The Peace Corps

Agency history, current news and stories of the people who are/were both on staff and Volunteers.

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Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Netflix CEO RPCV Reed Hastings to discuss Spirit of Service and Idealism
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Peter Hessler’s “Talk Like an Egyptian” article in current New Yorker
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NPCA endorses Senator Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) budget for 15,000 Peace Corps Volunteers
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Kennedy Library, NPCA and BARPCV commemorate JFK 100
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“An RPCV writes home from China” — Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana)
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RPCV Gulf Coast, Florida awards Project Light Manatee
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More background on today’s Peace Corps budget
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Peace Corps Budget on the Firing Line
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The Peace Corps in the Time of Trump, Part 9
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From the Atlantic Monthly–James Fallows Remembers Charlie Peters
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Do you remember this 1984 PCV tragedy? (Togo)
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Dr. Brendan Goff speaks on the Peace Corps: The New Frontier in Action
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Senator Tim Kaine Writes RPCV Dan Campbell (El Salvador)
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Looking for an Editor to Help You Write Your Book? Check Out RPCV Chuck Lustig!
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The Peace Corps in the Time of Trump, Part 8

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Netflix CEO RPCV Reed Hastings to discuss Spirit of Service and Idealism

  Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao, who was briefly a director of the Peace Corps (1991-92), and RPCV Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (Swaziland 1983-86), will reflect on their experiences as leaders in government and business and discuss the need for a spirit of service and idealism. The talk will be moderated by Ann Compton, former White House correspondent for ABC News. The discussion, “Inspiring a Sense of Service and Idealism,” will highlight the evolution of the Peace Corps and how its ideals remain relevant today—five decades after its founding.  The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 18, in the Coolidge Auditorium on the ground level of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.  Tickets are not needed, but an RSVP is required to specialevents@loc.gov. In recognition of the centennial of the birth of President John F. Kennedy, . . .

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NPCA endorses Senator Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) budget for 15,000 Peace Corps Volunteers

  Dear friends, The National Peace Corps Association is proud to endorse “Rethinking the Battlefield,” Senator Murphy’s alternative budget proposal representing a powerful vision for American leadership in International Affairs. This proposal includes funding for 15,000 Peace Corps Volunteers by 2022. We are forwarding you NPCA’s press release in the hopes that you can push it out into the public media space (print and online), either yourself or through your media contacts. And if you can help NPCA build our media contact list, we’d appreciate it even more! Just reply to this email or contact us at news@peacecorpsconnect.org. Though the vision of 15,000 volunteers is an exciting one, we know it will be an uphill battle in the next few months just to maintain level funding of $410 million for Peace Corps and $60 billion for International Affairs. For this reason, we need all the media support we can get! With . . .

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Kennedy Library, NPCA and BARPCV commemorate JFK 100

  JFK100 MAY 27, 2017 @ 2:00 PM EST John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Columbia Point, Boston, MA The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is proud to partner with National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) and Boston Area Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (BARPCV) to host the Peace Corps community at a centennial commemoration of the birth of President Kennedy. Since President Kennedy founded the Peace Corps in 1961, over 225,000 Americans have served as Peace Corps Volunteers in 141 countries around the world. Peace Corps Volunteers embody core American values of cooperation, understanding, and peace. And beyond service, Volunteers return home to carry out the “Third Goal” of Peace Corps – to promote a better understanding of the countries in which they served. Whether as educators, entrepreneurs, humanitarian aid workers, public officials, community leaders, and fellow citizens, RPCVs continue to live by these ideals and share the . . .

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“An RPCV writes home from China” — Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana)

  It’s bad enough we have a president who is described as a narcissist but it’s even worse when he is combined with a China policy that is schizophrenic. I was reminded of that condition the other day. I heard Sen. Cory Gardner, a 42-year-old Republican from Colorado, open a think tank’s discussion about China’s “fault lines”…and “instability.” He is chairman of the Senate foreign relations subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and international cybersecurity policy. His remarks swerved from the threatening (“the United States will deploy every economic, diplomatic and, if necessary, every military tool at our disposal to deter Pyongyang and protect our allies”) to the conciliatory, recognizing that China’s rise has taken 500 million people out of poverty and hoping for a peaceful relationship. His talk echoed both the thundering and more reassuring cool breezes coming from on high in the Donald Trump administration. His secretary of . . .

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RPCV Gulf Coast, Florida awards Project Light Manatee

Thanks to a ‘heads up’ from Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96) about the RPCV Gulf Coast, Florida group which has made great strides during the past few years fulfilling the Third goal of Peace Corps. The RPCVs have done a number of community projects: box gardens for children at a Sarasota library,  highway clean-up, sharing their Peace Corps experiences with library displays in Manatee and Sarasota Counties, making presentations to schools and colleges in the area, and a radio program of RPCV interviews. Their latest milestone was the presentation of an award of $800 to Project Light Manatee for exemplifying the spirit of the Third Goal, helping people in our community to become full-fledged and thus contributing members of the community.  Project Light teaches English to immigrants, mainly Hispanic and Haitian. It has been providing this important service to thousands of immigrants and others for twenty years or more.  Project Light was extremely . . .

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More background on today’s Peace Corps budget

Bill Moyers tells the story of how when he and Shriver went to talk to Vice President about getting the Peace Corps approved by Congress, LBJ took Moyers aside and told him, “don’t sell the Peace Corps, sell Shriver.” And that’s what Moyers did. Late in the afternoon—after a full day at the Peace Corps Headquarters in the Maiatico Building across from the White House and Lafayette Square –Shriver and Moyers would go downtown and “walk the halls of Congress” peering into open doorways to see who was still working and seek out Congressman and Senators as if they were two Girl Scout girls selling cookies. They’d introduce themselves and talk about the Peace Corps. Or Shriver would talk about what PCVs would do in the Third World and Moyers would “sell” Shriver and what this man could do with this new government diplomacy. Well, as we know, it worked. . . .

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Peace Corps Budget on the Firing Line

Last night on Hard Ball Chris Matthews (Swaziland 1968-70) was asking his panel for “something he didn’t know” and one commenter said the Secretary of State had gotten much of AID’s budget restored. Matthews asked immediately, “what about the Peace Corps?” The reply was “I think Peace Corps is okay, the politics behind it are so strong.” The reason that they are strong is that NPCV president Glen Blumhorst (Guatemala 1988-91) led the efforts to generate a record number of signatures from 175 members of Congress to sign a “Dear Colleague Letter” for funding for the Peace Corps at no less than $410m for FY 2018. Also significant was that the Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet spent the last two weeks of her directorship walking the halls of Congress talking to congressmen and senators about supporting for the agency in the upcoming budget. Rumors are that the Senate will also . . .

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The Peace Corps in the Time of Trump, Part 9

Carol Bellamy left the agency on May 1, 1995, and for several weeks it appeared that Harris Wofford (Ethiopia CD 1962-1964), a central figure in the creation of the agency, might become the new director. Clinton, however, had other plans and Wofford was asked by the president to take over and ‘save’ the new National Service Corporation. In August, Mark Gearan, then in the press office of the White House, and a political type, was named the next Peace Corps Director. Gearan was Director until August 1999, a total of four years and proved to be an outstanding director. I am indebted to Mark for taking an idea of mine—the Crisis Corps—and making it a reality. I had previously floated the idea of a “Crisis Corps” in a memo to Carol Bellamy who was intrigued by the idea but she didn’t last long at the agency. However, shortly after Gearan . . .

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From the Atlantic Monthly–James Fallows Remembers Charlie Peters

Thanks to the ‘heads up’ from Dan Campbell (El Salvador 1974-77) How to Reverse the Resentful, Unequal, Uncaring Parts of American Culture—-From the Atlantic Monthly A new book by Charles Peters (PCW/Staff 1961-65) looks to the past to address the problems of the contemporary United States Stories From Another Time, for Our Times: ‘We Dp Our Part’ James Fallows 8:42 AM / April 3, 2017 To the extent I spent any time studying in college, it was to learn about American history. The main impression the lectures and readings left on me was the realization that the country has always had big, serious problems. Slavery, violence, corruption, injustice—things were worst-ever during the Civil War, but if you choose your decade, you can name the corresponding set of failures and crises. As I think back to almost any stage in my own lifetime, I can tick off the emergencies of each . . .

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Do you remember this 1984 PCV tragedy? (Togo)

  AN IDEALIST’S SHORT LIFE ENDS IN A KILLING IN A TOGO VILLAGE Published: July 4, 1984 New York Times Twelve months into her tour as a Peace Corps volunteer, Jennifer Lynn Rubin, a 23-year-old from Oneonta, N.Y., seemed finally to have come to terms with the loneliness of being the sole volunteer in the village of Defale, population 500, in the West African country of Togo. Her letters home told of her trouble adjusting to her relocation from upstate New York. In some letters, Miss Rubin repeatedly mentioned a villager she had befriended, a 19-year-old woman named Gieselle who helped her adjust to the culture in northern Togo, a former French colony. On June 11 Miss Rubin was bludgeoned to death in her home, and the police in Togo have charged Gieselle with the murder. The police say they believe Miss Rubin was killed in revenge for telling Gieselle’s . . .

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Dr. Brendan Goff speaks on the Peace Corps: The New Frontier in Action

  Dr. Brendan Goff of New College of Florida met Harris Wofford for the first time when Harris was a senator in Washington. It was then that Goff learned of the role Wofford played in the creation of the Peace Corps. Speaking recently at a meeting of the Gulf Coast RPCVs group, he gave his perspective on the creation of the agency. He has kindly agreed to let me republish his presentation to the RPVCs about his studies. Footnotes to this academic article were removed. If interested in Dr. Goff’s writings email him at New College of Florida — bgoff@ncf.edu. • The Peace Corps:  The New Frontier in Action In the fall of 1991, I worked as an intern in the office of Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania. I chose to do my internship with Senator Wofford because of his strong stance on the need for health care reform.  But I was soon . . .

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Senator Tim Kaine Writes RPCV Dan Campbell (El Salvador)

Dan Campbell (El Salvador 1974-77) wrote a letter to his senator– Tim Kaine–asking for support for the Peace Corps in the upcoming budget. I thought we would all like to read it and asked Dan if I might share it with you. Thanks, Dan. • • •  Dear Mr. Campbell: Thank you for contacting me about the Peace Corps.  I appreciate hearing from you. Since 1961, the Peace Corps has challenged nearly 220,000 Americans to serve in over 140 countries and to help people in need.  In the process, Peace Corps volunteers have helped develop hundreds of communities around the world while promoting a better understanding of the American people.  Currently, about 6,800 volunteers, including over 200 Virginians, serve in 64 countries, mostly in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  I strongly believe that this service helps advance the national interests of the United States. I understand the value of . . .

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Looking for an Editor to Help You Write Your Book? Check Out RPCV Chuck Lustig!

Chuck Lustig (Colombia, 1967-68) novelist, editor and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA graduate. Some of his instructors at Iowa: John Irving, John Leggett and Gail Godwin. Currently finishing part one of his four-part Peace Corps hero saga entitled Charging the Jaguar (the story of a PCV turned Colombian drug lord), Chuck Lustig is available for: Writer’s coach therapy sessions by telephone or Skype: Tell me your writing challenges; let me listen and only then suggest possible options/solutions; Line-by-line edits of manuscripts; and Editorial critiques of Peace Corps novels and memoirs. Your immediate opportunity: Subscribe to Chuck Lustig’s monthly ExcitingWriting Advisory. Cost: Gratis. (Chuck has been bringing out a new issue of his newsletter every month for the past 15 years. Content also appears as a blog. For a number of years now, Chuck has been reviewing a different book about writing every month. For sample content, visit my blog at . . .

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The Peace Corps in the Time of Trump, Part 8

Carol Bellamy was nominated to be Peace Corps Director by Bill Clinton. The Senate confirmed her for the position on October 7, 1993. Leaving Bears Steams, where she was managing director, she was Peace Corps Director until May 1, 1995. President Clinton then nominated her to be head of UNICEF. One of Carol’s many claims to fame is that she is the first RPCV (Guatemala 1963-65) to be Director of the agency. How she got the appointing is an interesting and typical Washington story of how people get jobs in D.C. Maureen Orth (Columbia 1964-66) attending a Georgetown party shortly after Clinton was elected mentioned to the president-elect that the Peace Corps never had an RPCV director. Maureen told me, “Clinton’s eyes widened, hearing that news.” It was clear he understood he could be the one to nominate a ‘first” for the job.   Clinton also would nominate Chuck Baquet (Somalia 1965-67) . . .

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