Archive - April 2021

Thanks for the heads up from Steven Saum (Ukraine 1994-96)  at the NPCA —  All eleven living former Peace Corps agency directors have signed on to a letter to President Biden with a ringing message: “Now is the right time for the Peace Corps to build back better than it ever was before.” Read the entire letter to POTUS from the former directors below. • April 26, 2021 President Joseph R. Biden The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear President Biden, We write to you today as a bipartisan, unified group of former directors of the Peace Corps to express our full support for a revitalized Peace Corps, one that advances our nation’s critical foreign policy goal of world peace through international cooperation and service. We believe that now is the right time for the Peace Corps to build back better than it ever was before. We therefore . . .

by Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994–96) The United States has, to-date, missed a unique opportunity to provide critically urgent medical assistance to the world’s most populous democracy, and solidify our relationship with an important regional ally · India. Imagine a “Berlin airlift” by the U.S. and E.U. of vaccines, oxygen, beds, makeshift shelters and treatment centers (such as DOD provided to Ebola-stricken West Africa). This mobilization should have been initiated a week ago, and it is still possible. The outreach ideally should be regional and include its neighbors Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are in similar dire circumstances. India was an important Peace Corps “pioneer” country from 1961 to 1975, and its present demographics of a young population (median age under 30) and largely rural subsistence make it ideal for Peace Corps’ future return with programs geared to health, agriculture, the environment, and specialized education. The agency might be able to obtain . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65)   This video is brief but comprehensive.   The “professional” speaker is Meagan Kallman, who wrote the book on the Death of Idealism: Development and Anti-Politics in the Peace Corps. She wants to change Peace Corps into a cultural exchange program. She “offered the services of her university” to “help” Peace Corps transition.  She is now  Rhode Island State Senator.

    Those of us who were around when the agency was created know why and how it was. Peace Corps was a hope and a vision for the developing world. We could help poorer nations of the world. And we did. The Peace Corps changed the lives of many host country nationals and it also changed our lives. Today, 60 years after the first PCVs went overseas, we have another world with new needs. One of those needs is the climate all of us are living with. It is a problem we have wherever we live in the world. President Biden has recently spoken about what must be done here at home. What he hasn’t done is link today’s Peace Corps Volunteers with the needs for  Climate Change in the developing world. This is the role, many of us think, that should be a new role for Volunteers in . . .

An in-depth work of investigative journalism has shone light on a horrific problem. There are steps we can take now.” A statement from the Chair of the Board of Directors of National Peace Corps Association. By Maricarmen Smith-Martinez Today USA Today published an in-depth investigative piece chronicling the experiences of multiple women who have been victims of sexual assault while serving as Peace Corps Volunteers. Their stories are devastating. And the statistics cited in the article about the prevalence of sexual assault are profoundly disturbing. We owe it to these women to read their stories — and to truly hear what they are saying. Those of us who have been victims of sexual assault know firsthand that it takes immense courage to come forward, especially given how the initial reports of these women were handled. And let us be unequivocal: There must be zero tolerance when it comes to sexual . . .

  by Hannah Gaber, USA Today Three women tell their stories of sexual assault while volunteering in the Peace Corps, and how the agency’s bungled response compounded their trauma.   Emma Tremblay, then a 25-year-old Peace Corps volunteer from Seattle, was 4,000 miles from home on an exam table in Ecuador. A physician selected by the Peace Corps loomed over her and firmly placed his hand on her shoulder to keep her still. “Do you feel good?” he asked, then leaned in, pressing his erection against her arm. Tremblay feared he might go further. Half undressed, in pain and unsure whether she could fight him off, she stared him down. I’m fine, she said. When he backed away, Tremblay gathered her things and rushed onto Quito’s crowded streets. Then, another violation of her trust: The Peace Corps had been warned the doctor was a threat. Ashley Lipasek, a fellow volunteer, told . . .

April 22, 2021 “USA Today recently published an article on sexual assault experienced by volunteers during their service. To those volunteers who have told their stories about sexual assault in the Peace Corps: I am so very sorry for the trauma you have experienced. You have each shown tremendous courage, and I am grateful that you have come forward. “These are devastating stories, and the agency is working to get to the root of the very serious issues that were raised. “As we approach the return to service of volunteers, we are intensifying and cementing our commitment to mitigating risk, wherever possible, and providing victim-centered and trauma-informed support to sexual assault survivors. We must always be an agency that empowers survivors and tears down barriers to reporting, services and care. “As the new Acting Director of the agency and a returned volunteer myself, I am personally committed to ensuring the following . . .

    On its 60th anniversary, a moment of reckoning arrives for the nation’s globe-trotting volunteers By Miranda Moore (Uganda 2009–11) SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE MAY 2021   In March 2020, at the start of Covid-19 lockdowns, as flights were grounded and people around the world sheltered in place, 7,000-odd Peace Corps volunteers serving in 61 nations came home to an uncertain future. Many worried that the Peace Corps might even have to shut down permanently. That hasn’t happened, but the nation’s foremost global volunteer organization has no volunteers in the field for the first time since its founding 60 years ago. Practicing a uniquely American blend of idealism and realpolitik, the agency was conceived in October 1960, when Senator John F. Kennedy made a 2 a.m. campaign speech at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Kennedy, then running for president, challenged 10,000 students assembled outside the Student Union to use their . . .

  by Neil Boyer (Ethiopia 1962-64) April 18, 2021 • After I returned from Ethiopia, where I had served in the Peace Corps from 1962 to 1964, I went to work at Peace Corps headquarters on Lafayette Square in Washington. Harris Wofford had recruited some former volunteers in Ethiopia and other places to work with him on his seemingly limitless ideas. I helped him and others flesh out the idea of creating a “reverse peace corps” that would bring teachers and social workers from other countries to work in the United States. It was exactly a reverse of the Peace Corps concept, with volunteers selected by sending countries and supervised and administered by receiving agencies in the United States. Argentina would choose and send volunteers, for example, and US officials in OEO, the Department of Education and private agencies would supervise them. The program was called Volunteers TO America (VTA). . . .

  To further fulfill its goals to encourage, recognize and promote Peace Corps writers, RPCV Writers & Readers, the newsletter that was the precursor of PeaceCorpsWriters.org and PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org, presented its first annual awards for outstanding writing in 1990. Over 170 awards have been given since that time. The awards are: The Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award The Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award The Maria Thomas Fiction Award The Award for Best Peace Corps Memoir The Award for Best Book of Poetry The Award for Best Short Story Collection The Award for Best Travel Book The Rowland Scherman Award for Best Photography Book The Marian Haley Beil Award for the Best Book Review The Award for Best Children’s Book about a Peace Corps Country Other Awards Send your nomination(s) to John Coyne at jcoyneone@gmail.com (You may nominate your own book. Make sure you are nominating a book that was published in . . .