December 13, 2016 – Peace Corps Worldwide

RPCV Creates The America Team for Displaced Eritreans (Eritrea)

Dec 13 2016

The America Team for Displaced Eritreans, based in Southeastern Pennsylvania, assists Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in the United States and around the world – through resettlement services, policy advocacy, and life-saving interventions on behalf of Eritreans in perilous circumstances. We are the only organization in the United States dedicated specifically to that mission. We have developed working relationships with governmental, inter-governmental, and non-profit organizations in the U.S. and abroad, and those relationships aid materially in the effectiveness of our work. The America Team is an all-volunteer organization that subsists entirely on privately donated funds. We are not aligned with any U.S., Eritrean, or expatriate Eritrean political parties or organizations. The America Team is registered as a Section 501(c)(3) public charity with the United States Internal Revenue Service. The tree depicted in The America Team’s logo is known as Daero, which grows south of the town of Segeneitti. It is famous in Eritrea . . .

Making Lemonade In The Maiatico Building, Part I

Dec 13 2016

I had an email recently from a young PCV asking for more stories about the Mad Men and Women of the early days of the agency. Well, there are lots of stories to tell. In those first days of 1961, everyone who went to Washington wanted to be part of the New Frontier, and particularly part of that new agency, the Peace Corps. The new agency attracted the best and the brightest, or so they claimed. An early document of the agency said that the staff in D.C. and those staffers around the world was composed of “skiers, mountain climbers, big-game hunters, prizefighters, football players, polo players and enough Ph.D.’s [30] to staff a liberal arts college.” There were 18 attorneys, of whom only four continue to work strictly as attorneys in the General Counsel’s office and the rest [including Sargent Shriver] did other jobs. Also, all of these employees . . .

Archive - December 13, 2016