Peace Corps Worldwide

RPCV writer Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1965-67) filed this story late on Wednesday, May 20,2009, on the “bold new Peace Corps.” I wish I was as confident as others that Congress could override the White House and the budget office, as well as the State Department, and dramatically increase the numbers of Volunteers in the immediate future. I trust the House and Senate to vote for the increase and then not to fund the agency. It has happened before. Anyway, here’s what Larry has to say…. The bold new Peace Corps was born today in room 2172 in the Rayburn House Office Building. It took place as members of the House of Representatives were marking up the Foreign Affairs Authorization Bill authored by Committee Chairman Rep. Howard Berman. For almost every item, the California Democrat kept to the figures in President Obama’s budget, but when it came to the budget for . . .

The Philadelphia Business Journal  presented their 40 Under 40 Awards this month, recognizing 40 individuals, under the age of 40, who are proven performers in their respective industries and communities. This year the ’40 Under 40′ were 29 men and 11 women. And one RPCV! Concetta Anne Bencivenga (Thailand 1992-94) is the CFO and VP of finance and administration for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia. Concetta recently successfully completed a $60 million tax-exempt debt offering which allowed the museum to finance its expansion and relocation. By doing so, the museum managed to save a National Historic Landmark building and relocate in Philly. Concetta also is a blogger for this site, telling us all how (and why) to join the Peace Corps. For 4 years, before getting her M.P.A. at The University of Texas at Austin, she was a top recruiter in the Peace Corps New York Regional Office. Nicely done, Concetta! Congratulations . . .

Robert Textor organizes the “Thirsters” out in Portland, Oregon. I’m on his mailing list. The “Thirsters” reply from all over the world with comments, essays and ideas. As Robert writes, “of the 550 or so Thirsters Worldwide, some 40 are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.  The RPCVs are, in my view, a very special group of people.  Some of them are now in the seventies, others still in their twenties.  Typically, though, they regard their Peace Corps service as the most influential experience of their entire lives. During the recent campaign, Barack promised to double the number of Peace Corps Volunteers.  Many RPCVs and others were thrilled to hear this, if only because it betokened strong support on his part.  Recent budget proposals, though, suggest that he has changed his mind – no doubt due to the current recession.” This is a very smart essay that Textor has sent around that . . .

The RPCVs from India are rallying around Frank Fountain (India 1966-68) for the Peace Corps directorship. He looks like a very good candidate for the position, being an RPCVs, coming from a corporate and non-profit background. Here’s a little of his history. Frank Fountain grew up in Tunnel Springs, Alabama, a rural segregated community typical of the times. He earned a BS in History and Political Science at Hampton University in Virginia and trained at the University of Missouri at Columbia, MO, and served as an Ag Volunteer in West Bengal. After India, Frank was a Peace Corps Training Staff member in California, then worked two years with Robert Nathan Associates in Washington, DC as a consultant to the Neighborhood Improvements Project of the Office of Economic Opportunity’s Community Action Agency. He taught management skills and techniques of community organizing at a time when these powerful non-violent tools for fighting poverty were . . .

Carol tells this story about how she decided to join the Peace Corps. As a senior at Gettysburg College in 1963 she fell asleep while studying in the college library. Waking late at night in the dark, she found herself locked inside the library. She spent the time reading and one of the items she found, was information on the ‘new’ Peace Corps. By dawn’s early light, she had decided to join the Peace Corps. She went to Guatemala as a health volunteer, had her own radio program teaching health, then came back to New York and became a lawyer, state senator, investment banker, and in 1994 the first RPCV Director of the Peace Corps. After that she was appointed head of the United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF), and now is a college president. On Sunday, May 17, she returned to her college to receivean honorary degree along with Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt of Washington, D.C.

I met David Searles back in the mid-nineties in PC/HQ. He had just written his book about the Peace Corps and was visiting the agency and come to see me as I was then editing Peace Corps Writers & Readers in those pre-internet years. David has had careers in international business, government service and education. He was with the Peace Corps for five  years, 1969-71–three years as the country director in the Philippines, and two years at headquarters as a Regional Director for North Africa, Near East, Asia, and Pacific (NANEAP), and as Deputy Director under John Dellenback. He went onto earn a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky and published two books: A College For Appalachia (1995) and The Peace Corps Experience  (1997), both by The University Press of Kentucky. He lives now with his wife in Owensboro, Kentucky. David wrote me after seeing the news about the possible appointment of James Arena-DeRosa. Here is what he had . . .

The Peace Corps dropped the ‘book locker’ in the mid-sixties because of the expense of the books and shipping overseas and perhaps they decided that books weren’t needed in Peace Corps countries. It is true that in some post-colonial African nations book stores are better than what you find in most towns in America. In Ethiopia, for example, when we arrived in 1962, there was a wonderful bookstore, Giannopoulos, located on Churchill Road off the Piazza, and when I was in Ibadan, Nigeria in 1968, I found a great book store there that was connected to the university. Nevertheless, I still hear from PCVs longing for books. If we were reinventing the Peace Corps today, (and it seems that everyone want to do that), I’d say equip all PCVs with laptops for their schools and villages. Giving laptop to the developing world is already being done, of course. And it . . .

In the summer of 1964, Jack Prebis (Ethiopia 1962-64) returned from overseas and was responsible for putting the books together for the 3rd edition of the Peace Corps locker. Here is Jack’s recollection of that job and his collection of books for the famous Peace Corps book locker. Developing the Peace Corps booklocker was the best job I ever had. As sometimes happens with fun jobs, this one fell in my lap. Returning in 1964 from my secondary school teaching stint in Ethiopia, I headed to Our Nation’s Capital, hoping to land stateside Peace Corps work. Back in those days, the Peace Corps was fresh, free-wheeling and unbureaucratic, shot through with idealists. (Thanks in part to the five-year rule, it remains staffed with idealists.) To my good fortune, as I was being interviewed-was it by fifteen people?-the person who had begun work on “the booklocker” was heading back to Chile on staff. . . .

For a short period of time in the very first years of the Peace Corps all Volunteers were given book lockers by the agency. The lockers were to be left behind in schools, villages, and towns where PCVs served as seeds for future libraries. There is some mystery of who first thought to give PCVs these lockers and one rumor has it that the idea came from Sarge Shriver’s wife, Eunice. The first locker was put together by a young foreign service officer who left the agency in the very early days of the agency to teach at Claremont College in California. In a letter that Shriver wrote to the early PCVs about the locker, he said, “We know you need books. This Booklocker of paperbacks and inexpensive publications is designed to meet that need. It includes classics and contemporary writing by both American and foreign authors, as well as . . .