Peace Corps Worldwide

An article about Harris Wofford (HQ 1961, CD Ethiopia 1962-64; and Associate Director HQ 1964-67) and Martin Luther King Jr. appeared in the Washington Post today, written by Krissah Thompson. Here are a few excerpts. For a decade and half, Harris Wofford has taken what Americans do on the national holiday marking the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy personally.During his single term in the U.S. Senate, Wofford (D-Pa.) partnered with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) in 1994 to pass the King Holiday and Service Act. Both men, veterans of the civil rights movement who were friends of King, were fed up and disappointed with what the holiday had become. Rather than a day of unity and service as they had envisioned, the holiday was little more than broadcasts of the “I have a dream” speech and sales at shopping malls. Until last year. That’s when Martin Luther King Jr. Day got a . . .

E. Jackson Allison, Jr. MD/MPH, FACEP (Malawi 1967-69) is a Professor of Emergency Medical Care at Western Carolina University. He also served a 3-year tour with the Peace Corps in Malawi, Central Africa, where he was a public health Volunteer in the bush.  He is best known as a singer/songwriter there, having recorded arguably the most popular song with a message in Malawi — Ufa wa Mtedza (Peanut Flour in Your Child’s Corn Mush).  After Peace Corps, Jack went to medical school, and recently retired after a 30-year career in academic emergency medicine.  He has done three public health stints in Africa — a USAID mission in Tanzania in ‘82, a Project Hope Mission in Malawi in ‘94, and US State Department mission in Malawi in ‘05 — the latter two involved helping to eradicate AIDS in that Central African country.  Since 1967 Allison has raised more than $150,00.00 with his . . .

Late today Aaron Williams sent out another alert on what the Peace Corps plans to do. You can read it all on the Peace Corps website: www.peacecorps.gov. However, for those who want to volunteer for what was called the Crisis Corps, here is what Aaron has to say: “While formal partnerships with Haiti relief organizations have not been established, Peace Corps is currently assessing how we can be helpful in the future. I encourage all Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) interested in possible short-term, high impact assignments in Haiti or other programs around the world to apply to Peace Corps Response. As an RPCV, you have the opportunity to serve again by putting your skills and experience to good use in the places where you are needed the most. Over 500 Americans have served in Haiti as Peace Corps Volunteers and Haiti will forever be a part of the Peace . . .

The Friends of Korea RPCV group has just published an amazing book of the photographs taken by PCVs in the years when they were Volunteers in Korea. As the FOK rightly say, “No Peace Corps group has ever done anything like it.” I borrowed a copy of the book from Jon Keeton (Korea 1965-67; CD Korea 1973-76; Regional Director NANEAP 1984-89) who is President of Friends of Korea, and who first alerted me to this project. The book was edited by Bill Harwood (Korea 1975-77) and is entitled: Through Our Eyes: Peace Corps In Korea, 1966-1981. Printed in Korea, it sells for $50, plus shipping. The idea for the collection of photos and essays, I understand, began in October, 2008, at a reception hosted by our Korean Ambassador Kathleen Stephens (Korea 1975-77) for the RPCVs returning to visit Korea. Old photographs collected for that event showed how much Korea has . . .

I got this list of relief organizations from M+R Strategic Services. They work to build nonprofits and corporations, and they are an organization I trust. They recommend these non-profits in Haiti. The president is Bill Wasserman. I don’t know him, but the co-founder is an RPCV. That’s good enough for me. Here is what Bill sent me today: The tremendous organizations we work with every day at M+R have responded swiftly to the crisis, and we are humbled by their efforts. Many have long experience in Haiti, where their aid workers and emergency response teams are already helping dig through rubble to find survivors, and providing clean water, urgent supplies and medical care for those who have lost everything but their lives. We hope that you will contribute to their efforts, giving as generously as you are able: UNICEF – UNICEF’s field staff is working around the clock to help . . .

If you follow golf at all you know about the new groove regulations coming into effect this year. The volume of grooves has been changed by the USGA, and the groove edge sharpness reduced for clubs with lofts greater than or equal to 25 degrees. These rule was made by the governing body of American golf (United States Golf Association) to reduce the spin on shots played from the rough by “highly skilled golfers” (well, that leaves me out of the mix) and the reason, according to the USGA, is to “increase the importance of driving accuracy.” The USGA also determined that “average golfers playing from the rough hit the green in regulation only 13 % of the time”  so our club requirements aren’t immediately subject to the new rule. We don’t have to go out an buy a new set of club. Also, there aren’t too many amateurs who can win a . . .

Hi John.  I would have liked to know that you planned to publish our correspondence as I might have reviewed it a bit more closely.  Anyway, no harm no foul.  I think this is your way of compelling me to write something more. Also, you called me Roger in the first paragraph, not Robert. Go ahead and put this on the record if you want: It’s not that I’m no longer interested in the Peace Corps as you wrote.  I remain very interested in Peace Corps but unfortunately have come to the conclusion that there is no managerial will to undertake the reforms at Peace Corps that would help it fulfill its initial promise.  Peace Corps, as I have repeatedly written, is a wonderful idea that has been undermined by a terrible system that fails the agency’s larger purpose at every turn. As regards “why didn’t he (Strauss) send them . . .

I recently wrote Robert Strauss (Liberia 1978-80) in the hope of getting him to blog about the Peace Corps and development on our site. Robert, in case you haven’t read him, is an RPCV and former Peace Corps Country Director who does development work in Africa. He is currently living in Antananarivo, Madagascar where he is a writer and consultant and lives with, as he writes, “my wife and daughter in a small house surrounded by a large garden.” Robert is also a serious critic of the Peace Corps and what the agency is doing around the world. He has written articles and Op-eds (one famous one in the NYTIMES) and most recently another article about the Peace Corps  in The American Interest Magazine.” The American Interest Magazine piece is entitled, “Grow Up: How to Fix the Peace Corps. (The American Interest, by the way, is a bimonthly magazine focusing primarily on foreign policy, international affairs, global economics, . . .

A Proposal for the President Shriver introduced Wiggins and Josephson at the February 6, 1961, meeting and distributed copies of “A Towering Task.” From this point on Wiggins and Josephson became the engine room of the Peace Corps. Shriver describes Wiggins as “the figure most responsible” for the planning and organization that brought the Peace Corps into being. Twice more in February Kennedy would telephone Shriver to ask about progress on the Peace Corps. The final draft of the report was done with Charles Nelson sitting in one room writing basic copy, Josephson sitting in another room rewriting it, Wofford sitting in yet another room doing the final rewrite, and Wiggins running back and forth carrying pieces of paper. In his book, Wofford writes about a ‘statement of purpose’ for the new agency. Some of the Mayflower Task Force wanted a single purpose stated. Shriver, according to Wofford, “found the tension . . .

This last month, on December 5, 2009, William J. Lederer, co-author of The Ugly American, died of respiratory failure at Sinai Hosptial in Baltimore. He was 97. Lederer wrote The Ugly American with political scientist Eugene Burdick. They were both appalled at the arrogance and incompetence they saw in the U.S. diplomatic corps in the 1950s. There book is a thinly disguised account of how the United States was squandering billions of dollars and, through bungling and ignorance of local cultures, ceding influence in Asia to the Soviet Union. In the New York Times, Orville Prescott said the book was neither subtle as art nor altogether convincing as fiction. “It deals in too-broad generalizations and oversimplifies too many issues. But as fictionalized reporting it is excellent – blunt, forceful, completely persuasive.” Lederer and Burdick originally wrote their book as nonfiction, only to rework it at the last minute to create . . .

A Towering Task The day after his inauguration, President Kennedy telephoned Shriver and asked him to form a presidential Task Force “to report how the Peace Corps should be organized and then to organize it.” When he heard from Kennedy, Shriver immediately called Harris Wofford. At the time, Shriver was 44; Wofford was 34. They had become good friends during the campaign. Wofford had worked as Kennedy’s adviser on civil rights, and together they had worked on the talent hunt for staffing for the new administration. Initially, the Task Force consisted solely of Shriver and Wofford, sitting in a suite of two rooms that they had rented at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. Most of their time was spent making calls to personal friends they thought might be helpful. One name led to another: Gordon Boyce, president of the Experiment in International Living; Albert Sims of the Institute of International Education; . . .

Meanwhile, back in Ann Arbor On the Michigan campus, after hearing Kennedy, two graduate students – Alan and Judy Guskin – wrote a letter to the editor of The Michigan Daily, the university newspaper, asking readers to join in working for a Peace Corps. (The editor of the Daily, by the way, was Tom Hayden. The paper later won a journalism award for its coverage and support of the Peace Corps movement.) Students began to circulate a petition urging the founding of a ‘Peace Corps,’ though it was not named as such. Then a Democratic National Committeewoman and UAW official, Mildred Jeffrey, learned about the students’ response from her daughter Sharon, who was studying at the university. She put the students in touch with the Kennedy camp. They couldn’t reach anyone until they got Ted Sorensen, who liked the idea of a major speech on the subject, and promised to tell . . .

The Ugly American One of the most important books of the late 1950s was The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. The book’s hero was Homer Atkins, a skilled technician committed to helping at a grassroots level by building water pumps, digging roads, and building bridges. He was called the “ugly American” only because of his grotesque physical appearance. He lived and worked with the local people and, by the end of the novel, was beloved and admired by them. The bitter message of the novel, however, was that American diplomats were, by and large, neither competent nor effective; and the implication was that the more the United States relied on them, the more its influence would wane. The book was published in July 1958. It was Book-of-the-Month Club selection in October; by November it had gone through twenty printings. It was so influential that in later . . .