The Peace Corps

Thanks for the “heads up” from Catherine Varchaver (Peace Corps HQ & Kyrgyzstan APCD/Ed & Acting CD 1990-97   Forget new crewed missions in Space. NASA should focus on saving Earth By Lori Garver Washington Post July 23, 2019 Lori Garver is chief executive at Earthrise Alliance and was deputy NASA administrator from 2009 to 2013.   NASA was not created to do something again. It was created to push the limits of human understanding — to help the nation solve big, impossible problems that require advances in science and technology. Fifty years ago, the impossible problem was putting a human on the moon to win the space race, and all of humanity has benefited from the accomplishment. The impossible problem today is not the moon. And it’s not Mars. It’s our home planet, and NASA can once again be of service for the betterment of all. Let’s remember our . . .

Reading About Writing In the Spring 2019 issue of The Authors Guild Bulletin I read a few paragraphs that might interest you on the state of publishing today. In an article entitled Latest Author Income Survey Shows Business of Book Writing in Crisis. “Literary writers experienced the biggest decline in earnings from book-related income (down 27% since 2013), followed by general nonfiction authors (down 8%), raising serious concerns about the future of literature.” In another article entitled Writers on the Brink: The Current Economics of Authorship under the title What’s Driving the Decline? I read: Self-publishing is clearly having a huge impact on author incomes, if for no other reason than that there are more books on the market today than ever before. In 1985, approximately 35,000 books were published in the United States. In 2007, the year the Kindle came onto the market, more than 300,000 titles were published. . . .

Dear Friend — I write following our annual summer Celebration of Public Service in Washington, D.C. It was a pleasure to spend time reconnecting with old friends, alumni and students, former and incoming Fellows, and members of our Senior Advisory Committee. Thank you to those of you who were able to join us. We were honored to hear from President Lawrence Bacow, Honorary Chair of the IOP Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, and our student leaders about the importance of public service and the value of their summer internships. In his remarks, President Bacow eloquently spoke to the importance of the IOP’s mission: “The Institute of Politics underscores the reason that Harvard exists. I think this is a responsibility which we all bear, and that the world has never needed committed, active, engaged citizens more than now….this is a time in which good people need to roll up their sleeves and get involved.” . . .

Yael and Beci are a married couple who’ve decided to turn their love of books into service to others in the Peace Corps. This is their story.

    Peace Corps Documentary World Premier — A Towering Task: The Peace Corps and a Mission of World Peace   Save the date to join the Peace Corps community for the gala premiere of A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps on September 22nd at The REACH at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Watch your inbox in mid-August for details about the premier and how to reserve your tickets. The event will feature Third Goal activities for the whole family and is co-hosted by The Kennedy Center and NPCA. Narrated by Annette Bening, A Towering Task takes viewers on a journey of what it means to be a global citizen from Peace Corps’ founding under John F. Kennedy, through tough times during the Vietnam War and a surprising revival during the Reagan administration, to today’s Peace Corps Volunteers serving at the forefront of some of the most . . .

    Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Joanne Roll (Colombia 1963-65)   The Peace Corps has posted the following notice in the Federal Register to gather public comment on a proposed survey designed to capture information from RPCVs about their post service life, including health status.  Directions on how to post your comment is included in the annoucement.  We will try and get a copy of the proposed online survey.  Here is the notice: “SUMMARY: The Peace Corps will be submitting the following information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (0MB) for review and approval. The purpose of this notice is to allow 60 days for public comment in the Federal Register preceding submission to 0MB. We are conducting this process in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. DATES: Submit comments on or before September 9, 2019. ADDRESSES: Comments should be addressed to Virginia . . .

More than 20 years after Jocelyn Farrington served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Babangatu, Niger she continues to serve her village through NANEY, a non-profit she established to promote sustainable development.  Jocelyn and her board hope that NANEY provides an opportunity for other returned Niger Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) to reconnect with the communities where they carried out their volunteer service in a lasting and meaningful way. In 2018, NANEY invited TCP Global to partner with them to support micro-loans for women peanut farmers. Friends of Nigeria (FON) has partnered with Fantsuam in Kafanchan for almost ten years. In 2019, FON introduced TCP Global to Fantsuam, which now partners with TCP Global to provide affordable micro-loans in Kafanchan. Would YOUR Peace Corps site benefit from a sustainable loan program ?? While Colombia remains our largest program with eight sites, in the last five years TCP Global expanded its zero-overhead, sustainable micro-loan model to underserved communities in Guatemala, . . .

    The Peace Corps mourns the loss of Alan Hale   WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Response Volunteer Alan Hale, 80, of Bellingham, Wash., died in a bicycling accident in his site in the Philippines on July 11. Hale arrived in Southern Leyte province in October 2018 and worked with local officials to improve solid waste management. He delivered training to more than 2,000 people with a focus on eliminating trash burning and littering. Hale was on his second tour as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer Peace Corps as a training officer with Anita Hale in Puerto Rico for three years in the 1960s. A longtime resident of Bellefontaine, Ohio, Hale was a life member of Kiwanis International and a member of Toastmasters International. He volunteered on many boards, including the Logan County Art League. He was also an avid swimmer who had a great appreciation for nature. After graduating from . . .

On March 31, 2019, President Trump announced the United States was cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador because of the migrant crisis.  The Peace Corps website only listed Guatemala as a current Peace Corps site in that group. On April 15, I made a FOIA request for: “the documents which describe how this decision will impact existing  and future Peace Corps programs and Volunteers in Guatemala.” The FOIA was assigned 19-0065.  It took an appeal before I finally received a response on June 20th.  The response was an internal memo, most names  appropriately redacted. The memo was in response to a  serving PCV in Guatemala who had made the same request about the impact on Peace Corps Guatamala.  Here is the important statement from that memo, dated, I believe, April 3, from Joel Frushone, Associate Director Office of External Affairs, RPCV Lesotho  1995-97.   “Hello. Our social media team received . . .

Egyptian writer Yasmine El Rashidi, who lives in Cairo, and is the author of several books about Egypt, as well as an editor of the Middle East arts and culture quarterly Bidoun, did a full page review of Peter Hessler’s The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review Section. Yesmine goes beyond Hessler’s book to point out elements of archaeological history of The Buried—from the Arabic al-madfuna—an elevated stretch of desert near Abydos. She also shares her own personal writer struggles of trying to write about Egypt, admitting, “The challenge, in my case, was that everything felt too close—too personal or intimate either to me, or to people I knew.” In summing up her careful–but positive–review of Peter’s book, she admits, “In reading The Buried, which I admit is the kind of book I might have criticized in the past, I find . . .

He became famous, in part, by dressing like a PCV, as he was in Panama 1969-70. He created on television “the handy-man-hero aesthetic. The rumpled, but somehow polished workman in a flannel shirt, jeans and work boots.” That uniform has come to be synonymous with home improvement television, with variations worn by current HGTV stars like Jonathan Scott of “Property Brothers” and Chip Gaines of “Fixer Upper.” “He  single-handedly shifted the narrative of an age-old trade,” said Chip Gaines in a long article in The New York Times RealEstate Section of the paper this Sunday, July 7, 2019, entitled This Old House’ Turns 40. Bob Vila was the show’s original host in 1979 and was on the show until 1989. He next had his own show, “At Home with Bob Vila.” Since then he has made periodic cameos on the sitcom “Home Improvement.” The Times article writes that to celebrate . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Alana DeJoseph (Mali 1992–94) Leslie Hawke (Romania 2002-04) was already middle-aged when she arrived in Romania for the first time as a PCV. Thirteen years later she is still there, running a nongovernmental organization she co-founded and continuing the work that earned her an Outstanding Citizen Award from the United States Agency for International Development in 2005. A former editor and publishing executive, and mother of actor Ethan Hawke, Ms. Hawke left everything she knew in New York City to join the Peace Corps, trading a Central Park West apartment and leisurely Sunday brunches for life in Romania. “I joined … to give myself time to think about what I ought to be doing, not really expecting to actually find it in the Peace Corps,” she explains one recent afternoon while sitting in her office in the center of Bucharest, the capital. Around her, many of . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dale Gilles (Liberia 1964-66) Dale writes… “I have just posted the following on the two Peace Corps/Liberia Facebook pages that I follow.  As for your readers, whether blue or red, whether they support Mayor Pete or not …. they surely would like to see the Peace Corps included in this narrative.  Why not get behind this to push Pete to include the Peace Corps?” Strange — and unfortunate — that there is no mention of the Peace Corps in Mayor Pete’s plans for national service. May I respectfully request that you somehow reach out to him — and ask your colleagues to do the same — asking him to backtrack a bit and start including the  Peace Corps when he discusses these plans. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/03/politics/pete-buttigieg-national-service-plan/index.html https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8kreEg7itlw&fbclid=IwAR0SXIifLO-QUIYbbwMr1VkJri5_tL0tj-Ft0nu6EHC-DdMYi_rbUqGI_qY

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Bill Josephson (PC/HQ 1961-66) CR – Garamendi Statement on Introduction of the PCRA 06-25-2019