Search Results For -National Commission on Military, National and Public Service

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Mark Gearan gives talk on National Service
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Former Director of the Peace Corps Mark D. Gearan returns as President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges
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Review | Finding Kony by Robert E. Gribbin (Kenya)
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The Volunteer Who Became a Ten-term Congressman — Sam Farr (Colombia)
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“Order and Progress: A Brazilian Peace Corps Saga” by Jack Epstein and Chuck Fortin
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“Nine Days in Wuhan, the Ground Zero of the Coronavirus Pandemic” by Peter Hessler (China)
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National Service Commission: More information
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The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service Wants to Hear From you.
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RPCV Michael Skelly “Plugging in the Wind” (Costa Rica)
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Encounters with Harris Wofford by Neil Boyer (Ethiopia)
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JFK: The Last Speech–Documentary on American Public Television
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Chris Honoré: Why preserve the Peace Corps? (Colombia)
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Peace Corps Task Force, 2008 New Obama Administration
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“The Nzeogwu I Knew” by Tim Carroll (Nigeria)
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John S. Noffsinger and the Global Impact of the Thomasite Experience

Mark Gearan gives talk on National Service

  Former Peace Corps Director Mark. Gearan will join the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Rochester’s (NY) Fall Forum series, delivering a guest presentation on the state of public service in the U.S. and possibilities for its future. Gearan is nationally known for his tenure in higher education and national service. His public talk, “National Service in the 21st Century,” will be held in-person and online beginning at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 15 at the Rochester Academy of Medicine. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR PRESIDENT GEARAN’S TALK AT THE HARVARD-RADCLIFFE CLUB OF ROCHESTER.  Mark Gearan, president again of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, recently served as Vice Chair of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service created by the U.S. Congress. Gearan is a past chair of the Board of Directors of both National Campus Compact and the Corporation for National and Community Service.The event is hosted by the Rochester-area . . .

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Former Director of the Peace Corps Mark D. Gearan returns as President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Following Resignation of Joyce Jacobsen, Gearan Returns as President   Five years after leaving HWS for Harvard, President Emeritus Mark D. Gearan L.H.D. ’17, P’21 returns to HWS   The Hobart and William Smith Colleges Board of Trustees has announced the selection of President Emeritus Mark D. Gearan L.H.D. ’17, P’21 as the 30th president of Hobart and the 19th of William Smith. Gearan takes on the role following the resignation of President Joyce P. Jacobsen who presided over HWS from 2019-2022, engineering a period of exceptional innovation at the Colleges. Jacobsen will join the faculty at HWS as professor of economics.Gearan previously was president of Hobart and William Smith from 1999-2017 and during that time the Colleges’ endowment doubled as he oversaw a capital campaign that raised $205 million to support facilities and annual giving, established 168 new scholarships, and completed 80 significant capital projects. During his first presidency, Gearan made . . .

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Review | Finding Kony by Robert E. Gribbin (Kenya)

  Finding Kony by Robert E. Gribbin Self Published 248 pages November 2o22 $3.99 (Kindle); $15.99 (Paperback) Reviewed by Alan G. Johnston (Kenya 1968-70) Note: Both Robert Gribbin and Alan Johnston were in the Peace Corps group that arrived in Kenya in October 1968. They both spent many years in Africa. • On March 5, 2012 a U.S.-based NGO, Invisible Children, Inc., released a short documentary film called Kony 2012. The intent of the film, meant for world-wide distribution, was to make the infamous Ugandan warlord, Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), so famous that he couldn’t hide. The goal was to have him arrested and brought to justice by the end of 2012. The film quickly went viral, garnering more than 100 million views and becoming the most “liked” video on YouTube. The film highlights the announcement by Barack Obama in October 2011 that the U.S. . . .

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The Volunteer Who Became a Ten-term Congressman — Sam Farr (Colombia)

  by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • Sam Farr joined the Peace Corps in 1964 and served for two years as a Volunteer in Colombia. He was assigned to a poor mountain barrio near Medellin, teaching residents basic rural community development skills. Once back home, his public service began in the California Assembly where he worked as a staffer on budget issues for a decade. In 1975, he ran for and won a seat on the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. In 1980, he was elected to the California State Assembly, where he became a champion for the organics industry and wrote one of the country’s strictest oil spill liability laws. He served in the Assembly until his election to the Congress in 1993. It was a Special Election when former Congressman Leon Panetta resigned to become then-President Clinton’s budget director. Sam was then re-elected to his first full term . . .

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“Order and Progress: A Brazilian Peace Corps Saga” by Jack Epstein and Chuck Fortin

Thanks for the ‘heads up” from Leita Kaldi (Senegal 1993-96)   Our RPCVGulf Coast Florida zoomed an extraordinary presentation last Saturday with the two authors of a “Brazilian Peace Corps Saga.”  I believe it would be of interest to PCW readers.  Here are the authors’ bios and an abstract.  It’s not in book form, but is an article that will be published in Brazil. — Leita Kaldi Jack Epstein (Brazil 1968-70) received a BA in Latin American Studies from UCLA. He is the foreign wire editor for the San Francisco Chronicle. He previously headed the newspaper’s foreign service department, overseeing coverage by freelancers and stringers from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. In 1993, he moved to Rio de Janeiro where he worked until 1999 primarily for the Associated Press and TIME magazine. Charles Fortin (Brazil 1968-70) earned his doctoral degree through the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex . . .

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“Nine Days in Wuhan, the Ground Zero of the Coronavirus Pandemic” by Peter Hessler (China)

  By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) New Yorker Magazine October 5, 2020 On my second visit to the site of the former Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, at the intersection of New China Road and Development Road, in central Wuhan, I wore a mask and a pair of sunglasses with a loose frame. It was late August, and three security guards in black uniforms sat at the entrance. They examined my passport, checked my temperature, and asked me to scan a QR code that connected to a registration system. The system, though, required a national I.D. number, and the guards seemed uncertain what to do with a foreigner. I handed over the sunglasses and explained that they needed to be repaired. The earliest documented clusters of coronavirus infections had occurred in the Huanan market. During my first visit, a week earlier, I had left after attracting the attention of a man . . .

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National Service Commission: More information

National service: Rebuilding America’s civic fabric The Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion among the member of the National Commission on Military Service, National Service, and Public service.  The video should be able to be viewed by clicking on the phrase” Continue reading” in the announcement or https://www.brookings.edu/events/national-service-rebuilding-americas-civic-fabric/   The wide ranging discussion included strong opinions in favor of making a year of “service” mandatory for graduating high school seniors.  If there was also discussion on how the government would pay for such a mandate, let alone enforce it, I missed it. Mark Gearan, former Peace Corps Director, is Vice Chair of the Commission and  spoke about the efforts of the Commission for National Peace Corps Association, here:  https://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/articles/national-service-an-interim-report-on-the-commission-hearings See also: https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/?s=National+Commission+on+Military%2C+National+and+Public+Service  

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The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service Wants to Hear From you.

    “The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service is a bipartisan, 11-member Commission created by Congress to develop recommendations to inspire more Americans—specifically young people—to participate in military, national, and public service and to review the military selective service process. The Commission was established on September 19, 2017 and launched in January 2018. We released an Interim Report on January 23, 2019. Addressed to the American public, Congress, and the President, the Interim Report outlines issues we are exploring and summarizes our work to date. We will publish our Final Report, complete with policy recommendations and legislative proposals, by March 2020. Our work will conclude by September 2020.” The Commission is comprised of eleven commissioners who bring together diverse experiences from service in the military, public office, Capitol Hill, and not-for-profit organizations.” https://inspire2serve.gov/content/who-we-are   Peace Corps is included in the list of National Service opportunities.  The Commission . . .

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RPCV Michael Skelly “Plugging in the Wind” (Costa Rica)

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from David Miron (Colombia 1963-65) The Wall Street Journal June 22, 2019 By Russell Gold Updated June 22, 2019 12:01 am ET Adapted from “SUPERPOWER: One Man’s Quest to Transform American Energy” by Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold, to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc., on June 25. When Michael Skelly first visited the Oklahoma panhandle in 2009, he gazed at a giant grid with squares of corn and grassland. There were few houses, one every mile or so. Half had been abandoned decades ago by homesteaders who gave up to the elements. This pancake-flat landscape, he thought, held the key to overturning one of the greatest misconceptions of the climate-change crisis. For years, the wind and the sun were widely dismissed as niche sources of power that could never fill America’s vast need for energy. But now the cost of solar and wind power had . . .

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Encounters with Harris Wofford by Neil Boyer (Ethiopia)

Encounters with Harris Wofford By Neil Boyer My first encounter with Harris came in the spring of 1962, when I was a third-year student at New York University School of Law. I stopped in the dormitory where I lived (Hayden Hall) and found in my mailbox a message asking me to call Harris Wofford. I had no idea who he was, and there was no return phone number or any other reference to anyone of that name. So I began a search of the white pages in the Manhattan phone directory, found a listing for a Harris Wofford and called the number. The man who answered was pleasant but as puzzled about this call as I was. I guessed that this had something to do with the Peace Corps since I had applied but not heard anything in return.  Aha, the man said, “I think you want my son. He’s . . .

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JFK: The Last Speech–Documentary on American Public Television

  JFK:The Last Speech by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976-78) • EVEN 55 YEARS LATER, the life-changing effects of John F. Kennedy and Peace Corps service continue to resonate for several former Volunteers featured in an upcoming documentary distributed by American Public Television. The film, JFK: The Last Speech, from Northern Light Productions, spotlights how an October, 1963, a visit by JFK transformed four Class of ’64 graduates of Amherst College. The film will air on more than 40 public television stations nationwide the first week of June. About the speech Three weeks before  President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, he delivered a speech at Amherst at the groundbreaking for the Robert Frost Library. Frost had been a professor at Amherst for years, was a colorful presence on the campus, and had died the previous January. It was JFK’s last major speech, and it was described as “majestic” and one . . .

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Chris Honoré: Why preserve the Peace Corps? (Colombia)

Why preserve the Peace Corps? Mar 6, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Chris Honoré One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to eliminate funding for nongovernmental organizations in poor countries if they offer abortion counseling as a family planning option or if they advocate for the right to seek an abortion in their countries. The freeze applies even if the NGO uses other funds for such services. Republicans have supported this policy since the Reagan administration.   But the reality is that despite how freighted with ideology the above policy is, it’s not a one-off. The Trump administration has submitted a budget that will propose severe cuts to foreign aid programs as part of a 37 percent cut to the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. As well, Trump has told interviewers that he does not plan on filling hundreds of currently vacant posts in State or at USAID, . . .

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Peace Corps Task Force, 2008 New Obama Administration

It is that time again….a new administration in January, and a “new” direction for the Peace Corps. This is the document written in the fall of 2008, shortly before President Obama took office. It is fascinating to see how few of these recommendations from the Task Force (not surprising, I’d say) were adopted by the Obama Administration. I have ‘pulled’ one of those suggestions out and highlighted it. How often have we heard about the increasing of PCVs?  This is a Word Document taken from a PDF.  (John Coyne) During the Presidential campaign, President-elect Obama made the following comment in a speech at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa when introducing Senator Harris Wofford, a person with a close association to the Peace Corps since the days of John Kennedy: “It is an honor to be introduced by Harris Wofford – one of America’s greatest advocates for public service. Starting with . . .

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“The Nzeogwu I Knew” by Tim Carroll (Nigeria)

   Editor’s Note: In February 2015, Roger Landrum (01) 1961–63, in the email below, alerted the newsletter staff of what he believed to be an interesting story about a friendship that had developed in Nigeria in 1965 between Peace Corps Volunteer Tim Carroll and a young major in the Nigerian army. Jim. I recently read Achebe’s Biafra memoir, There Was a Country. It has a brief section on Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, one of the five military majors who led the coup that triggered the chain of events leading to the Biafran secession and the civil war. Achebe calls Nzeogwu “a mysterious figure.” Maybe not all that mysterious! There was a Nigeria PCV named Timothy Carroll posted in Kaduna who was friends with Nzeogwu. I’m trying to convince Carroll to write a piece for the FON newsletter called “The Nzeogwu I Knew.” I think Nigeria RPCVs would find this fascinating. It . . .

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John S. Noffsinger and the Global Impact of the Thomasite Experience

John Coyne has been posting a series on early Peace Corps history. One of the articles referenced the early staffer, John Noffsinger.  The link to this article was rendered inactive because Peace Corps/Washington is transitioning to a new all inclusive website.  However, Elizabeth Karr, RPCV and current librarian has generously offered to help all RPCVs who wish to view the digitalized  text documents, such as this one, during this transition period. Elizabeth asks that requests be sent to the email: library@peacecorps.gov As we wait for Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s review of Peace Corps Fantasies, John’s history becomes even more important.  Here is the link to his posting that included John S. Noffsinger.  Following the link is the article by Paul A. Rodell, RPCV. https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/ivs/ John S. Noffsinger & the Global Impact of the Thomasite Experience* By Paul A. Rodell Peace Corps/Philippines 68-71 Introduction This paper explores the life of a remarkable . . .

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