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Write about Your Peace Corps Experience and Earn an MFA Degree Have you ever wanted to tell the story of your Peace Corps experience or the stories of the people you met in your service? The Master in Fine Arts Program at National University is running a special cohort of students comprised of current or returned PCVs, employees of the National Peace Corps Association, or other members of the NPCA that have been closely involved with the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps Cohort will take three writing workshop classes together that will focus on writing about your Peace Corps experience and explore notable texts by other Peace Corps veterans. All three classes will be led by returned Peace Corps volunteer and noted author, John Coyne. The rest of the classes required to earn the MFA degree in Creative Writing will be taken with our experienced MFA faculty and our diverse . . .

  I came across this article after our 50th Anniversary and saved it. With the Trump Transition Team working on a new Administration who knows what might happen to the Peace Corps, but this ‘kind of thinking’ is in the air, I’m sure, at Trump Tower. • THE FORGOTTEN FAILURES OF THE PEACE CORPS by James Bovard April 1, 2011 This article originally appeared in the April 2011 edition of Freedom Daily This is the fiftieth anniversary year for the Peace Corps. Prior to the creation of AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps took the cake as the most arrogant and overrated government program in Washington. At a time when the agency is being hailed for idealism and almost saving the world, it is worthwhile to consider its early record of debacles and defaults. A 1980s Peace Corps recruiting brochure proclaimed, “Most people talk about world problems. The Peace Corps solves them.” The . . .

On this last day of 2016, I thought I might try and chart the impulses in America that brought about the creation of the Peace Corps–something positive to think about as we wait for 2017–and before all of “our” story is lost in the fog of history.  Most of the early history of the Peace Corps, as we know, lives only as oral history. Still, there are a few key books that spell out in some detail the foundations of the agency. Two important books are The Story of the Peace Corps by George Sullivan, and that has an introduction by Sargent Shriver. It was published by Fleet Publishing in 1964. A second one is Peace Corps: Who, How and Where by Charles E. Wingenbach, with a foreword by Hubert H. Humphrey, and published by John Day Company in 1963. A revised edition by Wingenback was later published by McGraw-Hill . . .

Thanks to the ‘heads up’ from Neil Boyer (Ethiopia 1962-64) Marchers in Trump’s Inaugural Parade Announced  No high school or university marching band in the D.C. area will march in the parade Forty organizations — including several military and veterans groups — will march in President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural parade. Trump’s inaugural committee announced Friday morning which groups accepted an invitation to participate on Jan. 20. DC-Area Marching Bands Opt to Sit Out Inaugural Parade No high school or university marching band in the D.C. area will march in the parade. These groups are set to participate: 1st Cavalry Division Horse Cavalry Detachment – Fort Hood, Texas 1st Infantry Commanding General’s Mounted Color – Ft. Riley, Kansas Boone County Elite 4-H Equestrian Drill Team – Burlington, Kentucky Caisson Platoon, Fort Myer – Fort Myer, Virginia Cleveland Police Mounted Unit – Cleveland, Ohio Coastal Florida Police & Fire Pipes & Drums – Palm Coast, Florida Columbus North . . .

Today I think, Trump might have a chance to help those old bald white guy after all. Perhaps there is light at the end of the Blue Collar tunnel. The good news is that you, (or most of you) “Baby Boom Generation” are retiring. The reason why that is “good” is because Baby Boomers (51-69) make up 20% of the workforce. That means there are more jobs for Generation X (35-50) and those Millennials.(18-34). As for the rest of us, the Silent Generation…well, we are increasingly that. The bad news is the declining manufacturing jobs. They have declined, according to the Labor Department, something like 35% since 1980. Also, I read recently In a New York Times article that thirty years ago the US had had one of the highest employment rates for women. Today that rate has been outpaced by European and other countries. In 1999, 74 percent of . . .

The Peace Corps actually ‘started’ the day after Kennedy inauguration. Kennedy telephoned Shriver and asked him to form a presidential Task Force “to report how the Peace Corps could be organized and then to organize it.” Shriver telephoned Harris Wofford and they rented two rooms for offices in the Mayflower Hotel, downtown in Washington, D.C. They were the “Task Force.” They began to call people they thought might know something about international development and living in the developing world. One name led to another. Shriver says that he had no long-term, premeditated vision of what the Peace Corps might be. “My style was to get bright, informative, creative people and then pick their brains.” The first official meeting of the Task Force was scheduled for February 6. Kennedy had requested a report from Shriver by the end of February. Shriver would later say, “I needed help badly.” On Sunday night, . . .

Brent Ashabranner (1921 -2016) was Deputy Director of the Peace Corps between 1967 and 1969. Following service in World War II, graduate school and a brief period of teaching, Brent spent thirty years working overseas, including starting the first Peace Corps program in Nigeria and becoming director of Peace Corps programs in India. Prior to his retirement in 1985, Brent worked for ten years with the Ford Foundation in the Philippines and Indonesia. It was in retirement that he wrote more than 30 books on cross-cultural topics for junior readers, books that resulted in more than 40 awards. The following is from Peace Corps OnLine, a website produced by Hugh Pickens (Peru 1970-73) Brent Remembers: I have never had any doubt that the books I read as a boy influenced the direction of my life, including my life as a writer. I grew up in a small Oklahoma town, but I was fascinated . . .

  Far Away In the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift David L. Koren (Nigeria 1964–67) First Peace Corps Writers Edition June 2016 346 pages $18.85 (paperback) Reviewed by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961–63) • The Biafran war for independence from Nigeria ended 47 years ago (1970), yet the horrors that occurred before and during the civil war linger. So does the idea of Biafra: an independent African state created by Africans, not by a European colonial power drawing the boundaries, a modern state with an efficient and productive democratic government. They seem to have a life of their own. One of the reasons for this was a dramatic humanitarian airlift operated from the remote island of Sao Tome to shuttle food and medical supplies into Biafra for a civilian population being deliberately starved into submission. The airlift was organized by a hodgepodge of church and humanitarian organizations, contracted planes and . . .

The most famous recruitment trip of them all was in early October 1963. It was the one that gave rise to the term, Blitz Recruiting. Gale put together five advance teams and five follow-up teams. Each team spent a week in southern California and then a week in northern California, visiting every major campus in both areas. Coates Redmon sums up the ‘teams’ in her book. “One advance team consisting of Nan McEvoy, then deputy director of the Africa Regional Office, and Frank Erwin, then deputy director of Selection, were assigned first to Los Angeles Sate University (where there was only modest interest in the Peace Corps) and next to San Francisco State University (where there was considerable interests). Bob Gale, Linda Lyle (his secretary) and Doug Kiker took on the University of Southern California in the south and then the University of California at Berkeley in the north. Gale had friends at both.” . . .

The five RPCVs named here were PCVs in the ’60s, ’70s, and 2000s.  Tino Calabia (Peru, 1963-65) spoke to them and had meetings with the State Department-funded national organizations called Volags. If you have questions or interest in helping out please contact Tino at: fcalabia36@gmail.com Tino Calabia Writes: As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees posts new stats on refugees — 65 million and climbing — some TV viewers change channels, and newspaper readers turn the page.  Others vent their rage against those they fear as including hordes of terrorists disguised as refugees or others whom they damn as “illegals.” But show photos of a Syrian toddler bleeding, covered with dust from rubble caused by bombings or of a three-year-old tike lying facedown dead like the flotsam littering the rest of the seashore.  These photos shock and awaken Americans to the plight of desperate asylum seekers.  Many Americans ask what can be . . .

On the Edge: An Odyssey Stephen E. Murphy (Regional Director, Inter-Americas Region, 2002-2003) Odyssey Chapters (via CreateSpace), Seattle, WA September 23, 2016 188 pages $15.95 paperback, $5.99 Kindle https://www.amazon.com/Edge-Odyssey-Stephen-Murphy/dp/1536851876 Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) Harvard missed an opportunity to welcome young Steve from Seattle, and work on his MBA with Boston’s finest…their loss, our gain! On the Edge, An Odyssey takes you from the Northwest to Boston to Rio and South America. Full of surprises and adventure, as well as serving in the administrations of Bush 1 and Bush 2. I found his book both exciting and a joy to explore funny moments as Steve becomes an adult in Brazil. But before he can continue, Vietnam calls and he becomes a US Navy Lieutenant junior grade, and finds himself as a participant in the war. Steve, or as the Brazilians call him…Estive, never allows grass to grow under his . . .

In 1962 the Peace Corps received 20,000 applications, compared with 13,000 in 1961. Nevertheless, Recruitment couldn’t keep up with the staggering period of growth. For example, in 1961 the Peace Corps was in 9 countries. A year later they were in another 32 countries. Then, in the early months of 1963, there was a dramatic decline in applications, and the Peace Corps suffered its first shortfalls. This happened just as more and more countries were asking for Volunteers. The head of Recruitment–called then ‘Chief of the Division of Colleges and Universities–was the former Dean of Men at Vanderbilt University, Samuel F.  Babbitt. Sam Babbitt was a low-key kind of guy. His idea for recruitment was to set up a single Peace Corps faculty contact on campuses all across the country with instructions to conduct a continuous but unaggressive information program. Babbitt wanted to win the Peace Corps a reputation for honesty and thoroughness which, he told everyone, “would produce a . . .

FOUR-CORNERED FLYOVER By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) The day after Donald Trump’s victory, Susan Watson and Gail Jossi celebrated with glasses of red wine at the True Grit Café, in Ridgway, Colorado. Watson, the chair of the Ouray County Republican Central Committee, is a self-described “child of the sixties,” a retired travel agent, and a former supporter of the Democratic Party. Forty years ago, she voted for Jimmy Carter. Jossi also had a previous incarnation as a Democrat. In 1960, she volunteered for John F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. “I walked for Kennedy,” she said. “And then I walked for Goldwater.” These days, she’s a retired rancher, and until recently she was a prominent official of the Republican Party in Ouray County. “This is the first time in forty years that I haven’t been a precinct captain,” she said. “I’m fed up with the Republican Party.” Initially, neither of the women . . .

A DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION By George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Four decades ago, Watergate revealed the potential of the modern Presidency for abuse of power on a vast scale. It also showed that a strong democracy can overcome even the worst illness ravaging its body. When Richard Nixon used the instruments of government to destroy political opponents, hide financial misdoings, and deceive the public about the Vietnam War, he very nearly got away with it. What stopped his crime spree was democratic institutions: the press, which pursued the story from the original break-in all the way to the Oval Office; the courts, which exposed the extent of criminality and later ruled impartially against Nixon’s claims of executive privilege; and Congress, which held revelatory hearings, and whose House Judiciary Committee voted on a bipartisan basis to impeach the President. In crucial agencies of Nixon’s own Administration, including the F.B.I. (whose deputy director, Mark . . .