By Admin1 (admin) on Tuesday, July 03, 2001 - 4:45 pm: Edit Post |
Ambassador Dane Smith (Eritrea RPCV) to Lead National Peace Corps Association
Ambassador Dane Smith (Eritrea RPCV) to Lead National Peace Corps Association
Ambassador Dane Smith (Eritrea RPCV) to Lead National Peace Corps Association
Ambassador Dane Smith to Lead NPCA
WASHINGTON, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- The chairman of the board of directors of the National Peace Corps Association announced today (Tuesday) that Dane Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Senegal, has been selected as the new president and chief executive officer of this 20-year-old organization of more than 16,000 returned volunteers, former staff, and friends of the Peace Corps.
Smith will end his foreign service career when he leaves his current post in Dakar in late summer to assume leadership of NPCA operations at its Washington headquarters. "Peace Corps has been a major part of my family for more than 35 years," said Smith. He and his wife, Judith, served as Peace Corps volunteers in Asmara, Eritrea from 1963 to 1965. Two of their children have also served as Peace Corps volunteers, one in Cameroon and the other in Paraguay. Smith has been an NPCA member for many years and, while serving as U.S. special envoy to Liberia, worked closely with the Friends of Liberia, an NPCA affiliate, to resolve conflicts arising from a lengthy civil war and to bring needed medical services and relief supplies to Liberian refugees in neighboring African countries.
"I look forward to working with the NPCA to strengthen support for the Peace Corps mission and the contribution of returned Peace Corps volunteers to community and international service." He succeeds Chic Dambach, who ran the organization for six years and recently became executive director of the Museum Trustees Association. "Dane understands what the NPCA is all about," said Roland Johnson, the NPCA's board chairman. "Our members care deeply about building their local communities and the well-being of the people they served as Peace Corps volunteers over the years. We're confident that with Dane's long and distinguished foreign service career, he will enable us to bring home to our U.S. friends and neighbors the reality and promise of the thousands of communities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East where we lived and worked. Dane's heart and soul is in this kind of work."
Smith began his foreign service career in 1966 and has served in a variety of overseas posts, mostly in Africa. He was deputy chief of mission in Sudan and Botswana, and served as ambassador to Guinea from 1990 to 1993, and as special envoy for Liberia from 1994 to 1996. He has been ambassador to Senegal for three years. While envoy to Liberia, he also served as the State Department's director for West Africa. In previous State Department assignments he was director of economic policy for Africa, and chief of the food policy division. Smith is a graduate of Harvard University, and received a doctorate in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
The NPCA is a national alumni organization that is independent of the Peace Corps, the federal agency that was created by President John Kennedy in 1961. The Peace Corps has trained and assigned more than 130,000 Americans to two-year community-based projects in 134 developing countries. The NPCA was founded in 1978 as a grassroots organization of Peace Corps alumni who want to teach America about the overseas communities in which they served. The NPCA operates global education, advocacy, overseas relief and development placement, and support services for its members. The association also publishes WorldView, a respected magazine of current events and commentary from more than 80 developing nations of the developing world.
Its members promote domestic and international community service as individuals and as members of the association's more than 130 affiliated groups in the United States. Many of these NPCA groups operate development projects in the countries where they lived and worked as Peace Corps volunteers. Several NPCA groups have been highly effective in advocating human rights, refugee relief, conflict-resolution, and economic development projects for their former countries of service.
By Tekeste Ghebray, PhD (82.14.102.83) on Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - 11:27 am: Edit Post |
I like to contact Judith Nordblom who taught me History in 1965 in Prince Mekonnen Secondary School. I am visiting the U.S. soon and it would be nice to connect with her who I understand married to Ambassador Smith.
By Alazar Gebre-Yesus (86.184.71.55) on Monday, March 13, 2023 - 11:29 pm: Edit Post |
It would be a great pleasure to me to see, meet and chat with Mr Gary Law, I guess he is from Connecticut State. Gary was one of the Peace Corps Teachers in Eritrea and later in Ethiopia too. While he was in Eritrea, he was my English Language Teacher by the time I was attending Grade 7 and Grade 8 in the scholastic years of 1963 -1965 in The Middle School of Saganeiti, Akele-Guzai, Eritrea. I lost my communication with Gary Law when he moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and when I started joining my Secondary School in Decamere, Eritrea in the scholastic years of 1965-1966. My father in those days who was a professional teacher and a caretaker of the school, worked and taught together in the same school. My full name is Alazar Gebre-Yesus. My father’s full name is Blatta Gebre-Yesus Andeberhan / Blatta Ghebreiesus Andeberhan/. I am currently living in London, England, United Kingdom. My email address is agya040607@sky.com Thank you.
Dr Alazar Gebre-Yesus, 14/03/2023, London.