August 17, 2003 - Times-Standard: RPCVs Dave Orphal and Sharona Thompson head back to Senegal to work for elimination of Female Genital Mutilation

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Headlines: Peace Corps Headlines - 2003: August 2003 Peace Corps Headlines: August 17, 2003 - Times-Standard: RPCVs Dave Orphal and Sharona Thompson head back to Senegal to work for elimination of Female Genital Mutilation

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RPCVs Dave Orphal and Sharona Thompson head back to Senegal to work for elimination of Female Genital Mutilation





Read and comment on this story from the Times-Standard about RPCVs Dave Orphal and Sharona Thompson who areheading back to Senegal to work with Tostan, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Senegalese women, particularly about the health risks of the traditional African practice of female genital cutting. Tostan means "breakthrough" in the Wolof language of West Africa.

Tostan's classes include health and sanitation curriculum and teaching women to read in their native language, among other topics. The health problems linked to female genital cutting soon dominated the discussion, however. Thompson said women who'd gone through it as young girls and had long-term health problems were astounded to learn that others had suffered similarly.

She said many Senegalese see female genital cutting as something that's always been done, and it has been a taboo subject. Discussing it openly and realizing how harmful it can be has opened people's eyes, she said. Read the story at:


Eureka couple headed to Senegal*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



Eureka couple headed to Senegal
By Sara Watson Arthurs The Times-Standard

EUREKA -- Villagers in Senegal needing health education will soon receive help from a Eureka couple.

Dave Orphal and SharonaThompson are heading to Senegal next month to work with Tostan, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Senegalese women, particularly about the health risks of the traditional African practice of female genital cutting. Tostan means "breakthrough" in the Wolof language of West Africa.

Thompson served in the Peace Corps in Senegal from 1998 to 2000. While she was there, the Senegalese government outlawed the practice of female genital mutilation. But where she lived in eastern Senegal, people felt disconnected from the government and protested the law.

"There were about 150 girls circumcised that next day, about two hours from where I lived," Thompson said.

Although people weren't going to cease the practice just because the government ordered them to, she said, villages were beginning to stop of their own accord.

Tostan's classes include health and sanitation curriculum and teaching women to read in their native language, among other topics. The health problems linked to female genital cutting soon dominated the discussion, however. Thompson said women who'd gone through it as young girls and had long-term health problems were astounded to learn that others had suffered similarly.

"Women found out, 'This is what tetanus looks like,'" she said. "'This is what AIDS looks like and how it can be spread from girl to girl just using one knife.'"

In 1997, the village of Malicounda Bambara publicly proclaimed the end of the pracitce. Over time, others followed suit as they became more aware of its consequences. Tostan's website states that 282 villages, representing more than 250,000 people, have decided to abandon the practice.

"People are making a powerful decision that they don't want to do this anymore," Orphal said.

Thompson said Tostan's education led to these decisions.

"It's giving information so that people can make decisions from that," she said. "It's not forcing anyone to do anything."

She said many Senegalese see female genital cutting as something that's always been done, and it has been a taboo subject. Discussing it openly and realizing how harmful it can be has opened people's eyes, she said.

She said cutting had been seen as an act of honor rather than violence -- families had their daughter's genitals cut to make her more desirable for marriage. The strong support of Senegalese men in the movement to cease the custom has made families change their views, she said.

She said residents of other parts of Africa are now interested in learning from Tostan's example, but the nonprofit's organization's resources are stretched thin.

Thompson, who speaks several African languages, plans to interview villagers about their experiences. Orphal has experience in grant-writing and developing projects, and hopes to help Tostan expand its efforts based on what Thompson learns of villagers' needs. Both plan to document Tostan's efforts.

Orphal, a teacher at Zoe Barnum High School, said he hopes to use his experiences in Africa to help develop new curriculum for his world history classes. Orphal said Africa is often neglected in discussions of historical and contemporary world issues. He noted that African history is closely linked to American history -- many American slaves were taken from western Africa.

Orphal and Thompson plan to stay in Senegal for six months to a year.
More about Tostan



Read more about Tostan at:

Tostan

ABOUT TOSTAN
Tostan (Wolof translation: breakthrough) developed an innovative basic education program that emphasizes literacy, numeracy, improving life skills and family income, and encourages women to participate in village decision making.

Tostan's success is based on three elements:

1. Trained facilitators present a participatory program in villagers’ native language using song, theater, books, storytelling, games, poetry, creative writing, and flip-charts. Tostan's program makes learning fun and familiar.

2. When villagers learn about human rights, preventative hygiene practices, problem solving, management and leadership skills, and how to read and write, they become empowered and begin making different choices in their lives.

3. Tostan facilitators build a trusting relationship with villagers through the course of the eighteen-month training program and teach in native languages. They do not impose their beliefs on villagers, but present information and allow villagers to make informed choices.

Tostan's program has reached more than 50,000 African people.
Information provided by Tostan was critical to the dramatic, unprecedented group decisions made by 282 villages (representing more than 250,000
people) to abandon the practice of female genital cutting.

Tostan now seeks funding to expand its program throughout Senegal and share it with other African organizations by establishing an education center to hold teacher-training workshops.

To reach Tostan write to Molly Melching,
Director of Tostan: Melching@telecomplus.sn


Female Genital Cutting: The Beginning of the End



Gerry Mackie
Junior Research Fellow in Politics, St. John’s College,Oxford OX1 3JP, United Kingdom

In 1996 I published a more or less complete, although condensed, “convention” theory of female genital cutting (FGC), which attempted to account for the origins, distribution, maintenance and possible abandonment of this perplexing practice. In that article I did what social scientists often preach, but seldom practice, I made a prediction. I predicted that the formation of a certain kind of pledge association would help bring FGC to an end. If there is some critical mass of individuals (it definitely need not be a majority, and also the more genuinely influential the individuals the fewer that might be needed), within a group of people whose children marry one another, who have come to the point that they would like to abandon FGC, a public pledge among such individuals would end FGC forever for them and also quickly motivate the remainder of the intramarrying population to join in the pledge and abandon FGC as well. Also, both the overlap of a successfully pledging group in neighboring marriage markets and the empirical example of successful abandonment might inspire neighboring groups to undertake their own pledges, so that the process would be contagious within some larger collection of overlapping groups.

The practice of the footbinding of women in China was swiftly ended by such pledge associations. I showed precisely why the Chinese reform tactics succeeded so well, and I explained why FGC is in essentials equivalent to footbinding, such that local adaptations of the Chinese reform tactics might work in Africa. In the summer of 1998 I learned that some villages in Senegal had invented, reinvented actually, the pledge technique, that the pledge had succeeded unequivocally in Malicounda, that nearby villages had after periods of deliberation devised their own pledges, and that the pledge idea was spreading further, all just as I had hoped. The reformers in Senegal were not aware of my article or of its theory, but once we exchanged information it was clear that there is a tight correspondence between the convention theory and the practice unfolding in Senegal.

For a more formal and detailed account of the theory the reader is directed to the original article, “Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account” (Mackie 1996). In this volume I will give an informal summary of the theory, and provide some information about convention shift in Senegal. Then I will offer some considerations on reform strategy based on a more fine-grained examination of the African case.

The Convention Model
FGC is nearly universal within the groups where it is found, has persisted for generations, and in some areas is becoming more widespread or extreme (Leonard, this volume; Carr 1997: 61). Many insiders emphasize that the practice is so deeply embedded that change will be very slow. An educated Sudanese woman said it will take 300 years to bring it to an end (Lightfoot-Klein 1989:135), and the casual observer would likely agree that it would take a very long time to erode such a fundamental cultural trait.1 However, it turns out that within an intramarrying group, if FGC ends, it will only end quickly and almost universally. Furthermore, without the right sort of reform program, FGC might take many generations to end, regardless of the degree of economic development or cultural internationalization. Fortunately, after a period of credible nondirective education about its health consequences, the way to end FGC is almost as simple as the formation of associations whose members pledge to abandon the practice.

Why do I say that FGC must either persist indefinitely or end rapidly? Before proceeding with an explanation we have to listen to what the people who practice FGC say about it. Almost all say that FGC is required for a proper marriage, and many say that it is required for the virtue of the woman, or for the honor of her family. Moreover, many have been unaware until recent years that other peoples do not practice FGC, and many have believed that the only people who do not do FGC are unfaithful women or indecent people. Like many other outsiders I find FGC horrifying to imagine, but for an insider FGC is more like dentistry than it is like violence.2 Americans subject their children to painful and frankly exotic dentistry practices, and not to provide dental care to one’s child is to damage his or her chances in life and marriage. Imagine that some foreigners come along who claim that dentistry is dangerous and leads to fatal diseases in middle life (a few people claim that mercury fillings represent just such a danger). American parents would find it very difficult to believe that there is a problem, and after they independently confirmed the information they would find it difficult to give up pretty teeth for their children if other parents didn’t give them up too.

FGC is a matter of proper marriage. An individual in an intramarrying group that practices FGC can’t give it up unless enough other people do too. FGC is a certain kind of “Schelling convention”: what one family chooses depends on what other families choose. To understand, imagine that there is a group that has a convention whereby audiences (at the cinema, at plays, at recitals) stand up rather than sit down. Sitting has been forgotten. Standing is both universal and persistent. An outsider comes along and explains that elsewhere audiences sit. After the shock of surprise wears off, some people begin to think that sitting might be better, but it would be better only if enough other people sit at the same time. If only one person sits, she doesn’t get to see anything on the stage. If only one family abandons FGC, its daughter doesn’t get married (because of the belief that only unfaithful women forgo FGC). However, if a critical mass of people in the audience can be organized to sit, even just a column of people who are less than a majority, they realize that they can attain both the ease of sitting and a clear enough view of the stage. This critical mass then has incentives to recruit the rest of the audience to sitting, and the rest of the audience has incentives to respond to the recruitment. Similarly, if a critical mass of people in an intramarrying group pledge to refrain from FGC, then the knowledge that they are a critical mass makes it immediately in their interest to keep their pledges, and in their interest to persuade others to join in, and after persuasion makes it in everyone else’s interests to join them. Without an understanding of the underlying mechanism, the abrupt end of such an entrenched practice by means of a mere public declaration would seem to be nearly miraculous.

A peculiar characteristic of a convention like this is that even if each individual in the relevant group comes to think that it would be better to abandon the practice, no one individual acting on her own can succeed. Each person could come to think that sitting is better than standing, but any individual sitting on her own would only make herself worse off. Enough people have to sit at the same time. One way to do this is to declare a public pledge that marks a convention shift. Every family could come to think that FGC is wrong, but that is not enough; FGC would continue because any family abandoning it on its own would ruin the futures of its daughters. It must be abandoned by enough families at once so that their daughters’ futures are secured.

Speculation? No. I have shown that the convention model explains the binding of women’s feet in China, both the former universality and persistence of footbinding and its sudden demise. The practice was beginning about the age of eight to bend the toes under the feet, force the sole to the heel, and tightly wrap the girl’s foot so that as she matured her feet remained tiny, perhaps a mere five inches in length. Footbinding was painful, dangerous, and disabling. Why did the Chinese do it? Again, it was necessary for a proper marriage, for the virtue of the woman, for the honor of her family. Footbinding and FGC are essentially equivalent practices, and originate from similar causes (see also Mackie 1996). Footbinding and FGC persist because of the same convention mechanism. Footbinding lasted for a thousand years, was universal among all “decent” Chinese, and was undented by liberal agitation and imperial prohibition in the 19th century. The most optimistic reformers in 1899 thought that it would take several generations to end. However, footbinding had ended for the vast majority by 1911, when a legal prohibition was enacted. Moreover, in localities where it did end, it ended quickly and universally, just as the convention model predicts. Therefore, the methods used to end footbinding in China, properly adapted, should work to end FGC in Africa.

The work of the antifootbinding reformers had three aspects. First, they carried out a modern education campaign, which explained that the rest of the world did not bind women’s feet. The discovery of an alternative is necessary but not sufficient for change. Second, they explained the advantages of natural feet and the disadvantages of bound feet in Chinese cultural terms. New information about health consequences, again, is necessary but not sufficient for change. Third, they formed natural-foot societies, whose members publicly pledged not to bind their daughters’ feet nor to let their sons marry women with bound feet. The problem is that if only one family renounces footbinding their daughters are thereby rendered unmarriageable. The pledge association solves this problem – if enough families abandon footbinding then their children can marry each other.

The first antifootbinding society was founded in 1874 by a local mission for its converts, who accidentally discovered the effectiveness of the public pledge. This local success went unnoticed, until it was rediscovered and advocated on a national level in 1895 by the newly founded Natural Foot Society. The pledge societies, and the cessation of footbinding, spread like a prairie fire. By 1908 Chinese public opinion was decisively against footbinding, and footbinding of children was absent from urban populations by 1911. Other Chinese marriage practices, such as arranged marriages and early female age of marriage changed slowly over many decades. Notice that cultural regularities do not all behave in the same fashion. In the U.S. there are campaigns to breastfeed babies rather than feed them formula. Change has been incremental; what one family does about infant feeding does not depend on what another family does. Footbinding and FGC, however, are each a special kind of convention, one family’s choice does depend on another family’s choice, such that either nearly everyone does it or no one does it, so that when it ends it must end quickly.

Convention Shift in Senegal
In September of 1996 women involved in a basic education program in Malicounda Bambara in Senegal decided to seek abolition of FGC in their village of about 3000 people.3 Using the communicative and organizational skills learned in their education program, the women proceeded to persuade the other women in the community, their husbands, and the traditional and religious leaders of the village that such a decision was needed to protect the health of their girl children and to respect human rights. On July 31, 1997 the village of Malicounda announced to the world its decision to abandon FGC and urged other villages to follow their example. Although some members of the Bambara ethnic group had stopped on an individual basis, no village had ever made a public and collective commitment to stop the practice. The commitment worked: public opinion continues to resolutely oppose FGC and deviators would be identified and shamed. This is the first unequivocal collective and contagious abandonment of FGC on record, and the event supports the convention hypothesis of FGC.4

Their decision was controversial among those who had not worked through the Malicoundan’s reasoning on the issue, and some neighboring Bambara, Mandinka, and Sosse people, both men and women, were angry and sent hostile messages to Malicounda. The women were hurt and depressed, yet defended their position, and even traveled to the villages of Nguerigne Bambara and Ker Simbara to discuss their commitment with women there in the basic education program. On November 6, 1997, the women of Nguerigne Bambara decided to renounce FGC forever. On November 20, 1997, the President of Senegal made a public declaration against FGC and called on the nation to emulate the women of Malicounda. At the same time, the people of Ker Simbara decided that they could not stop FGC without consulting with their extended family that lived in ten villages near Joal. This point also supports the convention hypothesis: the Ker Simbarans were aware that a change would have to involve the entire population among whom they commonly intermarried. Two men, one a facilitator in the basic education program, the other a 66-year old imam who had been a student of the basic education program, went from village to village to discuss FGC. The men were at first afraid of being chased out of the villages for talking about such a sensitive and controversial topic, but the fact of the Malicounda decision provided an opening for discussion. I infer that the demonstration effect was important: that the Malicoundans had succeeded at a collective abandonment and had avoided bad consequences.

Three representatives, including the village chief and two women, from each of the ten villages, gathered in Diabougou on February 14 and 15, 1998, along with delegations from Malicounda Bambara, Nguerigne Bambara, and Ker Simbara. These 50 representatives of 8000 people in 13 villages issued the Diabougou Declaration.

We . . . . declare:

Our firm commitment to end the practice of female circumcision in our community.
Our firm commitment to spread our knowledge and the spirit of our decision to our respective villages and to other communities still practicing female circumcision. . . .
We make a solemn appeal to the national and international community to quickly mobilize their efforts to assure that girl children and women will no longer suffer the negative health effects associated with female circumcision.

The ten villages had not gone through the basic education program, rather they had been persuaded by the emissaries from Ker Simbara, but the ten villages petitioned in the declaration to have the basic education program brought to them as well. Mrs. Hillary Clinton received the women of Malicounda in Senegal on April 2, 1998. They explained everything that had happened and Mrs. Clinton congratulated them on their courage. President Bill Clinton also greeted and congratulated the Malicoundans.

The Wolof of Senegal do not practice FGC, are generally prestigious, and are also reputed to be good Muslims, so perhaps it helped Malicounda, a Bambara village, to know that the natural alternative is possible. It has been further suggested that the abandonment was motivated by a desire on the part of the Bambara, a minority in the region, to assimilate to the Wolof, a majority in the region. There is no evidence for this assimilation hypothesis. No such motivation was cited by the Malicoundans, who did cite negative health consequences as a motivation. If the Bambara are eager to assimilate to the Wolof, then why were the Malicoundans initially reluctant to take up the issue? If Bambara want to assimilate, why was it that some nearby Bambara who did not possess credible information about negative health consequences were hostile to the Malicoundan decision?

Next, 18 villages in the region of Kolda in the southeast of Senegal (beyond the Gambia) who had also participated in the basic education program were inspired to follow the Malicounda example. This is a different region and a different ethnic group, the Fulani. The prevalence of FGC here is about 88 percent, so the alternative hypothesis of an ethnic minority assimilating to an ethnic majority does not apply, which permits rejection of the alternative hypothesis. They met on June 1 and 2, 1998, again, three representatives including the village chief and two women from each village, health workers, the Imam of Medina Cherif, representatives from government ministries, and they issued the Medina Cherif Declaration.

We . . .

have made the conscious decision to definitively renounce the practice of female circumcision, which is a source of multiple health dangers and constitutes a violation of the fundamental rights of our girls. We have taken this decision in order to assure the respect of girl’s rights to health, bodily integrity and human dignity. With this historic decision, we hereby join the great movement to end female circumcision which began in Malicounda Bambara. In that community, Amazons led the way to achieving the respect of the rights to health and dignity for all girls and were able to withstand the numerous pressures resulting from their courageous decision. Since that time the flag of the women of Malicounda was raised even higher in Diabougou.

Perhaps the reader is uncomfortable with all the encouragements and the muscular prose, but this is typical everywhere of difficult resolutions, individual or social. The events of the Declaration, both in content and in style, mark that, from now, the future shall be different from the past.5

Credible new information, the opportunity for a critical mass to form, a period when the critical mass conducts persuasion among the remainder of the population, climaxed by a coordinated decision on abandonment, the news that a positive alternative can be safely attained, followed by replication of the process among neighbors: this parallels Chinese events and supports the convention hypothesis for FGC.

I have not explained the most important and necessary factor in these developments, the fact that they originate with women who have participated in the same basic education program designed and implemented by Tostan (which means breakthrough in the Wolof language), a nongovernmental organization supported by UNICEF and the Government of Senegal, among others. The basic education program includes literacy training but goes well beyond. The program is aimed towards women as that is most cost-effective in the situation, but others are not excluded. There are six modules of learning, and each module contains 24 two-hour sessions carried out over two months, distributed over 18 months; there are also additional modules beyond the basic six. The first module concentrates on problem-solving skills, the second module on health and hygiene, the third on preventing child mortality caused by diarrhea or lack of vaccination, the fourth on financial and material management for all types of village projects, the fifth is on leadership and group dynamics, and the sixth is on how to conduct a feasibility analysis to predict whether proposed group projects would result in net gains. Reading, mathematics, and writing are introduced in parallel, partly motivated by the substantive topics. The pedagogy uses local cultural traditions and learner-generated materials, including proverbs, stories, songs, games, poetry and plays. Technique and content are regularly tested and evaluated.

Tostan is organized somewhat like a virtuous pyramid scheme. Tostan trainers first recruit village facilitators approved by the community of participants; one trainer is able to help prepare and to monitor facilitators operating in ten or so adjacent villages. Graduates are encouraged and supported to transfer the basic education program to new villages; former learners are trained to be new facilitators in the vicinity. Once the program is demonstrated in a pioneer set of villages, it turns out that neighboring villages want the basic education program and are willing to pay moderate fees in advance for its operation, which increases the overall efficiency of the project. Asked what has changed most in their lives, the majority of participants say that it is improved health and hygiene, new leadership skills, increased participation in the affairs of the community, and changes in local practices. The human-rights component of the program inspires action plans and strategies for reforming local practices such as violence against women, brideprice, ethnic discrimination, child labor, and for promoting the education of children including girls. External evaluations confirm the positive claims.

Groups that have undergone the convention shift want to share their experience with others. However, their efforts to inform nearby but unrelated villages that have not undergone the basic education program have sometimes met with hostile receptions. I venture that it is the entirety of the education program that contributes to success on FGC: from the very outset the program delivers useful if small achievements, so that trust in information sources and individual and group confidence advance from the beginning, and the cumulative achievement is large. Participants say that a consequence of the program is that one is able to tiim sa xel, "to look down upon one's mind.”

The basic education program is nondirective. Villagers first look at what they or other villagers are doing now and understand why they are doing it. Next they receive new, relevant and often technical information presented in a form they can comprehend. Then they work as a group to discuss the information and to decide whether it is relevant or useful. Often several steps using diverse participatory techniques are involved on a single topic. People are never told what to do. The nondirective approach is essential for success because of reactance, a concept I will explain below. It also expresses a proper respect for others.

In Malicounda the 39 Tostan participants had embarked on Module 7, on women’s health. Their facilitator was of the Wolof ethnic group that does not practice FGC. When this facilitator brought up FGC the participants refused to take part and went to speaking in Bambara. After several days of effort, the women started engaging in the questions, and started comparing experiences. In the process they discovered a connection between FGC and negative consequences that had been attributed to other causes, discovered that individuals believed that negative consequences were isolated because they had not been publicly disclosed, and thereby discovered that the negative consequences were not normal but avoidable. For example, a woman from a nearby village came who had once been a cutter but had stopped 30 years ago because her own daughter was almost killed by the procedure. The women were free to choose their own village projects, or none, and it was they who decided that stopping FGC was a priority project. Then there was the question of the religious propriety of FGC. The village imam ruled that FGC is not a religious obligation and revealed that he had not had it performed on his daughters. The connection of causal information, private experiences made public, private attitudes made public, and the larger context of the education program, precipitated the critical mass who then went on to persuade others in the village.

It has been observed that Europeans and Americans are peculiarly selective in expressing concern about the public health aspects of FGC, while neglecting activism on behalf of basic public-health efforts in Africa such as prevention of infant diarrhea, vaccinations, and so on. When I hear that, I think, you are right, but does one improvement always have to exclude another? It is comforting that the Tostan program provides a background of skills and information that facilitates autonomous and multiple improvements in health, education, and welfare.

How does the basic education program compare to programs for the cessation of FGC? A striking difference is that the Tostan program did not directly intend to end FGC. Its purpose is to provide skills and information that help people better define and pursue their own goals; it also creates a forum where women can safely engage together in free and equal deliberation about real problems. Unlike some campaigns it does not accuse people of intentionally doing wrong to their children. The nondirectiveness of the education, and also the building of trust and confidence as the program proceeds, seem to be factors in its success. Unlike several programs, the process is not limited to the women, rather, the women go on to persuade husbands, religious figures, elders and the whole group and later nearby groups of the rightness of a change. Unlike compensate-the-cutter programs (see Gosselin, this volume), participants pay to obtain basic education. The former cutters under the basic education program do not ask for money or new jobs, they ask for forgiveness for having participated in a mistaken practice. Further, participants say that the basic education program takes the place of the initiation ritual. Apparently it was the instructive and celebratory aspects of former initiation rituals that people valued more than their occult aspects.



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Accountability
Senator Norm Coleman is a strong supporter of Bush's full $359M budget request but wants greater accountability from the Peace Corps. Read why.

Protest at the Peace Corps
Do volunteers and staff retain first amendment rights while working in the Peace Corps. Join the discussion.

RPCVs organize
Read how 1,800 RPCVs organized to place two half-page ads in the New York Times.

PC is "truly hardcore"
A Marine Sergeant visited his daughter who is serving in Nicaragua. Read what he says about the Peace Corps.

From Russia with Love
The story behind the departure of the Peace Corps from Russia.

RPCVs honor Vaughn
Returned Volunteers met to honor and listen to the wisdom of Peace Corps legend Jack Vaughn.

More Special Reports

The Digital Freedom Initiative
The innovative new program to wire Senegal.

Bill Moyers talks about America's Future
Read what an early Peace Corps Deputy Director says about America's future.

PC/Washington: Senior Staff Appointments at PC HQ
See if you can guess how many RPCVs there are in senior staff positions at PC Headquarters.

Alcohol Abuse a big issue for PCVs in Central Asia
Read about the health hazard PC Staff is warning volunteers in former Soviet Republics about.

RPCV Spy dies in Moscow
The strange story of the RPCV who defected to Russia.

Op-ed: The Case for Peace Corps Independence
Why the USA Freedom Corps doesn't make sense.

Preservation of an Independent Peace Corps
Returned Volunteers insist that the Peace Corps must remain an independent agency to do its job.



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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Senegal; Service; Female Genital Mutilation; Health Education; Return to our Country of Service - Senegal

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