Archive - July 2013

Jon Ebeling (Ethiopia 1962-64) spent five years with the Peace Corps as a PCV and APCD in Ethiopia. Upon returning he entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International where he earned his Ph.D. in Economic and Social Development. As he graduated from the University, he came down with a severe case of juvenile diabetes and could not return to Africa. He taught statistics and public finance in the Department of Political Science at CSU, Chico for 32 years while directing over 200 master’s degree thesis until his retirement. He has done extensive consulting with governments and private industry in the area. He specializes in revenue forecasting, evaluation research, and public opinion research. He has taught off and on in the Economics Department as needed since the early 1970’s. Jon and his wife, Frederica Shockley, Chair of the Economics Department now have a . . .

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 . . .

This is from Ronald A. Schwarz (Colombia 1961-63). After the Peace Corps he became an anthropologist and spent 12 years in research and training undergraduates in Colombia and Africa. He  taught at Williams College and the Johns Hopkins University and later established a development consulting firm in Africa where he lived for 20 years. He has been writing a book about Colombia One PCVs since their Termination Conference. If you have ever met a Colombia One RPCV, the first thing they will say is their name, and then they’ll  say: “We were the first PCVs. I think that they must have been inoculated with this phrase by their Peace Corps Doctors.) This is Ron’s great piece about Shriver’s first visit to a Training Site in the summer of ’61. Sarge’s First Words “Looking more like the freshman football team than America’s latest weapon in the cold war, the first contingent . . .

[About 10 years ago I put up a series of stories about Sarge Shriver  and I thought I might ‘reintroduce’ them as so many PCVs have come-and-gone through the agency since then and they might not know about the man. I remember in the mid-90s when running the New York Recruitment Office an RPCV recruiter came up to me and asked, “Now was Shriver the first Peace Corps Director?” I didn’t know whether I should hit him over the head or fire him! If there is one legend that we want to maintain, it’s Sarge’s…..so send me your experiences with the Man and I’ll post them on our site. We begin with a story sent to me by Thaine H. Allison, Jr., a PCV in Borneo (1962-64) assigned as an agricultural extension agent in the village of Bandau, a place that is now called Kota Marudu, in Sabah Malaysia. Since . . .