The Volunteer Who Has lived the Third Goal — Ben Moyer (Colombia)

Dec 17 2020

A Profile in Citizenship

By Jerry Norris (Colombia 1963-64)

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In my time as a country director for a Cooperative Development Group in Colombia, one of the Volunteers in that group was posted to the country’s poorest and most under-resourced area: the Choco. It is on Colombia’s west coast, has a rainfall of some 400 inches a year, is largely jungle, thinly populated — mostly by indigenous native tribal groups and decedents of former African slaves, and it has few schools beyond the primary level. It is probable that in the Peace Corps long history of having thousands of Volunteers in Colombia, not more than 5 were ever posted in the Choco.

Ben Moyer

Yet, into this unpromising site with two Volunteers, Ben Moyer (1965-67), a recent graduate of Yale University, was posted as their replacement. Those early Volunteers had teed-up the El Valle Agricultural Cooperative in its formative stages, such as securing its Legal Charter with the Government. But it was Ben, as their replacement, that hit the long ball down the fairway, shepherding it through the day to day mundane processes of tedious bookkeeping, the election of Board Members, the opening of a bank account, various annual reports to government agencies — all requisite organizational elements which ensured that the Cooperative retained its legal standing.

After his service, he went to Cornell Business School and upon graduation joined the international department of the Bank of Boston in 1969, with his first assignment in Australia for two years. For the next seventeen years, he lived overseas in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Panama and Taiwan. He took early retirement in 1996 and immediately joined Wainwright Investment Counsel where he worked for the next fifteen years. In 2002, he joined the Board of ProMujer International, a micro finance institution providing micro loans to women in Central and South America. Over a two year period, he served as its CEO. In 1993, Ben joined the Board of Copper Cannon, a summer camp in Franconia, New Hampshire for under-served young people.

There are thousands of “Ben Moyer stories” on the careers they pursued after their active service as Volunteers. This is the dividend that continues to justify our country’s investment in the Peace Corps. Yet, it has taken a virus to get Peace Corps into our national consciousness.