Philippines

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Review | THE FALLEN by Edna G. Bay (Malawi)
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The Volunteer Who Went onto National Media with His Political Views — Bob Beckel (Philippines)
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Phil Olaleye (Philippines) wins Georgia 59th District seat
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Peace Corps CEO Carol Spahn visits The Philippines to celebrate 61 years of Peace Corps in the Philippines
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Review — THE GECKO IN THE BATHTUB by Janina Fuller (Philippines)
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16 New books by Peace Corps writers — May and June, 2022
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Peace Corps’ 60th year marks US /Philippines’ partnership, amity
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A Writer Writes — Reflections from a Simpler Time (Philippines)
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The profile of the first group to go to the Philippines in 1961
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The Innocents: A Filipina WWII Oral History
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Journals of Peace — Karin Schumacher (Philippines)
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Julie Ellen Fryman (Philippines 2015-17) Tells The Incredible Story of Lola Ko Sa Pilipinas
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Letitia [Lettie] Morse Lladoc (Philippines 1964-66)
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Arnold and Annette Finn (Philippines 1964–66)
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Morton E. Braunstein (Philippines 1966–68)

Review | THE FALLEN by Edna G. Bay (Malawi)

The Fallen: A Novel Edna G. Bay (Malawi 1965-68) Peace Corps Writers December 2022 220 pages $9.50 (paperback) Reviewed by Eugénie de Rosier (Philippines 2006-08) • Edna G. Bay served in the Peace Corps in Malawi in the 1960s. She has published a handful of academic books about Africa, and “The Fallen” is her first novel. Naïve, 30-year-old American Anna Moretti knows little of her mother’s death, an accident in east Africa’s Malawi, where her parents were development workers with the Peace Corps. Her dad, silent about her mother and Malawi for three decades, has just died, after raising Anna alone in the U.S., and she receives her mother’s African diary from her grandfather. Still dissatisfied with unanswered questions about how and why mother died, Anna flies to Malawi to locate and interview her parents’ friends, and learns her dad was accused of his wife’s murder, and was to be tried . . .

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The Volunteer Who Went onto National Media with His Political Views — Bob Beckel (Philippines)

  Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65)  • Robert (Bob) Beckel served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 1971 to 1972. Prior to that, Bob graduated from Wagner College in Staten Island, where he played football and worked for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968. After returning home from his Volunteer assignment, Bob was a graduate school professor of politics at George Washington University in the District of Columbia. In 1977, Bob joined the U. S. Department of State as deputy assistant Secretary of State in the Carter Administration. In that role, he helped to shepherd the Panama Canal Treaty through the Congress to ratification. The following year, he was appointed as Special Assistant to the president for legislative affairs, working on ratification of Salt II and Mideast treaties. Subsequently, Bob was the campaign manager for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign. During that campaign, he became known as . . .

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Phil Olaleye (Philippines) wins Georgia 59th District seat

  Phil grew up in a working class family in Stone Mountain, GA, the son of immigrants. As a youth, Phil had to travel two hours one-way to school each day to receive a decent public education. As soon as he was old enough, Phil began working at Waffle House and Best Buy to help support his single mother and family. These childhood experiences cemented values of sacrifice, dignity in work, and the value of a quality education. Phil attended Duke University as a working student, spending school breaks studying predatory lending policies across Georgia and the Southeast. After working at Citigroup to pay off college loans, Phil left to serve his country in the United States Peace Corps. After three years of supporting an indigenous community in the Philippines, Phil returned to the U.S. to study at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and organize in the Mississippi Delta (Baptist . . .

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Peace Corps CEO Carol Spahn visits The Philippines to celebrate 61 years of Peace Corps in the Philippines

  October 27, 2022   MANILA – Today, Peace Corps Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Carol Spahn, participated in a joint press conference with Philippine National Volunteer Service Coordinating Agency (PNVSCA) Director Donald Gawe. CEO Spahn’s remarks: “I am here this week to celebrate the 61st anniversary of Peace Corps Philippines, witness the tremendous work of our staff and partners in support of Filipino communities, and share how excited we are to welcome Peace Corps Volunteers back to the Philippines in January 2023. In January, 60 volunteers will arrive and work for two years at the invitation of host communities across Luzon and the Visayas in the project sectors of education, youth development and coastal resource management. “I am excited to say that this group will be one of the largest that the Peace Corps has organized since resuming overseas operations in March 2022. By September 2023, I expect more than . . .

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Review — THE GECKO IN THE BATHTUB by Janina Fuller (Philippines)

  The Gecko in the Bathtub: Encounters with Marvelous Creatures by Janina Marie Fuller (Philippines 1978-80) with illustrations by Maggie Demorest Peace Corps Writers June 2022 178 pages $17.50 (paperback) Reviewed by Andy Amster (Philippines 1978-80) • The Gecko in the Bathtub, Janina Fuller’s collection of stories about her interactions with a wide variety of animals, in settings both mundane and exotic, is subtitled Encounters with Marvelous Creatures. And I must say that while reading these stories, I came to realize that I was having an encounter with a marvelous writer, one whose love of nature and respect for its ecosystems and their inhabitants artfully enlists the reader into “allyship” in that love and respect. From the moment I glanced at the “Table of Contents” before settling down to read this wonderful book, I knew I was putting myself in the hands of an assured and engaging writer. “So Much Alaska,” “Visit from . . .

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16 New books by Peace Corps writers — May and June, 2022

  To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and/or  to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.  See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a copy along with a few instructions. In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf. Please, please join in our Third Goal . . .

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Peace Corps’ 60th year marks US /Philippines’ partnership, amity

  by Philippines’ BUSINESS MIRROR OCTOBER 13, 2021   The first Peace Corps volunteers comprised of teachers arrived on October 12, 1961. THE United States Peace Corps, the US Embassy in the Philippines, the Philippine government and other partners held a virtual event to commemorate the American Peace Corps volunteers—more than 9,300 of them—who had served alongside Filipino host-communities across the country since October 1961. Hundreds of former volunteers, host organizations, Peace Corps staff, as well as youth and other beneficiaries gathered online on October 6, as they recognized contributions of American volunteers and their local partners working in education, fisheries, coastal resource management, youth development, and other sectors through the decades. Participants also reflected on the unique ability of Peace Corps volunteers to meaningfully impact and integrate into their host communities as they learned local Filipino languages and lived with Filipino host families. “Peace Corps volunteers have significantly advanced our . . .

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A Writer Writes — Reflections from a Simpler Time (Philippines)

Reflections from a Simpler Time By Ted Dieffenbacher (Philippines 1967-69) The covid-19 pandemic has forced people all over the world to change — to simplify daily living, to isolate themselves from friends, favorite places, and gatherings that had always enriched their lives. What follows is an odd COVID comparison, about a time when I had to make a dramatic lifestyle change during my time in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) from 1967 to 1969. Single and 22 when I arrived in Santiago, Isabela, I was suddenly challenged to change not only my daily routine but also my way of thinking (and what language to think it in). Peace Corps gave each PCV a cardboard book locker — a few shelves in a sturdy cardboard box.  Each had about 60 books in it, and because no two lockers had an identical selection, I was able every so often . . .

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The profile of the first group to go to the Philippines in 1961

  PHILIPPINES Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines will assist in improving the quality of English spoken in rural areas and in raising teaching standards in both English and general science. They will help Filipino teachers of rural elementary schools teach their students to speak better English and increase understanding of scientific principles. Volunteers will be assigned as educational aides on Filipino teaching staffs in four minor regions. They will supplement, not replace, Filipino teachers. The Philippine Government is urging a general, rapid and comprehensive upgrading of education, especially in rural schools where teaching of  English and science is not yet of sufficiently high standard to prepare pupils for technical study. In the Philippines, English is the language of technology, trade, commerce and culture, but during the last five decades the influence of local languages and dialects has so altered spoken English that it is fast becoming incomprehensible to outsiders. . . .

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The Innocents: A Filipina WWII Oral History

  by Diane Rodill (Philippines 1985–87)   Author’s Notes: Pseudonyms were used for the Filipino nationals below for privacy purposes. Mr. “Navarro” was my host-country father.    Introduction I still weep when I reread the oral history notes I recorded 30 years ago. As a child in the 1940s, in a darkened cinema, I watched shadowy newsreels of World War II raging in Europe. I was incapable of comprehending the carnage in the Pacific. Today, Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken has unveiled the cruelty faced by U.S. and Filipino POWs under Japanese occupation. But few have recorded the cruelty, without munitions, imposed on the innocents in my father’s native country. In 1985, I fulfilled a 25-year dream of serving as a PCV in the Philippines. I was further blessed to become part of a wonderful host country family, the Navarros, in Irosin, Sorsogon. Since I lived and worked at the local level, I . . .

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Journals of Peace — Karin Schumacher (Philippines)

Journals of Peace Karin Schumacher (Philippines 1968–70) Monday, November 21 3:30 pm • There was never a doubt in my mind. From the moment I heard him speak of the Peace Corps, as a high school freshman, I knew it was for me. Then, it was a simple dream of far-away places, colorful people and a chance to “help”. The assassination of President Kennedy plummeted me into a shocking realization of the real world – its irrationality and the terrible consequences of self-interested power. His death strengthened my resolve, and I entered Peace Corps training upon college graduation at age 21. I hadn’t yet formed any plans for after the Peace Corps. It was well that I hadn’t, for it was for the experience itself that I shaped my long-term goals. I spent two years in Cebu City, Philippines at the height of the Vietnam War, 1968-1970. I could never . . .

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Julie Ellen Fryman (Philippines 2015-17) Tells The Incredible Story of Lola Ko Sa Pilipinas

Marching On: The Incredible Story of Lola Ko Sa Pilipinas (My Grandmother in the Philippines) by Julie Ellen Fryman (Philippines 2015-17) This story was originally written down on July 30, 2015, the night that it was told to me, so that I wouldn’t forget how my host grandmother looked when she told me these things or how it was that she came to share it with me. It pains me to think that if just a few decisions had been different – if the family hadn’t volunteered to host a Peace Corps trainee at the last minute or if I had been placed in the next barangay (community) over, I would not have had the privilege to sit with my host mother and grandmother that night and listen to how the family I fell in love with was all made possible through the extreme courage and resiliency of the tiny . . .

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Letitia [Lettie] Morse Lladoc (Philippines 1964-66)

Monday, November 21 5:00 pm IMAGINE, President Kennedy has been dead for two years, but it’s amazing how, here on the island of Leyte in the Philippines so many miles away from the United States, you visit barrio homes and there on the wall is President Kennedy’s picture. People here always want to talk about President Kennedy and it’s nice because they talk about him as if he was a close friend. I feel so honored to be part of his Peace Corps. I know years from now I’ll look back at my Peace Corps years as my best years. Jesse and I went walking in the park near the Tacloban capital today. He is becoming very special to me. How am I ever going to leave this place or him. POSTSCRIPT 1988 I didn’t leave Jesse! We’ve been married now for 22 years and have two wonderful children, Billy . . .

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Arnold and Annette Finn (Philippines 1964–66)

Monday, November 21 3:51 pm DEAR PRESIDENT KENNEDY, My wife, Annette, and I began our senior year at the University of Florida in the spring of 1963. We weren’t old enough to vote for you in 1960, but we thanked those who did. We were marching and ducking stones in Gainesville in the summer of 1963 trying to break the color barrier in the local food establishments, eliminate the white-only restrooms and homogenize the bus seating. You were making a tough decision to press on with the Civil Rights Bill. We all knew that what we were doing was right. We loved you. You were young and dynamic. You spoke of things we could understand, relate to, and support. We trusted you. You spoke the truth and seemed to do so with courage. You drew the best from us, the young idealists who thought that we also had a contribution . . .

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Morton E. Braunstein (Philippines 1966–68)

Monday, November 21 6:03 pm ANDY WARHOL PREDICTED in the 1960’s that “in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Well, I was famous, rich, and handsome too for 21 months while teaching in a small city on Mindanao, Republic of the Philippines. The constant attention wherever I went — focused on me, my American background, on my teaching — forced me to be more aware of how I impressed those around me. Naturally, I wanted to present a good image. Working on that image and the interpersonal relationships with co-teachers, friends, and my Filipino “family” contributed greatly to shaping me and my personality. I learned a lot about myself, my values, and what is important to me as an individual and as an American. That is perhaps the most valuable gift I received from the Peace Corps experience; that is the springboard from which I enact John . . .

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