Archive - December 3, 2018

In April, 1962, Sheldon was joined by his Deputy Director, Ted Banks, who thereby became the first overseas administrator to be transferred by the Peace Corps from one country to another (in his case, from Chile to Colombia.) On July 25, 1963, Banks was named the first Peace Corps Director in Uruguay. By then, the program in Colombia had become the second largest in the world with 561 Volunteers overseas and in training, and enough additional programs had been negotiated to raise the strength of the effort in Colombia beyond that in the Philippines, which had been first. A second group of 31 rural community development workers arrived in Colombia on May 18, 1962. On November 12 of the same year, the third group – consisting of 69 urban community development workers all of whom had taken training in the slums of New York – arrived in Bogota. Just before . . .