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| Posted on Monday, June 25, 2007 - 11:54 am: | |
Call for stories to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps The series will include four volumes, each with its own editor: Africa and the Middle East (Dennis Cordell); Asia and the Pacific (Jane Albritton); South America, Central America and the Caribbean (Pat Alter); and After the Cold War: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Jay Chen). “We are all aware that the Peace Corps experience was not always rosy or uplifting,” Albritton said. “Sometimes volunteers can’t avoid scary, ethically murky situations. We are prepared to include well-told stories that recount those parts of the Peace Corps experience along with the more familiar memories of just what do you do when presented with a plate of freshly fried crickets by a smiling girl from Chad?” Call for stories to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps The Editors of Peace Corps At 50 call for stories to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps. Call for Stories The Peace Corps will turn 50 in 2011. To celebrate the occasion, the editors of Peace Corps at 50 invite all volunteers, in-country staff and trainers to submit their best stories to a four-volume anniversary collection. The site www.PeaceCorpsAt50.org marks the spot with information on the project, the editors, and writers’ guidelines. “Everyone who has served in the Peace Corps has a story,” said series editor Jane Albritton. “We tell them when we get together; our families know them by heart (our kids sometimes roll their eyes). We include at least some of them in job interviews and when we meet new friends.” However, the editors agreed that even good stories can get lost in time, and with them vanishes a piece of vital knowledge about an organization that has to date sent roughly 187, 000 volunteers into 139 different countries. These four books and the stories in them will document that we in this country can engage fully with other cultures, have our preconceptions smashed to smithereens, and live to tell the tale. The First Equal Opportunity Adventure “Most people may not remember, or ever have known, that before Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, there were three African American volunteers in Pakistan,” Albritton said. “Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race and sex, Pauline Birky-Kruetzer had completed her appointment as in-country director for Pakistan 1. Peace Corps was way ahead of the curve.” In those days it might not have been entirely wise to give a woman a leadership role in a Muslim country, but director Sargent Shriver was adamant. Birky-Kruetzer prevailed, winning the respect of even the rugged Pathans. Birky-Kruetzer, now 91, has vivid memories of those times. “Willie Douglas, who was very dark, taught agriculture up in Pathan territory where farmers worked the fields with guns on their shoulders,” she recalled. “They loved him and wanted another volunteer just like him.” Four for the 50th The series will include four volumes, each with its own editor: Africa and the Middle East (Dennis Cordell); Asia and the Pacific (Jane Albritton); South America, Central America and the Caribbean (Pat Alter); and After the Cold War: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Jay Chen). (Please see the site for biographical information.) “We are all aware that the Peace Corps experience was not always rosy or uplifting,” Albritton said. “Sometimes volunteers can’t avoid scary, ethically murky situations. We are prepared to include well-told stories that recount those parts of the Peace Corps experience along with the more familiar memories of just what do you do when presented with a plate of freshly fried crickets by a smiling girl from Chad?” For further information on this project please visit the website or contact any of the editors at the following addresses: jane.albritton@peacecorpsat50.org (Asia and the Pacific) pat.alter@peacecorpsat50.org (South America, Central America, Caribbean) jay.chen@peacecorpsat50.org (Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia) dennis.cordell@peacecorpsat50.org (Africa and the Middle East) Quick Facts Project Title: Peace Corps At 50 ( www.peacecorpsat50.org) Purpose: To create four books of stories to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps and to maintain a website with additional stories until 2011 and beyond. Scope: Nonfiction stories that reflect the full range of experience in the Peace Corps, from the hilarious to the grim. Each book will be divided into sections that focus loosely on Expectations, Peace Corps Tasks, Unexpected Shadows, and the Context of History. If the Peace Corps were a person, these stories would be her memoir. Contributors: RPCVs, Peace Corps staff and trainers from 1961 to the present Time frame: First deadline for story submissions, January 2008 Site Contact: admin@peacecorpsat50.org
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Headlines: June, 2007; Writing; Announcements; Peace Corps Bibliography; Peace Corps Directory; Peace Corps History; Bulletin Board; Peace Corps Headlines
When this story was posted in June 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| Public diplomacy rests on sound public policy When President Kennedy spoke of "a long twilight struggle," and challenged the country to "ask not," he signaled that the Cold War was the challenge and framework defining US foreign policy. The current challenge is not a struggle against a totalitarian foe. It is not a battle against an enemy called "Islamofascism." From these false assumptions flow false choices, including the false choice between law enforcement and war. Instead, law enforcement and military force both must be essential instruments, along with diplomacy, including public diplomacy. But public diplomacy rests on policy, and to begin with, the policy must be sound. Read more. |
| Peace Corps Funnies A PCV writing home? Our editor hard at work? Take a look at our Peace Corps Funnies and Peace Corps Cartoons and see why Peace Corps Volunteers say that sometimes a touch of levity can be one of the best ways of dealing with frustrations in the field. Read what RPCVs say about the lighter side of life in the Peace Corps and see why irreverent observations can often contain more than a grain of truth. We'll supply the photos. You supply the captions. |
| PCOL serves half million PCOL's readership for April exceeded 525,000 visitors - a 50% increase over last year. This year also saw the advent of a new web site: Peace Corps News that together with the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps serve 17,000 RPCVs, Staff, and Friends of the Peace Corps every day. Thanks for making PCOL your source of news for the Peace Corps community. Read more. |
| Suspect confesses in murder of PCV Search parties in the Philippines discovered the body of Peace Corps Volunteer Julia Campbell near Barangay Batad, Banaue town on April 17. Director Tschetter expressed his sorrow at learning the news. “Julia was a proud member of the Peace Corps family, and she contributed greatly to the lives of Filipino citizens in Donsol, Sorsogon, where she served,” he said. Latest: Suspect Juan Duntugan admits to killing Campbell. Leave your thoughts and condolences . |
| Warren Wiggins: Architect of the Peace Corps Warren Wiggins, who died at 84 on April 13, became one of the architects of the Peace Corps in 1961 when his paper, "A Towering Task," landed in the lap of Sargent Shriver, just as Shriver was trying to figure out how to turn the Peace Corps into a working federal department. Shriver was electrified by the treatise, which urged the agency to act boldly. Read Mr. Wiggins' obituary and biography, take an opportunity to read the original document that shaped the Peace Corps' mission, and read John Coyne's special issue commemorating "A Towering Task." |
| Chris Dodd's Vision for the Peace Corps Senator Chris Dodd (RPCV Dominican Republic) spoke at the ceremony for this year's Shriver Award and elaborated on issues he raised at Ron Tschetter's hearings. Dodd plans to introduce legislation that may include: setting aside a portion of Peace Corps' budget as seed money for demonstration projects and third goal activities (after adjusting the annual budget upward to accommodate the added expense), more volunteer input into Peace Corps operations, removing medical, healthcare and tax impediments that discourage older volunteers, providing more transparency in the medical screening and appeals process, a more comprehensive health safety net for recently-returned volunteers, and authorizing volunteers to accept, under certain circumstances, private donations to support their development projects. He plans to circulate draft legislation for review to members of the Peace Corps community and welcomes RPCV comments. |
| He served with honor One year ago, Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul (RPCV Kenya) carried on an ongoing dialog on this website on the military and the peace corps and his role as a member of a Civil Affairs Team in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have just received a report that Sargeant Paul has been killed by a car bomb in Kabul. Words cannot express our feeling of loss for this tremendous injury to the entire RPCV community. Most of us didn't know him personally but we knew him from his words. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. He was one of ours and he served with honor. |
| Peace Corps' Screening and Medical Clearance The purpose of Peace Corps' screening and medical clearance process is to ensure safe accommodation for applicants and minimize undue risk exposure for volunteers to allow PCVS to complete their service without compromising their entry health status. To further these goals, PCOL has obtained a copy of the Peace Corps Screening Guidelines Manual through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and has posted it in the "Peace Corps Library." Applicants and Medical Professionals (especially those who have already served as volunteers) are urged to review the guidelines and leave their comments and suggestions. Then read the story of one RPCV's journey through medical screening and his suggestions for changes to the process. |
| History of the Peace Corps PCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help. | Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder. Story Source: Peace Corps at 50 This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Fiftieth; Writing; Announcements PCOL37937 04 |