Peace Corps Worldwide

  In the 1960s, twenty-thousand young Americans landed in South America to serve as Peace Corps volunteers. The program was hailed by President John F. Kennedy and by volunteers themselves as an exceptional initiative to end global poverty. In practice, it was another front for fighting the Cold War and promoting American interests in the Global South. This book examines how this ideological project played out on the ground as volunteers encountered a range of local actors and agencies engaged in anti-poverty efforts of their own. As they negotiated the complexities of community intervention, these volunteers faced conflicts and frustrations, struggled to adapt, and gradually transformed the Peace Corps of the 1960s into a truly global, decentralized institution. Drawing on letters, diaries, reports, and newsletters created by volunteers themselves, Fernando Purcell shows how their experiences offer an invaluable perspective on local manifestations of the global Cold War. Fernando Purcell is . . .

  by Bill Bowden Arkansas Democrat Gazette • Touring the backcountry of Turkey, a Peace Corps group came upon a man with a dancing bear. “This is our newest Volunteer,” Ross Pritchard told Sargent Shriver. Then Pritchard made up a name for the bear. “Daddy had a wicked sense of humor,” said Irene Pritchard. Ross Joseph Pritchard, 95, of Fayetteville died Wednesday after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. The bear incident took place in 1964, when Pritchard was the Peace Corps’ representative in Turkey and Shriver was the organization’s first director. Pritchard was born Sept. 3, 1924, in Paterson, N.J. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II. While Pritchard was playing football during officer candidate school, Coach George Cole told him that he should enroll in the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville after his discharge and play for the Razorbacks. So he did. In . . .

  July 11 marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Over the last quarter century, our two countries have built a partnership and friendship founded on shared interests, mutual respect, and people-to-people ties.  Our everyday interactions are highlighted by increasing trade and investment ties, strategic cooperation, and collaboration on humanitarian and legacy of war issues, including the solemn duty of accounting for our wartime missing.  In recent years, we have strengthened and expanded our Comprehensive Partnership, based on a shared vision of a stable and peaceful Indo-Pacific region, as well as respect for each other’s independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political systems.  We commend Vietnam for its outstanding Chairmanship of ASEAN this year, especially in coordinating ASEAN’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and issues related to economic recovery. The ties between the American and Vietnamese peoples grow deeper every . . .

  from the Peace Corps WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody K. Olsen attended a reception at the State Department today to celebrate the signing by Viet Nam of the implementing agreement between the Peace Corps and the Ministry of Education and Training to officially establish the Peace Corps program in English education. The event, which also commemorated the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, included Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell, Viet Nam Ambassador to the United States Ha Kim Ngoc and Deputy Chief of Mission Hoang Thi Thanh Nga. Viet Nam will be the 143rd country to host Peace Corps volunteers since the agency was founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. “We are . . .

  Inspired by the leaders, causes, and music of his youth, Chic Dambach set out to change the world. This is the fascinating life story of a ’60s antiwar and free speech leader who remained true to his values and helped build a more peaceful world. Along the way, he witnessed the torture of a black football teammate, he led a strike for his Peace Corps training group, his best friend and mentor was murdered, he donated a kidney to save his son’s life, faced financial ruin, helped end two major wars in Africa, and created the first Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations. Exhaust the Limits is a compelling adventure story and road map for idealists young and old. The cover is a caricature by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Matt Wuerker. The story of their chance meeting on a river and his vital role in saving USIP is in the . . .

Register for NPCA Town Halls and Peace Corps Connect to the Future Summit We invite members of our community to participate in our Town Halls on July 9-16 and Peace Corps Connect to the Future ideas summit on July 18. To register, login to your NPCA account. (There is a “forgot your password,” option if needed.) You will receive a confirmation email with call in details once you have successfully signed up. Please note: Each session has a separate registration page. You may sign up for as many sessions as you like. All sessions are listed below. To register for each, click on the orange “attending” button with the checkmark by it. A green bar indicating you have successfully registered will now appear at the top of your screen. If you have any problems registering, please contact support@peacecorpsconnect.org.Thursday, July 9 (8 pm EDT) – Peace Corps Funding and Capitol Hill MobilizationSaturday, July 11 (2 pm EDT) – Recruiting the . . .

  The event tonight will be on ZOOM, at 8PM to 9:30 PM EDT. You may also participate by phone. To register: https://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/events/peace-corps-connect-for-the-future If you are not a NPCA member, you will be asked to join – there is no cost. When you have registered, you will be brought to a page with a red box. If you have registered, there will be a check in that box, saying “attending”.  Click on the red box with the check.  You should be rewarded with a green banner which says you have successfully registered. You should check your email.  You should have a message from NPCA with instructions on how to sign in to participate. It will have the sign in link and telephone numbers if you wish to call in, instead. I would advise contacting NPCA directly if you follow these instructions, which I doublechecked today, and are having any problems. . . .

   Dear friends, We are thrilled to announce our discovery of a memoir by Sargent Shriver, We Called It a War, which will be published in January 2021 by RosettaBooks. In the memoir, Sargent Shriver traces his journey in bringing the programs of the War on Poverty to life. We rediscovered the memoir in one of our archival collections some time ago, and are grateful to be able to share it with you in the coming year. For more details about the memoir, we invite you to read the official announcement below. For ease of sharing, the announcement is also on our website. Friends, we thank you for your continued interest in our work. Let’s continue to engage with each other so that we may create a more just, more peaceful society for all of us. — Sargent Shriver Peace Institute Announcement We Called it a War: Sargent Shriver’s Recently Discovered, Lost Memoir . . .

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Dan Campbell (El Salvador 1974-77) • NEW YORK (AP) — The late Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps’ founding director and an architect of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” left behind at least one unfinished project. RosettaBooks announced Tuesday that it had acquired Shriver’s memoir We Called It a War, which he worked on in the late 1960s and was only recently rediscovered. Shriver’s friend and law partner David Birenbaum edited the manuscript, in which Shriver tells of his efforts to fulfill Johnson’s vow in 1964 to end poverty. The 348-page book, pared down from a “very raw” 500 pages, is scheduled for January. “What I learned from working with Sarge, and what I hope readers will discover in reading the book, is his distinctive model of leadership in which policy is shaped by our noblest human values and energy flows from spiritual awareness,” . . .