Monthly Archives: October 2008

10.24.08
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Agency Director Proposes Peace Corps Foundation

Peace Corps Director and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) Ron Tschetter today proposed the creation of an independent Peace Corps Foundation.

Since the inception of Peace Corps during the Kennedy administration, the agency has had three goals. The third goal has been to bring the world back home. The vision of the Peace Corps Foundation to support educating people in the United States about Peace Corps host countries and cultures.

This is from the press release issued by Peace Corps on Oct. 24:

Describing the idea during a town hall staff meeting, Director Tschetter said, “The Peace Corps Foundation would foster greater participation and support to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and their organizations, encourage cross-cultural exchange, volunteerism through community events, classroom visits, and other educational activities. We now seek support and authority from Congress on this key priority for our agency, and I look forward to moving ahead on this initiative as soon as possible.”

“Groups such as the National Peace Corps Association and the numerous ‘friends of’ groups comprised of Returned Volunteers could greatly benefit from Foundation resources…

“Ultimately, a Peace Corps Foundation building in Washington D.C. would serve as an educational facility where Americans, particularly children, would come and learn more about other cultures and countries, as well as how the Peace Corps fulfills its mission of promoting peace and friendship worldwide. The Foundation would also complement the Peace Corps’ Third Goal activities such as Peace Corps Week, the Coverdell World Wise Schools Program, and the publication of educational materials for teachers and students.”

Peace Corps Week takes place in the late winter and encourages RPCVs to speak about their cross cultural experiences in their communities and local class rooms.

World Wise Schools allows classrooms to adopt currently serving Peace Corps Volunteers as correspondents.

RPCVs and National Peace Corps Assocation-affiliated RPCV groups will likely greet the news of support for Third Goal activities with hope and curiosity.

Many groups work hard to make connections between their host countries and the United States, for example, members of the Columbia River Peace Corps Association in the Portland, OR, area have been working hard for years to launch the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience.

These are the three goals:

  1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
  2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
  3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
10.24.08
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AmeriCorps Program Named CNN Top 10 Hero

Program involving AmeriCorps members is honored as part of CNN Heroes series.

Yesterday, Anderson Cooper named his Top 10 Heroes of 2008 on CNN. Among them, Liz McCartney and the St. Bernard Project, an AmeriCorps project in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans.

According to a press release from the Corporation for National and Community Service,

Liz McCartney, co-founder of a Louisiana nonprofit that relies on volunteers and AmeriCorps members to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, has been selected as one of 10 finalists in the second annual “CNN Heroes” program.

The St. Bernard Project, formed two years ago by McCartney and Zack Rosenburg, has mobilized more than 9,000 volunteers to renovate and reconstruct 151 homes for residents of St. Bernard Parish, an area just outside New Orleans that once was home to 67,000 people that suffered massive damage from Katrina.

Watch the AC 360 clip from CNN.

Anyone can vote for the Hero of the Year.

The announcement is expected Thanksgiving night. The winner will win $100,000.

The top ten heroes each won $25,000 and McCartney donated hers back to the project.

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10.22.08
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Emerging Leaders Fellowship in NYC

Young public service professionals in New York can experience the support of a cohort without joining a service corps

The Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU offers the Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Service to non-students for the past several years that provides career and moral support, professional development, and camaraderie to nonprofit professionals who are in the first years of their career.

So the bad news is, the deadline to apply for next year was Oct. 17. Sorry I didn’t post about this sooner! The good news is, it exists! And Wagner — which has been both a grad fair host for Idealist and a career fair sponsor — has some other can’t-pass-up fellowships that I’ll link to at the end of this post.

Here is some information about FELPS from the web site for next year:

FELPS is one of the first organized programs that actively guides and engages emerging leaders in a process that encourages self-directed career development. This process encourages Fellows to explicitly answer the question “Why public service?” while simultaneously presenting them with the exciting and challenging options that a modern-day public service career offers. Through this Fellowship, NYU Wagner is extending its commitment to educating the next generation of public service leaders.

Fellows will be brought together for a series of twice-a-month workshops in the evening, during lunch time, and over breakfast with an opportunity to:

  • Discuss public service issues and career challenges with experts in the public service field;
    Gain a clear assessment of their own assets, knowledge base and skill set;
  • Build a network of peers and mentors who can offer insight and guidance on career development; and
  • Develop a career plan based on personal assessments and professional goals.

For those of you who are interested in Wagner as an educational destination, know about these opportunities: Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship offers a $50,000 scholarship for 23 in-coming full-time students at NYU’s graduate schools.

The David Bohnett Scholarship offers full tuition for MPA and MUP candidates who have expressed interest in working in municipal government to solve pressing social issues. Many more named scholarships and fellowships are on Wagner’s site.

Listen to this podcast show featuring Wagner’s career guru David Schachter.

Read more about grad school and financing your education on Idealist’s Public Service Graduate Education Resource Center.

This week our graduate admissions fairs are in the Midwest—St. Louis tomorrow night! Then next week the South! Durham (Oct. 27), New Orleans (Oct. 30) and Atlanta (Nov. 3).

10.21.08
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YouTube Presents Peace Corps Images

One thing I didn’t have when I was thinking about applying to Peace Corps in 1997 was … YouTube.

Not intended for recruitment purposes, the home movies of Volunteers in action serve as a way to make their experiences more concrete for family and friends at home, everything from village and landscape tours, to videos of students and neighbors, to silly games of Volunteers who are reunited on vacation and need to blow off steam, to talent shows, and slide shows of still photographs, like this collection from a Madagascar Volunteer corrinajs:

Apartment and house tours are a common theme –when you can’t have your family over for dinner, at least you can show them where you eat dinner, as JillKingslea has:

Videos take you inside moments of Peace Corps language training, documenting things like learning to sing love songs in Chinese from garlandrenn:

And…the opposite! Teaching host-country students to sing love songs in English (from nadunn):

The third goal of Peace Corps is to bring the world back home, to educate others in the United States about the people and cultures you learn about while you are abroad. Thanks to YouTube, Volunteers can do this faster and easier than ever before, without even leaving their host country. 

10.15.08
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RPCV David Schweidenback pushes Pedals for Peace

Today Peace Corps Polyglot highlights the work of Returned Peace Corps Volunteer David Schweidenback and his innovative program that brings bikes to people who need them in the developing world.

Pedals for Progress takes bikes that would otherwise be discarded and ships them to developing countries where transportation on a bike often makes a huge difference in people’s lives.  Because many people in developing nations have to walk everywhere, their access to services, resources, and jobs is significantly hindered.  Simply owning a bike can provide people with the ability to get the things they need and work more effe ctively.  Since 1991, P4P has rescued over 115,000 bikes shipped them to impoverished people in 32 countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

At Peace Corps’ 40th annivesary celebration at the JFK Library in Boston in 2001 I had a chance to meet Schweidenback. He was a really nice guy. His work was so impressive to me, because transportation makes such a huge difference in people’s lives.

A similar project that plays out at the local level here in Portland, OR, is the Community Cycling Center‘s Earn-a-Bike program, where donated bikes are refurbished, people with low-incomes apply to receive a bike, and recipients attend an orientation to bike commuting.