Peace Corps Worldwide

President Barack Obama announced Friday that he will ask Congress for the power to merge agencies to streamline government and improve efficiency. Obama wants to merger the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade representative and other independent business agencies into a new, unnamed Cabinet agency to create a more efficient experience for businesses. “Right now, there are six departments and agencies focused primarily on business and trade in the federal government – from the Commerce Department to the Small Business Administration to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office,” Obama said in remarks from the White House. “In this case, six isn’t better than one.” The president needs Congress to enact his idea. What next? The Peace Corps and AID? USIA all one Happy Agency? STAY TUNED!

Lost Touch: Peace Corps In Search Of 100,000 Old Volunteers January 11, 2012 by Corey Flintoff   Paul Vathis/AP Five Peace Corps trainees look at a map of the Philippine Islands in University Park, Pa. on July 31, 1961. The trainees will go there upon completion of training as teaching assistants in rural elementary schools. The National Peace Corps Association says it’s looking for about 100,000 good volunteers. They’re people who served in the overseas development program at some time in its 50-year history but later lost touch with their former colleagues. NPCA President Kevin Quigley says there’s no complete list of the 200,000 Americans who volunteered for the program, in part because key records were lost during its early days. “When the agency was in its infancy [in the early 1960s], a lot of systems for tracking former volunteers just didn’t exist,” Quigley says. The Peace Corps’ first director, . . .

I have written before about the Peace Corps’ first photographer, Rowland Scherman.  I got to know Rowland  in Ethiopia in the winter of 1962-63 when journalist Jim Walls and Scherman toured many of the Peace Corps countries writing about and taking photos of new PCVs. After his Peace Corps years, Rowland went out on his own as a free-lance photographer and became famous in other arenas. Here is one story of a famous photo he took on a sunny day in 1963. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhuSyFHGes0

I thought I might continue with a few more tales of Mad Men & Women at the Peace Corps in the early days when Headquarters was located in the Maiatico Building across from the White House and the agency had more clout in D.C. than it would ever have again. As we know the agency attracted to Washington the ‘best and the brightest,’ all of them wanting to work in the Kennedy Administration, with the majority wanting to work at the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps also attracted Republicans and one of them was Richard (Dick) Graham from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who worked with Bill Moyers as the Deputy Associate Director for Public Affairs. Dick Graham was one of the nicest guys to work at the Peace Corps, a selfless self-made millionaire in the days when being a millionaire meant real money. Dick had his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from . . .

Bill Moyers, who started out at the Peace Corps at age 27 or so, as the Associate Director for Public Affairs, and later was the Deputy Director under Shriver, and then continued to star in a variety of arenas, is back on public television this month with a new interview show, Moyers & Company. He left PBS 20 months ago, retiring from Bill Moyers Journal, but as he told Elizabeth Jensen in the New York Times (Sunday, January 8, 2012) he just needed a break. He wasn’t retiring. After all, he’s only 77! The new program by Moyers will be a lot like his last one: thoughtful interviews with thinkers. Upcoming will be interviews with David Stockman, Reagan budget chief; John S. Reed, the former Citibank executive; poet Rita Dove, and a four-hour chat with the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, on their work Winner-Take-All Politics. The catch to  his return . . .

The Boston Globe is reporting that Joe Kennedy III,  a 31-year-old prosecutor and son of former Rep. Joe Kennedy, might run for the Democratic nomination of the redrawn Barney Frank district seat. Kennedy, a Harvard Law School graduate, was in the DR as a PCV. If he were to win, he would be the fifth RPCV in Congress. He is also the first in the fourth generation of Kennedys to thrust himself into electoral politics. He is the second Kennedy to join the Peace Corps. A cousin Maeve Kennedy McKean was an English teacher in Mozambique. She currently works at the Department of Health and Human Services.    

Busted Halo is a blog that I check weekly because I find it interesting, and also it relates to my job as a communication director at a small Catholic college. The blog is a media and ministry outreach to Catholics in their twenties and thirties created by the Paulist Fathers. The discussions are based on the belief that all God’s children are “saints in the making,” and that everyone is called to aspire toward the holiness and selflessness of a Mother Teresa or Saint Francis. At the end of 2011, Busted Halo looked back and remembered important figures who had died during the year. Included was a piece about Sargent Shriver that I read — because it was about Sarge. It was written by Joe Williams, an RPCV from South Africa, who is the head art, graphics and video producer for Busted Halo. After graduating from Texas Christian University with a degree . . .