Here is a media alert for a speech that Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver will deliver at Yale University on November 10 calling for a renewal of the Peace Corps' focus. Peace Corps Online will be posting the speech after it is delivered.

ORIGINAL DIRECTOR OF PEACE CORPS CALLS FOR RENEWAL OF AGENCY'S FOCUS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 8, 2001

In a speech at Yale University on Saturday, November 10, Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver will call the current Peace Corps to task for its "puny" response to his original dream.

Citing the need "to bind all human beings together in a common cause to assure survival," Shriver will call for a "new Peace Corps--a vastly improved, expanded, and profoundly deeper enterprise," with 25,000 volunteers in the field, up from the current 7,000. He calls for new technology, an emphasis on youth programming, and deploying the talents and dedication of 162,000 returned volunteers.

Shriver questions the relevance of the existing Peace Corps, in the context of terrorism and military challenges to the U.S. Yet peace is still the only viable alternative to war, says Shriver. "We now live in a world of low-tech killing, where plastic knives and innocent-looking envelopes can do the job just as efficiently as nuclear bombs." Shriver directed the Peace Corps for his brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, and briefly for President Lyndon Johnson. "We bequeath to our children and grand-children a stark choice: peace or death," Shriver says.

Deployment of idealistic young Americans against those who hate the U.S. and what it stands for could become the nation's "most effective anti-terrorism program," says Shriver, in an address at Yale University's annual Daily News Banquet. Shriver was editor of the Yale Daily News as an undergraduate, in 1934. He was U.S. Ambassador to France (1968-70) and candidate for Vice President (1972).

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled hearings on November 14 on the nomination of Gaddi Vasquez of Orange County, California, as the new director of the Peace Corps.


John C. Rude
Committee for the Future of the Peace Corps
(310) 936-8654


Stephanie Garibaldi
Mr. Shriver's Office
(202) 347-3460

By Tondalaya Gillespie on Sunday, November 11, 2001 - 8:11 pm: Edit Post

My frustration with present day Peace Corps is that we have lost the mission that JFK thought we would persue....and that is to work with and share the pain and the joys of the poor. There are too many PCVs in cities working with the elites.
Let's get back to our original mission.