Archive - July 15, 2013

Watching the event this afternoon, Monday, July 15, 2013, where the President and  former president George Bush, honored an Iowa couple as part of Point of Light Awards, I was struck again how the Peace Corps has been cast aside by the current cast of characters in Washington. Obama wouldn’t even meet with RPCVs during the 50th celebration, and here we have been ‘volunteering’ for 50 years, way before 1989 when George H.W. Bush talked about “points of light” in his inaugural address. Bush said he wanted citizens who make a difference through their volunteer work. Hello! What about us? RPCVs, some 220,000, have been volunteering since 1961, and continue to ‘do good’  in the world, as well as at home, fulfilling the Third Goal of the Peace Corps Act. One reason Marian and I wanted to focus part of  www.peacecorpsworldwide.org website on Third Goal Projects is because RPCV projects . . .

Third Goal Projects Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) and John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) in the late 1970s published a newsletter RPCV Writers & Readers that developed by early 2000s into the website:www.peacecorpsworldwide.org. Today, this is an online community and resource for RPCVs, Peace Corps Volunteers, their friends and families, and all who share a desire for international understanding. Peace Corps Worldwide is not officially connected with the Peace Corps or the National Peace Corps Association. As the publisher and editor of this site, we are continually impressed by the Third Goal activities of RPCVs back in their host countries, the projects that RPCVs have developed in-country over the last fifty-plus years, from school and community libraries to health initiatives, to peace keeping efforts, to scholarships for students, and many other such efforts on behalf of their former hosts and the lifelong friends that they have made. We would like to . . .