Peace Corps News

Super delegates like Pat Waak and Sam Farr are super important

With Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama less than 100 delegates apart in the chase for the Democratic nomination, the party's so-called super delegates — roughly 20 percent of the total delegates available — are garnering attention from the campaigns. 

Consider Colorado Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak (RPCV Brazil). Chelsea Clinton called her cell phone and her home, wanting to talk about her mom. Bill Clinton personally asked her to support his wife.  Obama supporters found her private e-mail address, urging her to "fight against back-room deals" and support the man who won the Colorado caucuses Tuesday night.  "I'm sure this is just the beginning," Waak said.

Super delegates are party leaders, members of Congress and other VIPs who get an automatic vote on the convention floor — one that they alone decide. For the first time since the Democrats set up the system, super delegates could hold the balance of power. Read more.

Another RPCV super delegate is California Congressman Sam Farr who served as a volunteer in Colombia.  Bill Clinton has gone to work Thursday trying to win over Farr, the Monterey Bay Area congressman who has yet to declare his preference. Farr was leaving Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, where he was meeting with local health officials, when the former president rang his cell phone. "I told him I was holding my ground," Farr said Sunday. "He said he understood."

Several in the Democratic Party have suggested that superdelegates like Farr should side with the candidate who won their district "to avoid a possible backlash if the popular vote is overturned. But Farr said he's seen strong support for both candidates locally and didn't feel obligated to one. "I think I can use the statistics either way. Read more.

Colombia RPCV Michael Adlerstein to direct $1.9 billion UN renovation project

Colombia RPCV Michael Adlerstein to direct $1.9 billion UN renovation project
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has appointed Michael Adlerstein of the United States as executive director of the Capital Master Plan -- the $1.9 billion renovation project of the organization's New York headquarter complex, according to a spokesperson for the U.N. chief.

"The appointment will enable the United Nations to move forward with the implementation phase of the Capital Master Plan," a statement said, adding the renovation will take place over the next seven years.

Most recently, Adlerstein was the vice president and architect of the New York Botanical Garden.

In addition, Alderstein oversaw the restoration of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Born in New York in October 1945, Adlerstein also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, and has worked as a State Department consultant on preservation issues on numerous projects, including the preservation of the Taj Mahal, the statement said. Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Architects.

Read more about Peace Corps Colombia.

Recent RPCV Obituaries

Obituary for Nepal RPCV Loret Miller Ruppe
Inspired by her mother, who was director of the Peace Corps at the time and who later, was the U.S. ambassador to Norway, Dr. Ruppe served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal from 1985 to 1987. She married another Peace Corps volunteer and moved to Charlottesville where she received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia in 1990. While pursuing a doctoral degree in environmental engineering from the University of California at David, she completed the demanding Program in College Teaching and taught undergraduate classes. Dr. Ruppe organized conferences aimed at encouraging under-represented minorities and women to enter the engineering field. She also organized the National Science Foundation’s First Women in engineering Leadership Conference. She returned to the Washington area in 2003 to work at AID, where in addition to her role on the global climate change team, she also provided technical support on a range of climate-related issues to missions in Asia and the Near East and was a U.S. delegate to negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Dr. Ruppe received her doctorate in 2005. Read More.

Obituary for Jamaica RPCV Bonita 'Bonnie' Mather
Bonnie's life was rich with service to others. After nursing school, her nursing career began in the early 1950s with assignments in Billings, Williston, North Dakota, and Grand Forks, North Dakota. She received her bachelor of science degree in elementary/special education at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and her master's in special education from Eastern Montana College in Billings, going on to teach regular and special education for Great Falls Public Schools until 1972. She also piloted the first elementary program for the emotionally disturbed. Bonnie again returned to nursing at the Montana Deaconess Medical Center (now Benefis East) in various units from 1985 to 1993. In 1995, Bonnie joined the Peace Corps and served two years in Jamaica as a primary health care and health education nurse. Bonnie retired to her residence in Monarch, where her intelligent wit, keen sense of humor, and desire to give to others made her a fast friend to the community. Read more.

Obituary for Pakistan RPCV Richard Bowman
After returning to the United States, he was among the first employees of the Peace Corps, joining in 1961. For two years, he spoke at college campuses and gave television and radio interviews throughout the country recruiting for the Peace Corps. He served with the organization in Pakistan from 1963 to 1966. Read more.

Obituary for Togo Medical Officer Albert E. Henn
He had been a Peace Corps medical officer in Togo in 1968 before working for the U.S. Agency for International Development. During 1970 and 1971, he served as regional medical officer for the Peace Corps in Washington, where he recruited, hired and trained Peace Corps medical staff and helped to formulate Peace Corps health policies; coordinated international emergency care; represented the Peace Corps with other government agencies; and conducted clinical research. Read more.

Obituary for Thailand RPCV Henry Ginsburg, Curator of Thai and Cambodian Collections at the British Library
Introduced to Asia with a stay in India, Ginsburg nevertheless studied Russian at Columbia, then joined the US Peace Corps, which sent him to Thailand. There he taught English in the provincial town of Chachoengsao, 1964-66. His interest subsequently took him to the only viable academic institution where he could pursue the topic of Thai literature, namely the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Under the guidance of Stuart Simmonds, he wrote a dissertation on a set of embedded Thai fables, progeny of the Sanskrit Pancatantra, that, as can be learned from his 1975 scholarly article on the subject, serve to discourage humans from allowing identities to be perverted (don't marry a nymph, and remember that the mythic Garuda bird lost his credibility when he allowed the birds he ruled over to see him featherless while moulting). Read more.

Obituary for Malaysia RPCV Norman Leo Haug
He served in the Peace Corps from 1964 to 1966 and was stationed on a Malaysian island where he was often the only physician for a population of several thousand. After the Peace Corps, he joined the Army. While serving in Vietnam, he narrowly survived the Tet Offensive. He was a volunteer physician after the 1998 Hurricane Mitch in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and received many awards including the Colorado Rural Health Excellence Award in 1999, the Civis Princeps Award from Regis University in 2001 and the National Rural Health Practioner of the Year in 2003. Read more.

Memorial tree planted for Uzbekistan RPCV Melissa Reynolds
Reynolds, who was in her second year of the sociology and anthropology masters program, was studying to become a historical archeologist when she came to ISU in 2005. Born in the Netherlands, Reynolds joined the Peace Corps for two years and taught English to elementary students in Uzbekistan before attending ISU. She aspired to become an archaeologist when she was in elementary school and was well on her way to achieving that goal. Read more.

Obituary for Colombia RPCV Bill Bullard
Mr. Bullard retired in 1976, and he and his wife promptly joined the Peace Corps, spending 1 and a half years in Colombia helping to plan new national parks there. Most of the volunteers were much younger, but "we could keep up with them pretty well," Jean Bullard said. Read more.

Obituary for Chile RPCV Charles Grier Johnson Jr.
After graduating from Glassboro High School, he earned a bachelor's degree in forest resource management from the University of Idaho in Moscow in 1967 then joined the Peace Corps and served in Chile. While in Chile, he met and wed Angelica Gonzalez Sotomayor. Read more.

Obituary for Poland and Sierra Leone RPCV Ellen Elliot
Mrs. Elliott's passion for social causes provided the framework for an adventurous life. Her charity work took her to West Africa, Nigeria, India and Poland. In the Bay Area, she championed fair redistricting rules in state government, opened educational opportunities to poor children on the Peninsula, started a message service for inmates at the San Mateo County Jail, fed the poor in East Palo Alto, and, as the public face of the League of Women Voters, advocated for more open government on television and radio.  She tried her hand at book publishing, after returning to the Peace Corps with her husband to help promote tourism in Poland during its transition back to democracy in 1991. While she was leading community-building groups there, Mrs. Elliott was also editing a book about the history of the large prewar Jewish community in the area, "Jewish Bialystok and Surroundings in Eastern Poland." The book was favorably reviewed by the New York Times and is now in its second edition. Read more.

Obituary for Somalia RPCV Laurence Bourassa who led Catholic Relief Services in Cambodia during the bloody era of the infamous killing fields
Mr. Bourassa's life was most notably shaped by two episodes, friends and colleagues said - his stint in Somalia with the first group of Peace Corps volunteers, which first gave him a taste for overseas humanitarian work, and two harrowing years he spent in Cambodia during the bloody era of the infamous killing fields. He first went to Cambodia in 1973, as the conflict in Vietnam was spilling across the border and the brutal Khmer Rouge communist regime was gaining power. Mr. Bourassa was in charge of field operations for Catholic Relief Services, where he worked for 40 years. He provided food, medical assistance and water to Cambodians who were fleeing to government-controlled pockets of the country. He set up a relief operation and field hospital in Neak Loeung, where he briefly was stranded in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge was shelling the city round the clock. "We were in a siege situation," said Pat Johns, the director of emergency operations for CRS and a fellow worker in Cambodia. "We couldn't get a chopper in there to get them out." Mr. Bourassa and several medical personnel finally escaped via helicopter just 12 hours before the city fell to the Khmer Rouge. "When the helicopter landed in Phnom Penh it was a sight to behold," Mr. Johns said. "It was shot to hell. There were bullet holes all over." Read more.

Obituary for Lesotho RPCV Ruth Dunn
In 1984, Ruth Dunn joined the Peace Corps and went to Lesotho, a country surrounded by South Africa, said her son. "You have to remember that South Africa was in upheaval with apartheid," he said. "Nelson Mandela was in prison. Lesotho was not a place you wanted to be." Dunn, described as "about as big as a bird," thrived. Assigned to set up business cooperatives, she became a beloved and trusted member of the community. "Everyone called her 'Miss Ruth,' " her son said. "She adopted a dog she called Chang II after her cat Chang at home, and they went everywhere together. It was the best time of her life. " Read more.

Obituary for Tonga RPCV Ervin "Duane" Lassen
Duane received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from ISU in 1972 and, after serving in the Peace Corps in Tonga, he returned to ISU, where he completed a residency in veterinary clinical pathology and obtained his Ph.D. Duane was an avid runner, weight lifter and scuba diver. He biked the Leadville 100 and was an avid sports fan. Beyond his hobbies and his career, Duane's great love was his family, and he will be missed as a son, husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend and teacher. Read more.

Obituary for Ethiopia RPCV  Claudette Renner
It was natural for Claudette Renner, who passed away Feb. 6, to find ways to help others. She dedicated her life to helping others who couldn't help themselves. She was an active member of the Peace Corps volunteering in Ethiopia from 1965-1967. After Africa, she came back to the United States as a social worker in the Appalachian Mountains. Read more.

Obituary for Mali RPCV Clarence Wilson
Clarence Wilson, born in 1916, was inspired by the exploits of Charles Lindbergh to join the Navy as a pilot. After fighting in World War II, Wilson continued working for the Navy until he was hired in the early 1960s to work on unmanned space exploration by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He helped launch a satellite in 1963 that allowed the United States to watch the 1964 Olympics from Tokyo, his wife said. When Wilson's first wife died, he joined the Peace Corps in Mali, where he taught agriculture. "He had to learn French in no time flat, because that is what they spoke," his wife said. "He joined the Peace Corps to get his life back together." Read more.

Coffee and the Peace Corps

Honduras RPCV Jon Ferguson owns Cultiva  where he sells organically grown, fair-trade coffee
"I was a Hillside Farming Agricultural Extensionist Peace Corps Volunteer in Northwestern Honduras in 2000," Ferguson said. “I took three months of extensive language and technical training, mostly related to soil conservation and organic farming.” The group worked a little with coffee production and visited a few farms, he said.

After the Peace Corps, Ferguson relocated to Seattle and found a job with Zoka Coffee and Tea Co., famous for training its baristas for competition. After returning to Lincoln, Nebraska Ferguson tried his hand selling records, but he got sick of haggling with buyers and sellers. “I always felt that I wasn’t going the right direction in my life,” he said. “I kept on thinking about my experiences in the Peace Corps … and decided that I should get into coffee.”

Coffee is the second largest commodity traded in the world, just after oil, and it uses more pesticides in its production than any other agricultural product. “Most everything I have is organically grown, fair-trade coffee,” Ferguson said. Ferguson opened Cultiva Coffee, which he describes as a micro-roastery, on Dec. 20 of last year. Café Imports, where Ferguson buys his beans, sells direct relationship coffee, meaning the people who buy the coffee have direct dealings with the people who grow the coffee, as opposed to buying beans from a coffee broker, which is basically commodity coffee. “I wanted to help improve the lives of marginalized peoples in coffee producing countries, aka the third world,” Ferguson said.  Read more.

Donna Tabor, a Nicaragua Peace Corps worker, told them, "We can sell your beans"
In January 2002, the banks were about to foreclose on El Porvenir, this 640-acre cooperative coffee finca, or farm, in northwest Nicaragua. A rustic wooden warehouse held a 30,000-pound harvest in want of a market. Gaitan, the co-op's vice president, listened stoically as Donna Tabor, a Peace Corps worker, told them, "We can sell your beans." Such confidence is characteristic of Tabor, who lives in Nicaragua. But when she presented the idea to Building New Hope, the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit she works with, its co-founder Barbara Wein took a deep breath and wailed, "How are we going to sell 30,000 pounds of coffee?"

On the morning of May 7, 2002, a 20-foot truck pulled up to the loading dock at the La Prima Espresso Co. roastery in Pittsburgh. John Notte, La Prima's roaster, had met Tabor the year before when she was in Pittsburgh for a visit. "I'm a coffee man, and these farmers are coffee men," he said, explaining his motivation to help. "I didn't want to just write a check. I wanted to be part of something." What Notte and La Prima owner Sam Patti agreed to be part of was a project to roast the first 2,000 pounds of the harvest for free, the rest at cost, and to sell it in their coffee shops, remitting more than half from the sales to Building New Hope. Meanwhile, the nonprofit shot off an initial payment of $3,000 to El Porvenir to keep the banks at bay.

The 43 families at El Porvenir share the anxiety of another lean season. But the cooperative and the nonprofit arrived at an encouraging milestone this month. Wein, with a small entourage that included Notte, made the two-hour, bone-jarring, four-wheel trek up what in few spots only vaguely resembled a road to hand-deliver the last payment. At a makeshift ceremony to mark the occasion, Gaitan and Eugenio Laguna Gutierrez, the president of El Porvenir, sat at little school desks with their guests on a covered concrete porch amid the ballyhoo of chickens and roosters. "Everything you have sent us has gone toward our debt, which is now a very small amount," Gaitan told the group. He said the farm incurred much of its debt to repair property after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. "The policy of the government here is that the poor person does not exist. Had it not been for your effort, there would be 43 more families in the streets.

"We know you made a sacrifice to come here," Gaitan said. "Access is difficult, and, this is Nicaragua." He smiled at the chuckles that conceded Nicaragua's status as a tourist destination. "It was a leap of faith on both our parts," said Wein. "But when John committed to roast the beans, how could we say no?" Wein founded Building New Hope in 1992 with her husband, Jorge Portillo, a native of El Salvador. They initially set out to help civil war refugees repatriate in El Salvador, in a village the returnees named Nueva Esperanza - New Hope. Since then, with Tabor on the ground and vigorous in the cause of Nicaragua's betterment, Building New Hope has helped construct and support schools, small businesses, a women's clinic and water systems in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Read more.

Congressman Sam Farr supports the International Coffee Organization
Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world and over 25 million people depend on it for their livelihood. After hitting a 30-year low in 2001, the price of coffee has begun to recover. But the extra cents in no way signal an end to the coffee crisis. Despite higher prices, small-scale farmers still cannot earn a decent income. As a result of the crisis, many coffee farmers have lost their farms or have been forced to migrate to cities or other countries. In Colombia, farmers who once could make a good living harvesting coffee often have turned to growing coca, the base ingredient for cocaine.

"Though prices have recovered somewhat recently, the effects of the coffee crisis are still reverberating among the many millions of vulnerable people dependent on coffee for their livelihoods," stated Congressman Farr. "Back when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia, local coffee farmers were able to support their families with a stable income. Now that we have rejoined the International Coffee Organization, I hope the United States will be able to take an active role in returning that kind of stability and security to coffee farmers throughout the world." Congressman Sam Farr served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia in the 1960's. Read more.

Read more about the Peace Corps and Returned Volunteers working with coffee growers in Central and South America.

Sam Farr introduces legislation calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq

Sam Farr introduces legislation calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
Farr says he knows the president will never sign his bill, but he hopes his initiative will stir a public debate and give those who have voted to support the war in the past an opportunity to register their objections now. "This gives them a chance now to say, 'OK, you don't have it anymore. Mr. President, I'm repealing that authority'," Farr said.

Farr said Bush's call for escalation was a "tipping point" for him after three years of opposing the war and the deaths of at least six constituents in Iraq. Most surprising in Bush's announcement, Farr said, was that U.S. troops will now attempt to prevent Iran from moving arms and people into Iraq. "What does that mean?" said Farr, explaining that he's concerned that the troop escalation may signal invasions of other Middle Eastern countries, particularly Iran and Syria.

Farr, who is a member of the Out of Iraq Caucus, said his bill is one of several expected to be unveiled by other caucus members following President Bush's speech on January 10. Farr said his bill will now move into the House's Armed Service Committee and likely will be up for discussion in the full House in a couple of weeks. "Meanwhile," he said, "I will be getting co-sponsors."

Congressman Sam Farr of California served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia in the 1960's. Read more about RPCV Sam Farr.

Recent RPCV Obituaries

Obituary for Colombia RPCV James W. Thomas
He graduated from high school in Oakdale and went on to serve in the Peace Corps in Colombia. Jim is remembered by all who knew him as a man of few words. He never hesitated to lend a helping hand, whether it was moving equipment for a gymnastics meet, painting sets for plays, or going on stage as a pageant dad. He never complained about doing any ridiculous thing that the women in his life asked of him. He was a wonderful father, husband and friend. The real Jim left us several years ago, and he has been greatly missed by us all.

Obituary for Malaysia RPCV David Behm
Behm enjoyed the outdoors, cooking, his extended family and, of course, music. He was a member of the Angel Band, a Celtic music group and performed regularly throughout the Seacoast area. He was a Friday night regular at the Press Room in Portsmouth for many years and read the Declaration of Independence at Demmons Store and the West Nottingham Post Office on July 4th also for many years. His last CD, Hellfire and Behmnation, a tribute to a fellow musician Chip Chase, is available locally and shows his variety of style and musicianship.  Behm was a US Marine from 1956 to 1958 and a union bricklayer for many years. He discovered wood turning and in 1985 opened his own woodworking and chairmaking shop. He served in the Peace Corps with his family in Sarawak, East Malaysia in the early 1970's. He was also a Justice of the Peace for many years whose last official act was officiating at the marriage of his son on December 1.

Obituary for India RPCV Dennis Best
He joined the Peace Corps and traveled to India, where he was first exposed to eastern philosophies of healing. It was in California where Dennis became a member of the Baha'i Faith in 1970, captivated by its universal principles centering on the oneness of God, of religion, and of humanity. While researching Chinese medicine and acupuncture, he lived with his family in China from 1994-1996.

Obituary for Ethiopia RPCV William Giacofci
After earning his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1966, he served in the Peace Corps for three years as a legal adviser to Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, according to his family. Mr. Giacofci enjoyed reading and genealogy and was also an accomplished artist who created oil paintings in religious themes. He was a communicant of St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church in Queenstown, where a Mass of Christian burial will be offered.