The Peace Corps

  In accepting the presidential nomination, John Kennedy promised “invention, innovation, imagination, decision.” Thirty-nine days after taking office, he established the Peace Corps by executive order and began to keep that promise. Harris Wofford remembers in this long-ago short essay. • The Peace Corps began for me when a call came from Millie Jeffrey, a Democratic National Committee member and active colleague in the Kennedy campaign’s Civil Rights Section (where I was deputy to Sargent Shriver). With great excitement, she told me about Kennedy’s extemporaneous talk she had heard at 2 a.m., October 14, 1960 to thousands of students, faculty, and town people waiting for him in front of the University of Michigan’s Student Union. Challenging the students, he had asked them if they were ready to spend years serving in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Stirred by his question, Michigan students, including Millie’s daughter, had taken around a petition . . .

  It’s a fact of Peace Corps life that a volunteer must learn to get by in a world not his own, not her own. It’s never a perfect adjustment, not a completely comfortable fit. Often you make mistakes, some of which can be serious. Others are hilarious. (Once, at the dinner table with our training family in Asunción, as we were learning Spanish, my wife, Anne, commented that she had been taking notes in her diarrhea, which completely cracked people up and may still rank near the top in their hall of conversational fame.) In our case, our Peace Corps experience of feeling our way, doing our best to understand what was going on, turned out to be good practice for the foreign service, which we joined a few years after returning from Paraguay. Our Peace Corps country was nothing like Bolivia, or Honduras, or Spain, despite the common . . .

  Peace Corps was created in the golden glow of Post-World War II America. That war was won with our fossil fuel based industrial might. With the Marshall Plan, our ideals, our resources, our technology, we rebuilt our enemies, Germany and Japan,  into strong capitalist economics and laid the foundation for their democratic governments. Both countries became our strong, independent allies. At home, the GI Bill gave veterans a college education and support to own a home, building blocks for our growing middle class. Our economy was a golden cornucopia spewing forth millions of products, from a polio vaccine to pastel, scented toilet paper. In his Inaugural Address, President Kennedy acknowledged our wealth and our success with this call: Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but . . .

  Not many people can claim association with an agency spanning nearly 50 years, but our guest can. In the case of the Peace Corps, she’s been working for, with and in it for almost all of the 60 years the Peace Corps is celebrating this year. She’s got a great title to go with that experience — Expert in the Office of the Director. Kate Raftery (Paraguay 1973–75), joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin on March 16, 2021 to discuss her Peace Corps career. • In a half century in and out of the Peace Corps, she’s done it all   Tom Temin: Ms. Raftery, good to have you on. Kate Raftery: Thank you very much for having me. TT: And we should point out, you didn’t work for the Peace Corps continuously, because no one can do that. But tell us how you have been orbiting that agency for all this . . .

    “I joined Peace Corps in 1988 to immerse in meaningful work providing basic needs at the village level, as well as an opportunity for an out-of-the-box experience and time to reevaluate my life.” By Rick Dandes/The Sunbury PA Daily March 6, 2021 | 1:29 PM • At a time when the Peace Corps has suspended all operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic and recalled 7,300 volunteers from 60 countries — a first for the six-decade-old program — six former volunteers with Central Pennsylvania connections recall the value of their “life-changing” experiences and praised the virtues of the far-off locations where they served. Whether assigned to primitive villages in Africa in the 1980s, emerging democracies in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, or more recently to South America, they all joined the Peace Corps out of a desire to serve their country and to help people in need, using skills . . .

  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 Submit your favorite book(s) published in 2020. Send your selection(s) to John Coyne: jcoyneone@gmail.com List what award your selection should be given. The awards will be announced in August 2021. Thank you.

  This was originally posted on Peace Corps Worldwide on February 2, 2014.  Dr. Textor believed that RPCVs should ultimately be the ones staffing Peace Corps administration.  Perhaps in this time of proposing improvement to Peace Corps, it would be good to revisit his ideas. • This is a good time to remember how very much Robert Textor contributed to the Peace Corps. He was one of the original Peace Corps staffers. He believed passionately in the Volunteer and just as importantly, the RPCV. Textor was the  author of the “In, Up, and Out” policy or as it is more commonly known, “the five year rule.” But, he insisted that tenure should be eight years, not five. He envisioned a Peace Corps agency staffed 90% by RPCVs, arguing that the cross-cultural experience of the Volunteer was transformative and should be incorporated into every function of the Peace Corps agency. In the months before his passing, . . .

  The answer is simple . . . this woman! Why? Because . . . She is a woman—63% of all PCVs are women She is a close relative of the President—just like Shriver was to JFK A PH.D in Education—most PCVs are teachers An author (most RPCVs are writers) A person of compassion and understanding, just like all PCVs Who is it? Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden She has a bachelor’s degree and a doctoral degree from the University of Delaware, as well as master’s degrees from West Chester University and Villanova University. She taught English and reading in high schools for thirteen years and instructed adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital. From 1993 to 2008, she was an English and writing instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College. Since 2009, she has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College. She is also . . . founder of the Biden Breast . . .

    by Stephen Franklin (Turkey 1968-70)   I entered the world literally in Peace Corps in the 1960s. Suzanne and I lived in a small, somewhat isolated village in the middle of  Turkey, a place at the end of a long dry plain and a muddy road up a mountain. We had running water one day a week, and sometimes electricity, and the village was closed to the world in the winter when the snow brought the wolves down from the higher places, and if a bus tried to get to the next biggest city, it rode over the fields because they were easier to maneuver than the roads. Later we moved to Istanbul and ran an orphanage for 40 boys by ourselves. We learned about kindness, humanity and compassion for others. We learned about the tremendous power of hope and the great downward pressure of poverty and the cruelty . . .

  Hunting Teddy Roosevelt by James A. Ross (Congo 1975-77) Regal Publishing House 242 pages 2020 $9.49 (Kindle); $16.49 (Paperback) Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-67) • Ah, political machinations, financial shenanigans, international arm-twisting for war or peace, a plot to kill former president Teddy Roosevelt while he’s on an African safari. Crack open James A. Ross’s novel, Hunting Teddy Roosevelt, kick back, and settle down into a romp through a blend of history, true facts, fictional facts, and an ill-fated romance. J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and William Randolph Hearst plot to keep the ex-president in faraway Africa for a year. Morgan wants TR off the political stage, permanently, so he can undo Roosevelt’s trust-busting laws that are a thorn in Morgan’s wallet. Carnegie wants to harness for world peace TR’s passion for anti-crime and anti-corruption, but without Teddy “Rough Rider” Roosevelt, who enjoys killing animals and fighting wars. Hearst . . .

  The Tributes to John and Marian, also, continue. John has been the heart of the RPCV community and Marian’s support of RPCV books and their authors will support that legacy.  I am one of so many RPCVs who have benefited from their generosity  and support.  I will be forever grateful. I appreciate the opportunity to post these thoughts that were written before I knew of the John’s decision. • There are no Peace Corps Volunteers serving now and no dates certain forreturning to host countries. However, there is much interest in looking towards to how the Peace Corps can improve in the future. Representative Garmandi  introduced the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act. (https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/congressman-john-garamendi-introduces-peace-corps-reauthorization-act/) Peace Corps responded to President Biden’s Executive order on advancing racial equity and supporting underserved communities.( https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/the-peace-corps-responds-to-president-bidens-executive-order-on-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/). The NPCA held Town Halls through the summer with RPCVs and has published “Time for a Change” (https://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/articles/now-is-the-time-for-historic-changes-that-includes-the-peace-corps) I think . . .

  I am overwhelmed and humbled by the kind words from all of you about my decision to ET my website. I wish I did have the time, energy, (and age) to keep up the pace, but I am deep into a novel (not about the Peace Corps) that I want to finish before I’m too old to type. For many of us, as you know, the Peace Corps is a passion that just won’t let go. It is the experience that changed us, even if it took us years to realize why the Peace Corps is so important in our lives. Most of us are still connected in some way to our host country, the school where we taught, our host family, friends, and PCVs from our group. Why we even married each other! The Peace Corps is a real pest. It won’t let go. I always said when . . .

I am closing down www.peacecorpsworldwide.org website this month. Marian Haley Beil and I started a newsletter RPCV Writers & Readers 32 years ago. We then shifted to our website in 2000. We started our newsletter in April 1989 as a Third Goal project to promote and encourage stories and books about the Peace Corps and our experiences as a way of educating Americans about the developing world. We had hoped with the website to have a place where RPCVs could share points of view and their own stories. While this has happened, but for the most part our 245,000 plus RPCVs do not look back and reflect on their time overseas, caught up naturally with their current lives, families, and careers. The Peace Corps is history for most RPCVs. I am happy to say that Marian will continue to develop Peace Corps Writers Books imprint where 89 RPCVs and Staff . . .

Experiences in Ethiopia Enriched My Life Jim Skelton (Ethiopia 1970-72) It all began when, as a young boy, I was held spellbound by President John F. Kennedy’s historic inauguration speech on January 20, 1961.  JFK’s incredibly inspiring words about doing something for my country made quite an impression on me, even more than I realized at the time.  Less than two months later, on March 1, 1961, he signed Executive Order 10924 establishing the Peace Corps, and since then nearly a quarter of a million citizens have followed his vision by joining and serving as Peace Corps Volunteers in 133 countries around the world. I was one of those who continued to feel drawn by that vision, and those stirring words stayed with me through high school and college until I finally understood that was how I could do something meaningful with my life.  So, I applied to become a . . .