U.S. Peace Corps XI Swearing-in Ceremony
U.S. Peace Corps XI Swearing-in Ceremony
The eleventh group of the U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers to South Africa was sworn in at a ceremony held in Mokopane, Limpopo. The total number of forty-one trainees arrived in July and, after a brief training period, thirty-eight were sworn-in today. Nineteen will serve in a cluster of rural primary schools under the auspices of the Limpopo Department of Education. Another nineteen will support NGO’s in the Limpopo and Mpumalanga Provinces as they strive to address the impact of HIV/AIDS in this country.
It has been seven years since the bilateral agreement of bringing Peace Corps volunteers to South Africa was signed by Presidents Clinton and Mandela. At the time the agreement focused on one project: the Schools and Community Resource Project. Since 1997, Schools and Community Resource Project has succeeded in assisting educators to improve their Math, Science & English methodologies. It has assisted school managers in strengthening their management practices and schools have been used as community resources through: the creation of libraries, adult education, after school /winter school learning as well as computer literacy and IT development.
Peace Corps was not satisfied with contributing to only one area of South Africa’s development, so, in 2001, in response to President Mbeki’s call for Partnership against Aids, Peace Corps South Africa introduced a second project designed to support community responses to the pandemic: the HIV/AIDS NGO Capacity Building Project. The program seeks to address two key issues: strengthening of the NGO sector through the direct, long term (2 years) provision of capacity building support to host NGOs; and enabling South Africa to meet the need to mobilize community responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Since then, volunteers have also participated in secondary projects such as HIV/AIDS awareness and education, sports development, women’s co-ops, life skills for women as well as supporting community groups in project design and management.
An important part of being a Peace Corps Volunteer, no matter which project that volunteer works in, is the relationships that are developed between people. The U.S. Peace Corps in South Africa is particularly proud to note that since the start of the program, communities have responded very positively to Volunteers, welcoming them as integral members of the community and homes.
