Bellamy, who turns 64 next month, said a big worry for her is that military personnel are increasingly doing double-duty as builders of schools and operators of food programs. It's "worrisome, in my view, when you start to blur the lines between the military and political and humanitarian. And I think it puts in jeopardy humanitarian assistance today, whether it's being carried out by Red Cross workers or the Danish aid agency," she said in an interview in her office on a hill above Brattleboro. Carol Bellamy was the first returned Volunteer (Guatemala 1963–65) to be confirmed by the Senate as director of the Peace Corps.
Carol Bellamy says it's "worrisome, in my view, when you start to blur the lines between the military and political and humanitarian"
Former UNICEF chief settles in at helm of World Learning
By David Gram, Associated Press Writer | December 24, 2005
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. --The stage is smaller now, but the issues remain much the same for Carol Bellamy: war and strife around the world, and what that means for those who try to bring aid to the needy.
The former head of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, moved to Vermont in May to take the helm of World Learning and the School for International Training, which have a variety of programs that help prepare people for work in international aid organizations.
Bellamy, who turns 64 next month, said a big worry for her is that military personnel are increasingly doing double-duty as builders of schools and operators of food programs.
It's "worrisome, in my view, when you start to blur the lines between the military and political and humanitarian. And I think it puts in jeopardy humanitarian assistance today, whether it's being carried out by Red Cross workers or the Danish aid agency," she said in an interview in her office on a hill above Brattleboro.
There's that problem; the changing nature of warfare, with fewer governments and more rebel and terrorist groups as aggressors; the fact that women and children often suffer most in these conflicts. "There's just enormous sexual violence against women and girls," Bellamy says.
With so much to concern her, it's little wonder that Bellamy talks fast, often in sentence fragments that sometimes seem to struggle to keep up with a mind moving even faster.
On making the move from New York City to Vermont she zooms from not walking as much as she did in the city to the mid-December cold snap during which she spoke, to being brave in the face of Vermont winter.
"Bad, bad, bad change. One of the things we do as New Yorkers is we walk. Here, everybody just drives. So frankly I had in New York, for the last two years ... a really nice treadmill which I never used. Well, thank God I bought it because I brought it up here and I still use it. I'm still a schlub, but I get on it every day, because you don't walk here.
"If I have to put a couple things in the negative column, not walking would be one. Minus 7 degrees when it's not winter yet would be another one in that old negative column. No, no, I don't mind."
Bellamy, who never married and does not have a family, said those facts have enabled her to devote herself fully to her work.
The New Jersey native spent several years as the first female president of the New York City Council. She was the first woman to run for mayor, losing to Ed Koch in 1985. Not to worry. "I just go on to the next thing," she said at the time.
That determination remained with her during the 10 years she spent as head of UNICEF -- the post has a 10-year term limit. Her time in the job began just after the slaughter in Rwanda and came to a close as several Asian countries sought to regain their footing after last year's tsunami.
"I don't think it's a great state of the world right now. The amount of instability in the world today -- and that is not all attributed to terrorism. I think the continuing existence of deep, abiding poverty in the world is probably far more dangerous than any weapon of mass destruction," she says.
"With 2 billion people living on less than $2 a day and a billion living on less than $1 a day ... the majority of people in poverty being women and children."
After her decade in the thick of grappling with those problems, Bellamy has come to a place where she will be able to educate and shape some of those who will be working to improve life in developing countries in decades to come.
World Learning has four main units:
-- The School for International Training, an accredited program offering undergraduate and graduate courses in a wide variety of languages, international development and related fields;
-- The Experiment in International Living, a program that allows high school students to travel in foreign countries, live with host families and work in community-service projects;
-- World Learning for International Development; an organization that frequently contracts with agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development on specific foreign aid projects; and
-- World Learning for Business, the institution's only for-profit unit, which provides training for business people in foreign languages and cultures, and which has a client list that includes Microsoft and American Express.
Bellamy believes one of the main challenges she faces is improving coordination among World Learning's different programs.
"I like this job a lot, and I love still being involved with young people and education and sustainable development," she says. "But for the smallest thing I've been involved with for the past 25 years, it may be the most complex."
World Learning has an annual budget of about $85 million, Bellamy says, versus about $2 billion for UNICEF.
"To pull the strands that connect the different pieces closer together is part of my challenge ... And to strengthen its financial model is part of the challenge." The four units are "not unrelated but significantly different kinds of businesses that need to be somewhat more related."
Of the mostly young people whose careers she's helping to launch, Bellamy says, "It's not for us to tell them what they should think, but it's to open their eyes to the bigger world out there. ... I think that's our little contribution, and it's a great thing."
