Miscellany

[Thanks to Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964 & 67; PC/W 1968-73 & 1990-93) we have this item from the Bizpac Review written by Michael Dorstewitz on March 14, 2013.] • Beginning at 9:45 a.m. on Thursday morning, former congressman Allen West of Florida was the alarm clock for the enthusiastic Conservative Political Action Conference-2013 attendees. “There is no shortage of people telling us what conservatism cannot accomplish, what we can’t do, how we cannot connect, how we must change our values to fit the times,” he began. “Well ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you that is truly a bunch of malarky.” “The last time I checked, a bended knee is not, nor shall it ever be, a conservative tradition.” He then steered the address to his own personal experience as a black conservative. “I’m speaking from experience when I tell you that there is nothing on this green earth that . . .

Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65) was kind enough to email me this item for today’s blog, knowing perhaps that I was a student of the Jesuits years ago at St. Louis University.  Tony writes about our new Pope being a Jesuit and how Jesuit schools are famous for their volunteer work. • Many of you may know the Jesuits started the international Jesuit Volunteer Corps in 1956, five years before the first PCVs arrived in Ghana (and Colombia). Like PCVs everywhere, these Jesuit Volunteers manifest the Jesuit spirit of serving others, especially the poor. It was my experience in the Peace Corps, and being associated with the agency from a distance, is that Jews and Catholics make up the majority of PCVs in terms of percentages.  When the Peace Corps recently released its list of the top 25 schools fielding PCVs in Fiscal Year 2012, Jesuit schools were prominently listed. The first of three categories was limited . . .

The Peace Corps will need to reduce the total number of PCVs by approximately 300 Volunteers when the full force of the sequester takes hold. The Volunteers will go first, than the overseas staff, and, of course, no one in D.C. will be laid off. When the hammer of the sequester falls the total number of Peace Corps Volunteers will drop. We all know that regardless of who is in the White House or on the Hill, the Peace Corps is expendable. We are a token agency on the foreign aid front. The budget in 2012 was $375 million. The budget for the agency in 2013 is set at $377.295 million before the cuts begin. At the moment, we have 8,073 PCVs overseas. Of course, we don’t know who just ETed in the last ten minutes. We are currently in 76 countries, more or less. The high point for the agency in terms of . . .

Bender Library Establishes Peace Corps Community Archive The Bender Library is pleased to announce the newly established Peace Corps Community Archive (PCCA) an exciting new joint initiative with the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of International Service. The PCCA will collect and exhibit materials documenting the experiences and impact of individuals who have served in the Peace Corps. The archive will serve as a research level collection for use by students and scholars studying peace diplomacy. The archive also aims to increase awareness of the history of the Peace Corps and interest in serving today. Bender Library is reaching out to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers in the DC area to donate their personal memorabilia. For more information about this exciting new archive or to make donation inquiries, please contact University Archivist Susan McElrath at archives@american.edu <mailto:archives@american.edu> or 202-885-3197. American University recently ranked second in the country for . . .

John F. Kennedy is given credit for the remark, “success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan,” and that phrase can easily be applied to the creation of the Peace Corps. A half dozen names come up when the conversation turns to: who thought of the Peace Corps idea in the first place? Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman in her excellent book All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s, published by Harvard Press, points out that between 1958 and 1965, “nearly every industrialized nation started volunteer programs to spread the message of economic development and international goodwill.” Before that we had Herbert Hoover’s Commission for the Relief of Belgium and the Marshall Plan of the Truman administration. Theodore Roosevelt sent the U.S. Navy on a grand tour of the world following his negotiation of the Treaty of Portsmouth, and Woodrow Wilson brought arms to bear to . . .

[Thanks to Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) we have this blog item.] This remix of JFK’s inaugural speech is very moving. The message is just as real as it was then. It includes two RPCVs. Along the right side of the main film screen is smaller screens with interviews with the speakers. If you link to the Peace Corps films more will come up on the right including JFK talking about the Peace Corps in March ’61 – and others RPCVs speaking about the Peace Corps. JFK50: Let the Word Go Forth “Let the Word Go Forth” is a film of many faces and voices re-creating President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqnRRO3zziI&list=EC0C8EA12816C44568 Executive Order 10924: Establishment of the Peace Corps. (1961) The founding of the Peace Corps is one of President John F. Kennedy’s most enduring legacies. Yet it got its start in a fortuitous and unexpected moment. Kennedy, . . .

Peace Corps Acting Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-83) Writes: Not Your Parents’ Peace Corps in a short essay on Huff Post today, February 25, 2012. She is making the case that PCVs today are “installing solar-powered computer labs to helping communities switch to renewable energy; from linking local entrepreneurs to global markets to developing cellphone text messaging services to answer questions about HIV.” All of that may be true enough, but did any of today’s PCVs have to operate a Gestetner Machine? Let them ask their PCV parents what a tough, messy job  was really like in days of old. Not sure if this was Carrie’s title for her article…It might have been crafted by the new press person at the Peace Corps, someone who never met a Gestetner Machine, let alone operated one. That being said, Carrie has a nice piece in the Huff Post detailing was is true today, at it . . .

The NPCA sent the following announcement out saying that they have hired an RPCV who used to work for ACDI/VOCA. (I have no idea what ACDI/VOCA means, but I hope it is not contagious. Using an acronym such as ACDI/VOCA without any explanation of what it means is another example of how out of touch with the Peace Corps Community the leadership of the NPCA is. They think the whole Peace Corps Community lives inside the Beltway and daily uses such acronyms and terms. Okay NPCA take this: ‘I’m going to hit an 8.5 degree Burner SuperFast with a Fujikura Motore Speeder 8.0 X shaft on the back side and play a Pro Vix and hit a cut fade into the terrace green at Twelve as the TifEagle Bermuda is overseeded with rye and I have thirty degrees helping and everything is running towards the water.’ How’s that for making myself understood? Anyway, this is what the NPCA had to . . .

Washington, D.C., February 15, 2013 – Harris Wofford, who was instrumental in the formation of the Peace Corps, was honored today with the Presidential Citizens Medal. Peace Corps Acting Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet released to following statement in congratulations. “I cannot think of a more deserving American for this prestigious honor. Senator Wofford’s lifetime of good and gracious service to our country has been exemplary, and he has inspired and guided generations of Americans to serve our communities, our country and our world. Congratulations from everyone in the Peace Corps family to Senator Wofford on this special honor that he so richly deserves.” Senator Wofford worked closely with Sargent Shriver to create the Peace Corps after it was established by executive order on March 1, 1961. Wofford served as the Peace Corps’ special representative to Africa and as Country Director in Ethiopia from 1962 to 1964. Upon returning to Washington, he . . .

[John Gomperts is the former Director of AmeriCorps and is currently President and CEO of America’s Promise. This morning he sent out a message to his staff about Harris Wofford being bestowed with the Citizens Medal. John is a nice guy and he has allowed me to reprint part of his message for our Peace Corps Community.] This is part of what John had to say to his staff about Harris. Also, he had a wonderful and  ‘typical’ Wofford tale to tell. It is a story that those of us who know Harris can certainly relate to: John Gomperts: “In a ceremony at the White House this morning, the President bestowed the Citizens Medal on my and our colleague, mentor, and friend Harris Wofford. I can’t think of a more deserving winner, and I am happy not only for Harris but for all the people and organizations he has influenced, including especially America’s Promise. It . . .

Former Senator Harris Wofford, one of the original Mad Men with Shriver in creating the Peace Corps, and later the first Country Director in Ethiopia (1962-64) will receive the Presidential Citizens Medal,  the nation’s second-highest civilian honor, that recognizes American citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens. Wofford will be honored along with other recipients at a White House ceremony this Friday, February, 15. Wofford’s first claim to fame came in  1941 as a teenager when he created the American Student World Federealist Movment. As Harris tells it on a wintry Saturday night early in ’41, when he was 14-year-old in Scarsdale, New York, he was taking a bath, reading his Latin lesson, and listening to the radio. He got caught up listening to Clarence Streit, who was committed to the notion of an Atlantic union of democratic nations federated along lines similar to those . . .

Peace Corps Global FROM:            Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Acting Director SUBJECT:      Peace Corps Volunteer Nicholas M. Castle I am deeply saddened to inform you that we have lost a member of our Peace Corps family.  Yesterday, Peace Corps/China Volunteer Nick Castle, 23, died after a short illness in Chengdu, China.  His parents were at his bedside at the time of his death.  Nick arrived in China on June 29, 2012, to begin his pre-service training and was sworn in as a Volunteer on August 27, 2012.  He was serving as an education Volunteer at Tongren University in Guizhou Province, where he taught university-level English.  He was scheduled to complete his service in July 2014. Nick was an outstanding Volunteer who was dedicated to helping others and his passing is mourned by the entire Peace Corps community, including his fellow Volunteers in China, Peace Corps/China staff, and his students.  We are taking the . . .

“[Peter Tinti (Mali 2008-10) is a freelance journalist, writer and analyst based in Bamako, Mali. He writes and reports on issues pertaining to politics, culture and security in West Africa. He has lived and worked in the region since 2008, first as a PCV in Gao, northern Mali.]   February 9, 2013 Mali War Shifts as Rebels Hide in High Sahara  By ADAM NOSSITER and PETER TINTI DAKAR, Senegal – Just as Al Qaeda once sought refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, the Islamist militants now on the run in Mali are hiding out in their own forbidding landscape, a rugged, rocky expanse in northeastern Mali that has become a symbol of the continued challenges facing the international effort to stabilize the Sahara. Expelling the Islamist militants from Timbuktu and other northern Malian towns, as the French did swiftly last month, may have been the easy part of retaking . . .

I read recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education how Facebook was destroying Study Abroad Program. The writer, Robert Huesca, a professor communications at Trinity University in San Antonio, made the point that while living for six months in Benin he was “particularly attuned to the issues that concern professionals in study abroad-ranging from cultural immersion to health and safety. All of those issues seem to have been transformed for good and for ill by advances in information and communication technology.” After living with 10 students in the town of Ouidah, watching all of them (and himself!) operate in a new cross-cultural setting, equipped with “computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, iPads, iPods, and other media players loaded with movies, television programs, and music,” he came to the decision that  “we need to add technology management to curricula aimed at preparing students to gain as rich an experience as possible from . . .

Three Washington state colleges swept the nation in their respective size categories for having the most PCVs in the Peace Corps. It’s the first time WWU has been ranked No. 1 and the fifth time for the University of Washington. Five other universities in Washington also made the Peace Corps 2013 Top Colleges rankings, all in the small school category: Seattle University (No. 5, 19 alumni currently serving), University of Puget Sound (No. 8, 18 alumni), Evergreen State College (No. 8, 16 alumni), Whitman College (No. 8, 16 alumni), Pacific Lutheran University (No. 18, 15 alumni). The full top 25 rankings for each school size category – plus all-time and graduate school rankings – can be found on the Peace Corps website: www.peacecorps.gov Gonzaga University climbed to No. 1 nationwide among small colleges and universities whose graduates serve in the Peace Corps. Twenty-four Gonzaga undergraduate alumni are serving overseas as Peace . . .