Archive - March 2020

Pease note:  This was posted last April, here on Peace Corps Worldwide.  I am posting it again as the subject of Selection is once again appearing in the comments.   “The University of New Mexico was the training site for Peace CorpsTrainees bound for South America, from 1962 to approximately 1967.  Selection was an important part of the training process. Trainees were observed at all times and subject to psychological testing and evaluation in addition to the elaborate background checks.  The University of New Mexico has archived important documents from Peace Corps Training.   Thank you to the Archivists at the University of New Mexico’ s Center for Southwest Research.  The archivist emailed me a digitial copy of the memo. I had to reformate it in order to post it here.  The text was not changed. Here is the citation: Box 1 in the Selections 1962-1963 folder of UNMA 150, . . .

    Remembering the Peace Corps — 60 Years Later Marnie Elberson Mueller, Ecuador 1963-65 • I was in my dormitory at Case Western Reserve University on March 1, 1961.  I was a sophomore. I have this image of being in the downstairs parlor of a 19th Century building, looking toward the entryway, and for some reason thinking, “I want to do that,” meaning join the Peace Corps.  I don’t know how I received the news.  Was it from the radio or a newspaper or a letter from my parents? I’ll claim the latter because it’s the sort of information my parents would have loved: The adventure, the commitment to doing good, the concept of helping people to help themselves. My father was an economist turned community organizer and my mother, a teacher with a commitment to underprivileged children.  They married in 1938 and spent their honeymoon in a dirt-floored . . .

  Doing the Blitz Peace Corps Recruitment in the ’60s by Hal Fleming (Staff: PC/W 1966–68; CD Cote d’Ivoire 1968–72) • IN 1966, I CAME DOWN TO WASHINGTON from New York. It was a time in our country when the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War divided the nation. I had been tapped to work as a staff member in the Public Affairs and Recruiting office for the Peace Corps. On my very first workday in Peace Corps/Washington, I was told to join Warren Wiggins, the Deputy Director of the Agency, in his government car for a one-hour ride to a conference for new campus recruiters at Tidewater Inn in Easton, Maryland. Wiggins, preoccupied with his opening speech to the conclave, said very little to me except to read out a phrase or two of buzz-word laden prose, mostly unintelligible to me as the new guy, and ask for . . .

  The Peace Corps Story, A Towering Task How can you tell the Peace Corps story in a one hour-and-forty seven minutes film? Tell the story of more than 240,000 volunteers spanning 60 years of service? (You know how long people talk just about their two-week European vacation.) Somehow Director Alana DeJoseph  (Mali 1992-94) has managed to tell the story of all of our experiences. It takes an RPCV to get the job done. The Peace Corps began by President Kennedy in 1961 when he sent young Americans into the developing world not with a rifle, but with a handshake, and that, as we say, has made all the difference. This film– A Towering Task–tells the stories of these Americans who went from innocent to worldly, from ignorant to enlightened, from strangers to adopted members of their host country families in 141 foreign countries. Director Alana DeJoseph captured in a . . .

The Peace Corps Breaks Ties with China The agency has always been viewed as removed from political spats. But the timing of the U.S.’s decision seems suspicious. By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) March 9, 2020 The author, lower left, with other China 3 volunteers in front of the Forbidden City, in Beijing, in 1996.Photograph courtesy the author On the morning of January 17th, shortly before I was scheduled to meet with a hundred and forty Peace Corps volunteers in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, there was an unexpected announcement that the China program was ending. The Peace Corps had first come to the country in 1993, and as a volunteer from the early years I had been asked to speak at an in-service training that the organization was holding in a hotel near where I live. But by the time I arrived nobody was in the mood for nostalgia. The . . .

    In keeping with the original three goals of the Peace Corps Act, a pilot program to upgrade the level of English learning and teaching in Ethiopia is seeking RPCV’s who have taught English in Ethiopia. We’re developing some new digital materials for Ethiopian grade school students and would like to have them reviewed by teachers with experience in Ethiopian English classes, preferably in upper elementary and middle schools. We are particularly interested in recent returnees who used the series, English for Ethiopia in their classes. This is a not-for-profit venture and participation is on a voluntary basis. We are excited about the potential of this work to solve an urgent challenge facing Ethiopian education, particularly in rural areas. If you would like to learn more or to volunteer, contact Andy Martin (Ethiopia, 1965-68) or Michael McCaskey (Ethiopia, 1965-67) at jcoyneone@gmail.com

Talking with Paul Theroux . . . an interview by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64)This is an interview I did with Paul around 2002. Since he is speaking in Washington this Saturday, March 7th, I thought I would republish it to fill in everyone about his early years in the Peace Corps.PAUL THEROUX (Malawi 1963-65) has produced some of the most wicked, funny, sad, bitter, readable, knowledgeable, rude, contemptuous, ruthless, arrogant, moving, brilliant and quotable books ever written. In doing so, he has been in all regards the most successful literary and commercial writer to come out of the Peace Corps.For those not familiar with Theroux’s life, he was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1941, one of seven children, and studied premed at the University of Maine before transferring to the University of Massachusetts and taking his first creative writing class from the poet Joseph Langland. He graduated in 1963 from . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) Saturday, March 7 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm Travel Theater Paul Theroux, Bestselling Author, Novelist, Travel Writer My travels began in 1963 when I joined the Peace Corps and became a teacher in Central Africa. At last, I had something to write about, something that mattered, something inspired by travel. I traveled throughout Africa for the next six years and published four works of fiction. After three years in Singapore and travels in South East Asia, I published Saint Jack which became a movie. Resident in Britain, I was stumped for an idea, but decided that travel had always served me well: so I set off on the trip that became The Great Railway Bazaar, a book that led to ten other long trips, and ten more books – some of the trips risky, but all of them fruitful, in . . .

March 4, 2020 WASHINGTON – The following is an open letter to Peace Corps volunteers from Director Jody Olsen. Dear Volunteers: As you are aware, the number of countries that are reporting confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus continues to grow. We currently have 11 Peace Corps countries with reported cases and the expectation is that the list will grow. There is a lot of media attention being given to the virus and how countries across the globe are responding to it. These variations in responses have had a direct impact on many of you. And I want to thank you for your patience as we continue to implement measures that we believe will help keep Volunteers and staff safe. It is in this spirit that I want to share with you some of the steps that the Peace Corps has taken over the past 8 weeks to prepare for, . . .

First published on our site on April 22, 2010 (Reprinted on this anniversary week.) There is a lot one can write about those early days of the agency when the Peace Corps attracted the best and the brightest. An early document of the agency said that the staff in D.C. and 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 were parents of some 272 children. In terms of staff and PCVs, the ratio was quite small. Figures from WWII show that 30 people were required to support every soldier in the front lines. After the war, the peacetime ratio . . .

  House Peace Corps Funding Letter Circulating The co-chairs of the House of Representatives Peace Corps Caucus, RPCVs John Garamendi (D-CA) and Joe Kennedy (D-MA), along with Representative Garrett Graves (R-LA) are now circulating a letter that their colleagues can sign, asking that Peace Corps funding for the fiscal year that begins this coming October (FY 2021) be increased to $450 million. TAKE ACTION NOW! Read the letter here. Ask your House Rep to “sign the Garamendi – Graves – Kennedy Peace Corps funding Dear Colleague letter that is now circulating”. Write and Ask your House Representative to Sign the Letter Find the Phone Number of Your House Representative if you want to contact them by phone The deadline for members of the House of Representatives to sign this letter is Friday, March 13th. Our goal is to meet or surpass last year’s record-breaking 181 signatures. A similar Senate Dear Colleague letter will . . .

On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy signed the executive order to create the Peace Corps. Three weeks later, on March 22, he would name Sargent Shriver as its first Director. Sargent Shriver believed deeply that the Peace Corps was a cornerstone of peacebuilding, and that it needed to play a central role in our foreign policy and diplomacy. A disruptive, innovative idea at the beginning of the 1960s, the Peace Corps continues to play a significant role in allowing Americans to serve in communities abroad, bringing us closer to our brothers and sisters in developing countries. With new challenges coming about from the effects of climate change, war, pandemics, and other crises, Peace Corps volunteers could play an even bigger role in serving vulnerable communities everywhere — if our leaders would dare to innovate and evolve as President Kennedy and Sargent Shriver did. Below Sargent Shriver’s Remarks at the Peace . . .