. It was the childhood home of Jackie Kennedy, and where the wedding reception was held for JFK and Jaqueline Bouvier. During his presidency, Kennedy spent so much time at Hammersmith Farm that it was referred to as the “Summer White House.” In late  September 1961, during one of these stays, Kennedy signed Public Law 87-293, the Peace Corps Act of 1961.    

Those of us who follow the history of the Peace Corps agency know the term “peace corps” came to public attention during the 1960 presidential election. In one of JFK’s last major speeches before the November election he called for the creation of a “Peace Corps” to send volunteers to work at the grass roots level in the developing world. However, the question remains: who said (or wrote) “peace corps” for the very first time? Was it Kennedy? Was it his famous speech writer Ted Sorensen? Or Sarge himself? But – as in most situations – the famous term came about because of some young kid, usually a writer, working quietly away in some back office that dreams up the language. In this case the kid was a graduate student between degrees who was working for the late Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Today, fifty years after the establishment of the . . .