January 7, 2004 - Peace Corps: Byron Battle named Country Director for Mexico
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January 7, 2004 - Peace Corps: Byron Battle named Country Director for Mexico
Byron Battle named Country Director for Mexico
Read and comment on this Peace Corps memo that Mali Country Director Byron Battle (shown above duirng a PCV site visit in Mali) has been selected for the important task of Country Director for Mexico. Our congratulations and best wishes for his success. Read the memo at:
To: All Peace Corps*
* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.
To: All Peace Corps
From: Gaddi H. Vasquez, Director
Subject: Country Director for Mexico Named
I am pleased to announce the selection of Byron Battle to be the first Peace Corps Country Director in Mexico. Byron has served as Peace Corps Country Director in Mali since November 2002.
Byron Battle has extensive private sector experience working in the field of international development and has served as Undersecretary of International Trade and Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Byron was also a Senior Research Fellow at MIT, and Director of External Relations in the Office of the Secretary General at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with USAID in Paris. He holds a master's degree in economics from George Washington University, a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University, a bachelor's degree from Duke University, and he also studied at the London School of Economics and Free University in Berlin. Byron is fluent in French, Portuguese, Spanish, and German.
Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to Mexico will work in partnership with the National Council on Science and Technology (CONACYT) of Mexico in the areas of information technology, small business development, and science and technology. A Peace Corps assessment team has worked closely with CONACYT to select sites and determine the best way to utilize the volunteers. The Peace Corps will send its first group of approximately 15 to 20 Volunteers to Mexico in 2004.
As Country Director, Byron will act as the senior Peace Corps official in Mexico. As such, he will be responsible for the overall management and direction of all aspects of Peace Corps programs in Mexico.
The Peace Corps first began exploring the possibility of entering Mexico after U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox announced the "Partnership for Prosperity" initiative during their summit in September 2001. In November 2003, Director Jaime Parada Avila of CONACYT and Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez signed a new partnership agreement to launch Peace Corps' entry into Mexico.
November 24, 2003 - Peace Corps on a High-Tech Mission to Mexico
Peace Corps on a High-Tech Mission to Mexico
Peace Corps on a High-Tech Mission to Mexico
Monday, November 24, 2003
By Peter Brownfeld
WASHINGTON — Peace Corps volunteers are expected to enter Mexico for the first time ever next year, heading south to help train workers in high-tech skills. The mission comes as some industry observers say they fear America is losing its high-paying jobs in the field to other countries.
The Peace Corps (search) is still working with representatives of the Mexican government to define the mission, but when Mexico invited the volunteers, it asked that they focus on science, technology and small business.
"We're very excited about the Mexico program. We're looking forward to the next six months of developing the program," said Peace Corps Press Director Barbara Daly.
Volunteers will work "in a sort of high-tech field, rather than" what is "commonly regarded as a traditional role for the Peace Corps," said Roger F. Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, when he announced the program earlier this month.
The Peace Corps was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Since then, more than 170,000 volunteers have served in 136 countries in such areas as education, health, HIV/AIDS awareness and education, information technology, business development, the environment and agriculture. Peace Corps volunteers, who currently can be found in 69 countries, are expected to work for two years and must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years old.
The Peace Corps' mission to Mexico is part of the "Partnership for Prosperity" (search), an initiative launched in 2001 by President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox to harness the power of the private sector to foster an environment in which Mexicans do not feel compelled to leave their homes because of a lack of jobs or opportunity.
"It will probably be a high level of training because the talent is there. The technology is there," Daly said.
Noriega said that Mexico wants the program to be part of a technology transfer. Volunteers will be expected to have computer expertise they can pass on to their Mexican partners.
But too much technology transfer worries some critics, who warn that the developing world poses a threat to take away America's high-tech and high-salary jobs.
"What is the U.S. public policy? I am hard put to find a document" outlining it, said Intel co-founder and chairman Andrew S. Grove, who added that China and India represent the most serious threats to American high-tech job security. Intel manufactures computer chips and processors.
Offering evidence for Grove's argument, the Gartner Group, a market research firm, estimates that 10 percent of jobs at U.S. information technology vendors will move offshore by next year. Forrester Research predicts that U.S. companies across the board will lose approximately 3.3 million technology jobs by 2015.
Manufacturing jobs have been heading south of the border and to other cheap labor destinations for decades, but the departure of high-tech jobs is a new phenomenon, in part because these positions are relatively well-paid and require some education, said Brookings Institution (search) senior fellow William Dickens.
Dickens acknowledged that India and other South Asian nations are taking high-tech jobs formerly in the United States, but questioned the accuracy of estimates given by researchers predicting widespread job losses in the coming years. "I don't think either of those groups are irresponsible ... so I suspect they've done the best they can without a scientific survey of the sort that the Bureau of Labor Statistics" conducts, he said, adding that without such a survey, it is hard to draw any solid conclusions on the path of the labor force.
He said he also doubts that Latin America will become a future destination of technology jobs. While programmer jobs and customer service help lines are often sent overseas -- particularly to India and Pakistan, because those countries have a competitive advantage in English-speaking skills -- the language barrier makes it unlikely that high-tech jobs will head to Mexico or the rest of Latin America.
Ana Eiras, Heritage Foundation (search) senior policy analyst on international economics, said she is not concerned that the potential loss of high-tech jobs will pose a danger to the American economy. She said that while some nations have a competitive advantage in terms of lower labor costs, the United States guarantees the rule of law, has relatively limited regulations and enjoys a stable economy.
"The U.S. is one of the most attractive places in the world to do investment. I don't see us losing that advantage at least in the short term," she said.
Many factories moved to Mexico in 1994 and 1995 to take advantage of the low cost of doing business, but have subsequently moved to China or back to the United States because Mexico does not have a consistent rule of law for businesses, and Mexico's regulations are too convoluted to understand, Eiras said.
"Mexico, in terms of regulation, is a tough place to do business because you have to comply by all the regulations they have for hiring people, establishing a factory, environmental regulations," she said.
Next year's Peace Corps mission will begin with 15 to 20 volunteers slated to arrive in mid to late summer. Peace Corps veterans will be the first volunteers down there in order to help establish the mission.
Eiras said America has nothing to fear by the Peace Corps' assistance and doubts that the aid they offer will help inspire a flow of high-tech jobs to Mexico.
"I'm not sure that whatever the Peace Corps is going to do is going to be huge," she said.
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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Mexico; COS - Mali; Country Director - Mali; Country Director - Mali; Expansion; Peace Corps Directors - Vasquez
PCOL9506
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I want to recieve information about mexico farms ta this adress. lopez
11305 lowe st.
lamont ca 93241.
I want to recieve information about mexico farms ta this adress. lopez
p.o box 74.
lamont ca 93241.
HI, Can you forward this message to Byron Battle from a friend of his. Thank You David Wagner
wagnermail@aol.com
I feel like Bull Dog Druman one of the great detecives of our days finding you as Hi Byron
Peace Corps Country Director for Mexico. Congradulations , I knew this what you wanted all along. I’m not quite sure where we last lost contact with each other but I sure hope everything has worked out on the home front.
Flo and I have been residing in India this past year in a delightful guesthouse on the calangute beach in the province of Goa. My time has been well spent in writing two manuscripts and three short stories about our trvels and Aid work. Doing some aid work in Ethiopia for farmer To Farmer program. Flo for a short time was working with the chidren of the village poor until the great Tsunami diasaster hit the east cost of India. now she is there joining the releief efforts with an organization, Hope International.
I am presently in the bush areas of Ethiopia teaching livestock cooperatives how to write a business plan on the Farmer To Farmer program administered by Acdi/Voca. Back to what I enjoy doing the most.. In April I’ll join Flo once again , and spend a month on the beach in Goa, India then return home and try to peddle my writing.
Lets try to maintain contact and follow our unexplainable desire for the developing world.
Your friend,
Dave
er
wagnermail@aol.com
Please forward to Byron Battle
Hi Byron,
I feel like Bull Dog Druman one of the great detecives of our days finding you as
Peace Corps Country Director for Mexico. Congradulations, I knew this what you wanted all along. I’m not quite sure where we last lost contact with each other but I sure hope everything has worked out on the home front.
Flo and I have been residing in India this past year in a delightful guesthouse on the Calangute beach in the province of Goa. My time has been well spent in writing two manuscripts and three short stories about our trvels and Aid work. Flo for a short time was working with the chidren of the village poor until the great Tsunami diasaster hit the east cost of India. now she is there joining the releief efforts with an organization, Hope International.
I am presently in the bush areas of Ethiopia teaching livestock cooperatives how to write a business plan on the Farmer To Farmer program administered by Acdi/Voca. Back to what I enjoy doing the most.. In April I’ll join Flo once again , and spend a month on the beach in Goa, India then return home and try to peddle my writing.
Lets try to maintain contact and follow our unexplainable desire for the developing world.
Your friend,
Dave
Byron,
Are you still Mexico country director?
(Posted Jan. 30, 2007)
Art Latham
RPCV Marshall Islands (1966-68)