Archive - May 2020

Thanks for the ‘head-up’ from Matt Losak (Lesothe 1985-88) Carolyn and Richard Paul Thornell were married for nearly 50 years. (Family photo) By Tara Bahrampour In the 1970s and ’80s, when Richard Paul Thornell would go with his sons to the grocery store and return late, his wife would teasingly ask, “Did you run into someone from the Peace Corps?” Usually, the answer was yes. In the early days of President John F. Kennedy’s administration, Thornell had worked under Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver and future senator Harris Wofford, negotiating and setting up the first Peace Corps program in the world. In May 1961, the 24-year-old Thornell traveled to Ghana as director of the Peace Corps Africa Regional Office to help design educational, agricultural and job-training programs there. Although he had to return to the United States that summer after contracting tuberculosis, the experience marked him. “For him, it was . . .

Scott Galloway predicts a handful of elite cyborg universities will soon monopolize higher education by James D. Walsh New York Post, May 11,2020 In 2017, Scott Galloway anticipated Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods a month before it was announced. Last year, he called WeWork on its “seriously loco” $47 billion valuation a month before the company’s IPO imploded. Now, Galloway, a Silicon Valley runaway who teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, believes the pandemic has greased the wheels for big tech’s entrée into higher education. The post-pandemic future, he says,  will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. MIT@Google. iStanford. HarvardxFacebook. According to Galloway, these partnerships will allow universities to expand enrollment dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees, the affordability and value of which will seismically alter the landscape of higher education. Galloway, who also founded his own virtual classroom start-up, predicts hundreds, . . .

Peace Corps Journal U. S. Capital Readings Remembered   Monday, November 21, 1965 Participant                                                                              Time Slot Letitia Morse Lladoc                                                             5:00 p.m. Philippines 1964-66 Leyte Island Teacher: ESL Imagine President Kennedy has been dead for two years, but it’s amazing how, here on the island of Leyte in the Philippines so many miles away from the United States, you visit barrio homes and there on the wall is President Kennedy’s picture. People here always want to talk about President Kennedy and it’s nice because they talk about him as if he was a close friend. I feel so honored to be . . .

The Journals of Peace Making it happen by Tim Carroll (Nigeria 1963-66) In 1988, as the first Director of the National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (NCRPCV), now the National Peace Corps Association, I felt a considerable part of my mandate was to bring our disparate numbers together, to gather us up to celebrate those feelings we had in common. A number of special events given under my tenure accomplished this in varying degrees of success, but none held the hearts of Peace Corps family as did the Journals of Peace. As the 25th anniversary of the death of President John Kennedy — the founder and much-loved hero of early Volunteers — approached, I made a call to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the church that had been the site of JFK’s funeral service, and asked if we might have a memorial Mass that would include not only the traditional Showing . . .

A 24-hour vigil at the U. S. Capital never happened before, or since. It was a day and night for America and for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers that should never be forgotten. I will over the next months publish a number of those addresses read by former Volunteers in the Rotunda of the U.S Capitol. All of these original essays I have and will give to the new NPCA museum in Washington, D.C. so that the history of the first generations of Volunteers will be kept, remembered, and understood by generations to come. In these sad days of the Trump Administration, we can now look back and read back what Volunteers did for America and the Third World as we approach the 60th anniversary of the Peace Corps in 2021. It is especially important at a time when Peace Corps Volunteers have been pulled out of service, and we have . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Gerry Allan Schwinn (Nigeria 1963-65) Lou Stovall, Peace Corps, 1970, silkscreen, 35″ x 23″ Washington Color School artist Paul Reed commissioned this poster in 1970 while he was Director of Graphics at the Peace Corps. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lou Stovall created limited edition silkscreen prints for Reed and other Color School artists, including Thomas Downing, Gene Davis and Sam Gilliam, as well as posters for Vista, Job Corps and other service-oriented organizations. Stovall chose the following quote from Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweizer to capture the mission of the Peace Corps: “I don’t know what your destiny will be but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” Images and text courtesy of Will Stovall.

    The NPCA is reporting this possible action and asking the RPCV Community to rally and contact their Congress Representative. From the NPCA Newsletter comes the alarming news: “Legislation would jeopardize funds that provided for health and safety of more than 7,300 evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers amid global pandemic. Let’s keep that from happening. While there has been significant legislation introduced to support Peace Corps and evacuated volunteers, a South Carolina Congressman has announced legislation that would — in part — rescind the $88 million in emergency appropriations approved earlier for Peace Corps. Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC) has introduced H.R. 6657, the Working Under Humanity’s Actual Needs (WUHAN) Rescissions Act, which calls for eliminating more than $27 billion from the CARES Act legislation that was overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by President Trump in late March. Included in the new legislation is the proposed return of the $88 million appropriated . . .

    A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps “Helping other nations build the strength to meet their own problems, to satisfy their own aspirations, to surmount their own dangers. The problems in achieving this goal are towering and unprecedented. The response must be towering and unprecedented.”  — President John F. Kennedy • The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick, published in 1958, demonstrated how Americans working abroad failed to integrate with local communities allowing Russians, who did in fact integrate, to spread Communism. President John F. Kennedy read the book and was spurred to action. His goal was to have Americans volunteer to combat hunger, fight for civil rights and promote world peace by working within the communities they were helping. On September 22nd, 1961, Congress voted to make the Peace Corps a permanent agency. “To help young Americans understand the rest of the world is . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Paul Koprowski (Ethiopia 1962-64) The Peace Corps Is Suspended—Here’s Why We Need to Make Sure It Returns By Jessie Beck (Madagascar 2011-13) AFAR Travel Magazine 04.30.20   Ninety-two percent of Peace Corps volunteers say the experience has changed their lives. In the Peace Corps, you learn that travel isn’t just about hotels and the sights. It’s about the people and connections you make. On March 15, 2020, the Peace Corps announced the evacuation of all 7,000+ volunteers from 60+ countries and suspension of all operations. With just 24 hours’ notice, all volunteers were asked to pack up their bags, say goodbye to their host communities, and return to the United States. I can only imagine it was a difficult, but necessary, decision. Keeping volunteers safe and healthy is a top priority for the organization, and it would have been a struggle to provide adequate healthcare to . . .

    In a Washington Post article published on May 1, 2020, award-winning journalists Edward H. Carpenter and Charli Carpenter published an article entitled, “East Africa has weathered pandemics — and has a few things to teach the U.S.” In the article, they write how African leaders have managed the crisis much better than the U.S. They write: These factors make it all the more remarkable that emerging economies of East Africa are far better prepared for this crisis than the United States was even two weeks ago. These countries include some of the more stable African nations (Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea) and some of the most unstable (Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan). What they share is a relatively low incidence of the coronavirus and a strong, proactive and coordinated response to the crisis. The current pandemic won’t be the last the world faces. And while it is functionally too late for the United . . .

      Haddad became involved with the JFK presidential campaign and got back into politics as a special assistant to Robert Kennedy, and it was the Attorney General who brought him to the attention of Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps. — JCNote.   By Matt Schudel Washington Post May 2, 2020 During his varied and sometimes adventurous career, William F. Haddad was a teenage sailor with the Merchant Marine, a reporter who helped expose corruption in New York’s political machine, a founding official of the Peace Corps, a newspaper publisher and an advocate for breaking the pharmaceutical industry’s control over drug prices. He was the author of several books, including one about his experiences as an executive for John Z. DeLorean, a charismatic car designer who launched a once-revolutionary automotive company, only to be disgraced amid a far-reaching scandal. Mr. Haddad, a ubiquitous and restless figure who was a . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Mark Walker( Guatemala 1971-73)   The Red & Black Publishing April 30, 2020   COVID-19 ended my Peace Corps service, but I’m still grateful Brun Baringer 2018-2020 • My colleague greeted me with a premonition: “tsudi otsneba mqonda” — “I had a bad dream.” His implication was clear: my time here would be cut short. I was working in the Georgian Black Sea port city of Poti through the Peace Corps, consulting a civic development non-governmental organization and a TV station. We were meeting on a sunless Saturday afternoon to discuss a grant proposal for a collaborative advocacy project between the two organizations, but immediately on this premonition the clouds crept inside, brooding over our conversation. I had been living in the Eurasian country of Georgia for close to a year. It is an amazing place with some unbelievable mountains, incredible cuisine and a culture of inspirational hospitality — . . .