The Peace Corps

In April, 1962, Sheldon was joined by his Deputy Director, Ted Banks, who thereby became the first overseas administrator to be transferred by the Peace Corps from one country to another (in his case, from Chile to Colombia.) On July 25, 1963, Banks was named the first Peace Corps Director in Uruguay. By then, the program in Colombia had become the second largest in the world with 561 Volunteers overseas and in training, and enough additional programs had been negotiated to raise the strength of the effort in Colombia beyond that in the Philippines, which had been first. A second group of 31 rural community development workers arrived in Colombia on May 18, 1962. On November 12 of the same year, the third group – consisting of 69 urban community development workers all of whom had taken training in the slums of New York – arrived in Bogota. Just before . . .

  I met “41” when he was VP with President Reagan. We met in Conakry, Guinea in March 1984. He led the U.S. delegation attending the funeral of Guinea’s first president, Ahmed Sekou Toure. I was assigned as his personal escort for the two days he was in Conakry. A highlight of that memorable event was when all the non-Muslim heads of state were crowded into a small room located on the side of the Grand Mosque in Conakry. We expected to be allowed into the Mosque from this point. We were crammed into this room like sardines in a can. It felt like a sauna bath with Conakry’s 100 F temperature and 90% humidity, especially as we were all dressed in black suits and ties. Our ambassador got separated from us. He was hopelessly blocked by the crush of the crowd from joining us. We were instructed to take off . . .

The first program to be developed for Latin America was planned for the immense, mountainous country-side of Colombia. Co-administration of this rural community development effort as assigned to CARE in the first private agency contract to be signed by the Peace Corps. CARE offered extended experience in community development work in Colombia, and the agency once counted Derek Singer among its administrators there. When he set out to negotiate a Peace Corps program in Colombia, Singer turned naturally in the direction of his former employer. For both the Peace Corps and CARE, the first Colombia program was an exciting experiment, the first attempt at the kind of community action work which has come to occupy the full time of a fourth of all Volunteers overseas. The 60 Volunteers, all men, who turned this experiment into a practical program, entered training at Rutgers University on June 25, 1961. Together with the . . .

“I’m torn between going into high megaton, overkill, intercontinental ballistic missiles, or the Peace Corps.” Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, 1964 

Timmy Napolitano came to the Peace Corps in March, 1961, “on loan” from the National Institutes of Health. For her, the move was permanent—or as permanent as anything in the Peace Corps—although she remained “on loan” for two months after responding to directions to “come now. We’ll arrange your papers later.” If the Peace Corps is not as hectic now as it was then, a certain hectic quality has continued to linger around Mrs. Napolitano’s career. After helping to organize the Near East-South Asia Regional Office, she settled down to pay particular attention to South Asia when queries about the Peace Corps came from Ceylon. In answer to these queries, Mrs. Napolitano was dispatched on October 9, 1961, to the five-year-old island nation off the southern tip of India. In a stay of four months, she surveyed the island from Jaffna to Matara and from wet western coast to the . . .

(The Washington Post,1997)

 By Robert Fallert (Brazil 1963-65)

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Klaus Heimburg (Ethiopia 2012-14) We Need a High Wall With a Big Gate With Trump using immigration simply for political gain, Democrats need to be the adults and offer a realistic, comprehensive approach. By Thomas L. Friedman Opinion Columnist Nov 27, 2018 LIMA, Peru — Kamala Harris, the Democratic senator from California, recently raised eyebrows when she asked Ronald Vitiello, President Trump’s nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whether he appreciated the “perception” that ICE spreads “fear and intimidation” among immigrants the way the Ku Klux Klan did among blacks. Harris carefully worded her question around the “perception” of ICE — and it was raised in part because Vitiello had once shamefully tweeted that Democrats were “the NeoKlanist party.” Nevertheless, with Harris a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, Republican media pounced on her with variations of: “Hey voters, get this: Democrats think the ICE . . .

  “The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. … Its highest priority is to ensure that Congress has 24/7 access to the nation’s best thinking.”  Its current summary report on Peace Corps Issues, updated on October 12, 2018,  can be read at: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21168.pdf Peace Corps funding is discussed in detail and that is important.  The information helps to answer the question:  What happens to Peace Corps funding after December 7, 2018? The federal government’s budget runs from fiscal year beginning on October 1, and ends on September 30, of the next year.  Congress failed to pass a new budget by October 1, 2018 for fiscal 2019.  Instead, Congress passed a Continuing Resolution, funding agencies at the old 2018 level. For Peace Corps, this means funding continues at . . .

WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen joined USAID Counselor Chris Milligan to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Small Project Assistance (SPA) Program. The joint collaboration has supported more than 25,000 projects and 2,800 training activities in 116 countries over the past three decades. On Monday, at a co-hosted event held at Peace Corps headquarters, Director Olsen shared success stories and the results of a new, jointly-funded external report that evaluated the program’s effectiveness. “Whether increasing local water access in The Gambia, developing waste management solutions in Tonga, or mobilizing civic sector organizations around food insecurity in Macedonia, the SPA Program helps to catalyze community-led development,” said Director Olsen. “Time and again, we have seen the ripple effect of the program go well beyond a single grant, and last long after the end of an individual Peace Corps volunteer’s service. Now we have the hard data to prove it, thanks to . . .

Featherweight boxer Johnny Hood had 165 bouts in an amateur career which took him all over the U.S. in pursuit of expenses and eating money. Sometimes, he fought five and six nights in a row. In amateur tournaments, such as the Golden Gloves tournament in which he won the featherweight championship of Michigan, he sometimes had to take on three opponents in one night. Born and raised in Columbus, Mont., where the Yellowstone river pours out of the Rocky Mountains, Johnny Hood felt an early attraction toward Mexico. “I was bumming around Mexico one summer when I ran out of money,” he remembers. “I decided I would take my boxing and turn pro, but I didn’t know enough Spanish at the time to tell whether the agent said I would get 60 pesos for four rounds or four pesos for 60 rounds. You can guess which figure was correct.” Before . . .