Archive - January 11, 2019

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dan Campbell (El Salvador 1974-77) • Big data is Peace Corps’ ticket to renewed policy relevance (and mojo) by Michael Buckler, opinion contributor — 01/10/19 The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of the hill Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen recently spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies about the future of the iconic agency under her watch. As a former Peace Corps teacher in Malawi (2006-08), I was struck by Director Olsen’s honesty regarding the agency’s need to “demonstrate results” in addition to sharing “wonderful” stories. Director Olsen framed Peace Corps as a “strategic point in longer-term development efforts,” with volunteers providing “data points” to development partners such as USAID. These words suggest a seismic shift for a staunchly qualitative agency searching for relevancy in an increasingly quantitative world. Director Olsen appeared to identify Congress as the catalyst: “the Hill . . .

This division developed general guidelines and policies for program development and operations and recommends the allocation of resources among regions and types of projects. It developed and negotiated all project proposals which were interregional in scope. Charles Nelson worked his way through Lincoln University with the usual college jobs—washing dishes, working as a library researcher—and one of the marked distinction—making corn flakes during the summers at the Kellogg’s factory in his home town of Battle Creek, Michigan.   After graduating in the social and behavioral sciences, Nelson went through Officers Candidate School in the Army and was assigned in 1942 to a tank-destroyer battalion with which he landed at Omaha Beach in France after D-day. The battalion participated in three European campaigns as it rolled across France, Germany and Austria. The advance ended at Innsbruck where at the end of the war Nelson moved into the military government, serving as . . .