April 2013 – Page 3 – Peace Corps Worldwide

RPCV Paul Clements (Gambia 1985-87) Runs for Congress in Michigan

Apr 02 2013

Paul Clements was a PCV math teacher in The Gambia from 1985-87, and stayed on in Africa with ActionAid (1987-89) and USAID (1989-90). Today he is the director of Western Michigan University’s Masters of International Development Administration program which has a “Peace Corps Option,” one of Peace Corps’ Masters International Programs, so many of his students have gone on to the Peace Corps. As director he gets to supervise their field papers, usually studies of large development projects in their countries of service. Paul met his wife, Aedin, in The Gambia. Aedin, an Irish volunteer, was in The Gambia working as a librarian with Ireland’s semi-volunteer aid organization. Their first daughter, Anna, was born in Royal Victoria Hospital in Banjul. Paul returned to Gambia in 2008 with their daughter, Anna, after she graduated from high school, and they stayed for a few days with his “family” in Pakalinding, the village . . .

A Writer Writes: Apocalypse Then, Part I

Apr 01 2013

Apocalypse Then by Bob Criso (Nigeria & Somalia 1966–68) • Part I Ishiagu: July, 1967 EAGER FOR NEWS OF THE WAR, I huddled with my students many evenings around a transistor radio and a kerosene lamp listening to Radio Enugu. Refugees were returning from the North with stories of Igbos being hacked into pieces, pregnant women being cut open and children screaming inside burning homes. There was a report on the radio about a train filled with bloody body parts that were sent down from the North “as a warning.” I was skeptical about that one until I saw a woman returning to the village carrying the head of a man. She said she had retrieved it from the train. Several weeks earlier, Ruth Olsen, the Nigeria Peace Corps Director in the East, had given me a van as part of an emergency evacuation plan. I was supposed to pick . . .

Fifty years ago, Shriver wanted 500 doctors for universal health education! What happened?

Apr 01 2013

Vietnam. In a remarkable speech to the Albert Einstein School of Medicine on November 15, 1964, Sargent Shriver called for universal medical education, manned, in part by Peace Corps Volunteer doctors. Read the entire impassioned speech at Peace Corps’ greatly expanded digital library: http://collection.peacecorps.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9009coll13/id/12/rec/3 Shriver said: “We need a new idea and a new program…The answer lies in universal health education, with effective medical programs, medical centers and medical personnel serving as the central source for this public education. Just as the Peace Corps has sent thousands of teachers overseas to help developing nations achieve universal school education, so now we must help them make universal health education a reality.” If this program sounds familiar, it is exactly what is now being developed, fifty years later. by a contract between Global Health Volunteers and Peace Corps Response. There are striking similarities between the proposals, separated by fifty years. Shriver explained . . .

Archive - April 2013