Archive - February 28, 2017

The Peace Corps Fund announces its 2017 writing contest. Prizes range from First Prize of $1000, Second Prize $500 and numerous Honorable Mentions of $250. Top prizes will be published on the Peace Corps Worldwide website and promoted throughout the Peace Corps community. Eligibility Must be a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer or Former Peace Corps Staff Submissions should generally advance the Third Goal of the Peace Corps Act: To increase the understanding of the peoples served on the part of Americans. The Third Goal Writing Contest Overview and Rules The Peace Corps Fund will appoint a panel to review submissions whose decisions are final. Submissions must be received by April 30th. Winners will be announced at the National Peace Corps Association Conference, August 1st. Submissions may include, poetry, essays or short stories. No submission may be more than 5,000 words. Submission may not have been previously published or have been . . .

  From The Guardian  @BenQuinn75 • Monday — 27 February 2017 US spending on overseas aid is expected to bear the brunt of dramatic cuts as part of Donald Trump’s plan to increase defence spending by $54bn in his upcoming budget. The US operates the largest and most expansive overseas aid programme in the world, with a proposed federal spend of $50.1bn (£40.3bn) for 2017 alone (pdf). More than $18bn of that is made up of economic and development assistance, commonly referred to as humanitarian aid. A further $8.1bn was due to go towards security assistance. While humanitarians had been bracing themselves for possible cuts to their budgets since Trump’s election, the indications coming out of Washington on Monday appeared to suggest that he was going to make good on a campaign pledge to “stop sending foreign aid to countries that hate us”. White House budget officials briefed on Monday said there would be a . . .

Nixon was no fan of ‘anything’ John F. Kennedy created. The Golden Age of the Peace Corps was over. The New Frontier for this agency came to an end on May 1, 1969, when Joe Blatchford was appointed the third Director and the second Republican to hold the job. (Jack Hood Vaughn was a Republican.) Blatchford had grown up wealthy in Beverly Hills where his father was involved with finances for the motion pictures. He attended UCLA and was captain of the tennis team. In 1958, when then Vice-President Nixon was charged by a mob in Venezuela, Blatchford began to think about what could be done to improve relationships between the U.S. and Latin America. With tennis friends and jazz musicians, he dropped out of college for a year and went on a goodwill tour in Latin America, playing tennis and jazz. He raised money for this venture with funds . . .