Peace Corps News

Condoleezza Rice Visits Peace Corps Headquarters

Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter welcomed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Peace Corps Headquarters. Secretary Rice’s remarks to 65 Country Directors and headquarters staff officially kicked-off the Peace Corps 2008 Worldwide Country Director Conference. Secretary Rice is the first sitting Secretary of State to visit Peace Corps Headquarters.

Secretary Rice said, “Each of you is to be commended for your dedication to helping the world’s neediest people, often times in some of the world’s most impoverished communities. Through your work, you’re strengthening communities, you’re improving lives and you’re building bridges between nations.” She added, “Throughout its history, the Peace Corps has met the challenges of an ever-challenging world by adapting and responding to the issues of the day, but never losing sight of the values that have sustained the Peace Corps throughout its history.” Read more.

"Today, Peace Corps volunteers are opening up a whole new world for the people that they serve by teaching computer skills and providing access to the internet, so keeping abreast with the challenges of today.  The invaluable trust Peace Corps volunteers are gaining among the people that they serve gives them the credibility to talk about diseases like HIV/AIDS prevention in their communities when, frankly, others cannot.  That is why the Peace Corps is emerging as an important part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean. 

In fact, as the Director said, while visiting Accra, Ghana in February with President Bush, I was fortunate enough to have lunch with a group of your Peace Corps colleagues.  And earlier this month, I accompanied President and Mrs. Bush to Ukraine where we had the opportunity to see an HIV/AIDS education play put on by Peace Corps volunteer Margaret McKenna and 15 of her students.  Margaret and her students not only perform in their own community, but they travel to educate other schools throughout Ukraine about the danger of AIDS.   

Throughout its history, the Peace Corps has met the challenges of an ever-challenging world by adapting and responding to the issues of the day, but never losing sight of the values that have sustained the Peace Corps throughout its history. Currently more than 8,000 Peace Corps Volunteers continue to meet these new challenges across the globe, particularly in places where the Peace Corps has been absent for some time. 

Just this past February, of course, President Bush announced the return of the Peace Corps to Rwanda, after a 15-year absence.  And this summer, the Peace Corps will return to Liberia with a Peace Corps response program working in education.  In 2007 the Peace Corps returned to Ethiopia after an absence of eight years.  And volunteers began their service for the first time in Cambodia in 2007 to train teachers and teach English in seven provinces. " Read Rice's entire speech at Peace Corps Headquarters.

Renewing the Bond of Trust with Volunteers

Chuck Ludlam and Paula Hirschoff write: Renewing the Bond of Trust with Volunteers
At its founding, the Peace Corps was premised on a radical and idealistic notion that many thought was impractical and even outlandish. It took bold vision and risk taking—a New Frontier mentality, a land-on-the-moon mentality—to give this notion a try. The notion was that we could trust Americans, mostly young Americans, to envision what it would take to improve the lives of villagers in the developing world, to survive hardships, and to make the best of the situation and its challenges. It took visionaries like Sargent Shriver, Bill Moyers and Harris Wofford—leaders who trusted and listened to Volunteers—to put this brilliant idea into practice.

Over the decades, there has been no change in Volunteers that warrants a diminution of this bond of trust. As stated above, we are impressed with the Volunteers with whom we serve. Almost without exception, they are idealistic, resourceful and hard working. We find that they are more mature and wise to the world than we were at their age. We are proud to serve with them, and know that many will be friends for life. We invite you to visit the Volunteers in the field to see for yourself. We believe you will be inspired as we are.

Unfortunately, today some Peace Corps managers seem to assume that Volunteers are slackers and adolescents needing strict rules and discipline. Volunteers often get the impression that the managers don't trust us. They often seem to act as if Volunteers need to be tethered so that we won't embarrass the Country Director or generate a Congressional inquiry. When the agency suffers a rare negative incident, its instinct is to construct a bulwark of paperwork and rules in hopes of preventing a recurrence. En loco parentis condescension and risk aversion seem to be common attitudes.

One probable cause of condescension is the substantial age differential between managers and Volunteers, who tend to be straight out of college with little work experience. These skewed demographics might pose problems, but they do not justify treating Volunteers like juveniles. The Volunteers may be young, but they are exceptional individuals with deep insights into their work, their sites, and their needs at site. Condescension is sure to discourage older Volunteers from serving.

Hierarchical organizations, like the present-day Peace Corps, are notoriously poor at listening. They tend to command, dictate and impose, demoralizing Volunteers in the process. In many cases what Volunteers hear from the managers are demands—to write more reports or comply with more rules. Predictably, some Volunteers become resentful and unproductive or they terminate their service early.

Early termination is a plague in the Peace Corps. It squanders the expenses of the selection process, screening, site preparation, training and settling in. It dashes the hopes and expectations of the community in which the Volunteer was serving. The best way to reduce ETs is for the Peace Corps to listen better to what the Volunteers need to be effective and productive, as S. 732 commands.

Read the rest of this article.

Obituary for Morocco Country Director Everett Woodman

Obituary for Morocco Country Director Everett Woodman
At age 88, World War II veteran and former diplomat Everett M. Woodman took the podium as guest speaker at the 2004 Fourth of July celebration in Hanover, N.H., and condemned the war in Iraq as a betrayal of American ideals. Some in the crowd booed the former Navy intelligence officer, who 60 years prior had stormed the beaches at Normandy and now stood with the help of two canes. But Mr. Woodman continued speaking, according to his daughter Betsy, of Andover, N.H., who was in the audience. "I think they expected a normal patriotic speech and he came out with this blistering stuff," she said.

From 1952 to 1954, Dr. Woodman worked in Madras, India as a cultural affairs officer for the United States Information Agency, and for an interim as acting public affairs officer for South India. For the next four years he served as an attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and as director of the Educational Exchange Program under the India-U.S.A. Agreement of Public Law 48. In 1958, Dr. Woodman joined the Ford Foundation as an educational consultant to the Government of India's Ministry of Education until his appointment as president of Colby Junior College in 1962.

As president, Woodman led the college through ten years of growth and transformation. During his term, he emphasized the importance of an international perspective on education, as evidenced by campus events such as United Nations Day and Reaching the Questioning Mind Overseas. He also sought the opinions of the college's students, faculty, and alumnae and cultivated a strong relationship with them. Dr. Woodman served as president of the American Association of Junior Colleges from 1969 to 1970 and was also active in the New Hampshire Council on World Affairs.

After leaving Colby Junior College in 1972, Dr. Woodman served as president of the Nature Conservancy in Washington, D.C. Later he was appointed director of the Peace Corps in Morocco. Colby-Sawyer College presented him with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in May of 1995. Read more.

Speech by WWII D-Day Veteran and Morocco Country Director Everett Woodman on July 4, 2004
I am glad that we are not closing this event with a bugle sounding taps, for it is not a military funeral.

It is our celebration of freedom -  our  pledge to be worthy.

And while a holiday is all around us, this gathering on the green is not a high-five conqueror’s party.

We gather in justifiable pride, knowing likewise that  we have as much to mourn as to memorialize.

We weep for those we have lost, and combat veterans will best understand that kind of loss, for they had loved each other in that bond of danger and death.

I am especially mindful of that ultimate patriotism for exactly four Sundays ago I was at the American Military Cemetery, at Omaha Beach in Normandy where 9,387 headstones mark our permanent  presence on “that terrible and Sacred Shore.”

My thoughts of D-Day 60 years ago prompt thoughts of why wars should and should not be, and includes deep feelings for all families of  soldiers, sailors, airmen  who long ago gave their lives for America. Most  recently I think  today of the sadness of  Iraq - and join you in tribute to the unselfish service our forces are still performing over there with honor and courage - pray that we can say sometime soon, honestly this time,  “Mission accomplished.”

Permit me now to pursue that theme - quietly - because the subject is delicate, and I am sensitive to that.

I say this carefully:

I am glad that  Saddam Hussein is no more a worry.

He was brutal and good riddance -  but to get rid of him we betrayed our ideals and sold our soul to the totally un-American concept of “preemptive attack deterrence” - the most transparent rationalization of  Pentagon double  talk and in that unprovoked invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation  we forfeited our claim to the moral high ground.

There is no need to multiply illustrations of why much of America is now recognizing that the Iraq adventure was a colossal tragic mistake – and when history fully appraises this worst military and diplomatic blunder in memory it will portray properly a man so hungry to be a war time President that he could  taste it. “Bring ‘em on” he said.

It will also reveal how every episode of this dreadful undertaking , from the constantly concealed civilian death toll, to American torture of prisoners, to the hastily arranged secret and superficial ceremony conveying  “full sovereign authority” to Iraq, how every aspect of this long charade has been slanted and sold by shameless rationalizations – semi-plausible sounding reasons for doing what should never be done, and not doing what should be.

Now we look ahead and our prayer is that our young people and their children will develop the courage and wisdom to find victorious living in ways other than war - that their lives in a contracting world will eliminate fear of cultural differences - the mindless prejudice that often twists proper patriotism into negative nasty nationalism that  turns otherwise civil societies into warring tribes.

Teach our children to have faith in humanity and to know the dignity of all human beings. Reaffirm America’s basic belief that all people are created  equal -   that we all are children of the Universe.  There is no nonsense about that - it is universally obvious and fundamentally American.  Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Morocco.

Read more about Peace Corps Country Directors.

Recent RPCV Obituaries

Obituary for St. Vincent and Hungary RPCV Verona McCrary Thomas
Ms. Thomas served in the Peace Corps from age 67-69 as a librarian in St. Vincent and 74-75 as an English teacher in Hungary.

Parents plant seeds of caring for Armenia RPCV Carrie Jane Dulin
The Dulins' daughter, Carrie Jane, died in a car crash on her 28th birthday, Aug. 5, 2003, en route to a new assignment in Nigeria. She had spent five years as a Peace Corps and World Vision worker in Armenia. A year after her death, the Dulins took a trip to Armenia to deliver money donated in their daughter's name to two orphanages in Sissian and Spitak. They purchased appliances for the kitchen in Spitak and an organ for the orphanage in Sissian. They also took part of Carrie's ashes and spread them at a deserted monastery near Sissian. As they left the orphanages, they asked the directors what they could do to make a difference in the lives of the children there. They were told that the children at both orphanages needed warm clothing for the winter, when they are forced to bundle up in bed and stay home from school because the buildings aren't heated. Last year, the Dulins' church, Doylestown United Methodist, organized a coat campaign and collected about 30 boxes of coats that were shipped to Armenia through the United Methodist Committee on Relief, just after Hurricane Katrina.

Obituary for Ethiopia Country Director Henry Donald Wilson
Mr. Wilson graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948 and worked for two years as a lawyer before becoming a regional organizer for the United World Federalists, an international peace movement. In 1955, he joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, and joined Arthur D. Little in 1960. Mr. Wilson took a leave from Arthur D. Little in 1964, when he was appointed by R. Sargent Shriver as a Peace Corps director in Ethiopia.

Obituary for Togo RPCV John Peter D'Agostino
He worked as a freelance artist as well as a Peace Corps Rural Development Volunteer in West Africa. John also worked in many facets at The Ohio State University in addition to working at the BakeHouse Richmond and Dunbar Elementary Schools in Florida, The Historical Museum of Southern Florida, the Miami-Dade Community College, Pine Villa Elementary in Florida and at Enka Schools in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent his life learning and teaching.

Obituary for Malaysia RPCV Ross Pelton
Ross Pelton taught chemistry in Malaysia through the Peace Corps. He said his parents and sister visited him there and quickly fell in love with international travel. Like everything else in life, Pelton and his wife traveled with gusto once they got started, eventually visiting all 50 U.S. states, Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand and China. Pelton served as principal at Logan with no assistants, Fregin said, and volunteered to coach the school's football team as well. He said the school, which then held grades 7 through 9, had more than 800 students at the time. "That was his life," Fregin said of Pelton's commitment to the school. "He devoted everything to that."

Obituary for Belize RPCV Charlene Andrews
Andrews, known internationally for her support of Oregon's Death with Dignity law, wanted to keep helping people even after her death. In lieu of flowers, Andrews had asked people to bring children's books to donate to a library she created while serving in the Peace Corps in Belize.