March 2, 2015 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Today NYTIMES Morning Briefing Features the Peace Corps

Mar 02 2015

Your Monday Briefing By ADEEL HASSAN John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps in an impromptu, 2 a.m.address at the University of Michigan, three weeks before he was elected president. He signed legislation creating the organization on March 1, 1961, less than six weeks after his inauguration. Fifty-four years later, this is Peace Corps Week. The organization has 6,818 volunteers working in 64 developing countries, less than half the record high of more than 15,000, reached in 1966. But sweeping changes to the application process last year – like allowing volunteers to select their country of service – increased the number of candidates by more than 70 percent. Today’s Peace Corps volunteers are mostly female (63 percent), unmarried (94 percent), white (75 percent) and youthful (only 7 percent are over 50). Education is its biggest focus, followed by health services. Forty-five percent serve in Africa, and 23 percent in Latin America. California . . .

Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965-67) writes: Look About You, There is So Much to See

Mar 02 2015

A Writer Writes Gerald Karey taught English in a middle school in a Turkish village from 1965 to 1967. After the Peace Corps, Karey worked as a general assignment reporter for two newspapers in New Jersey, and for a McGraw-Hill newsletter in Washington, D.C., where he covered energy and environmental issues. A collection of his essays entitled Unhinged, was published in October, 2014. • Look About You, There is So Much to See by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965–67) . Ride the Staten Island Ferry across New York’s Upper Bay and look about you. It is one of the world’s most magnificent urban/sea-scapes. The Atlantic Ocean lies just beyond a suspension bridge spanning the Narrows between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island; the great hundred square mile Lower Bay protecting the Upper Bay from the Atlantic; 770 miles of waterfront; on land, towers of commerce and finance scrape the sky; . . .

Peace Corps Global Partnerships

Mar 02 2015

The Office of Strategic Partnerships at the Peace Corps is currently managing more than 40 public and private partnerships as well as relationships with 147 colleges and universities. “Public and private partnerships are a priority”, according to Peace Corps. “They enable us to open doors of opportunity and implement interventions to save lives and create ripples of hope.” Peace Corps Global Partnerships There are two multinational for profit corporations. Peace Corps is involved with the economic developments programs of these two corporations. 1. Water and Development Alliance (WADA) Agreement From the Peace Corps Press Office: The Water and Development Alliance (WADA) is a partnership between The Coca-Cola Company and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that addresses community water needs in developing countries around the world. In 2012, the Peace Corps partnered with WADA to jointly create water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) training curriculum for the use of . . .

Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) in NYTIMES

Mar 02 2015

Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) wrote a review of Green on Blue by Elliot Ackerman in the New York Times Book Review Section, Sunday, March 1, 2015. In the review of this novel that is set in Afghanistan, Bissell writes: “I pondered my own brief 2001 excursion in Afghanistan, among Northern Alliance guerrillas with whom I could speak a bit thanks to my Peace Corps Uzbek.” Tom was a PCV for seven months in Uzbekistan before he ETed. In 2001, or thereabouts, Bissell convinced a magazine to send him back to Central Asia to investigate the Aral Sea’s destruction. There, he joins forces with a young Uzbek named Rustam, and together they make their often wild way through the ancient cities–Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara. Out of this experience came his nonfiction book, Chasing the Sea Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia. He has also written a collection of short . . .

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