Summer 2011 - Innovations in Water - Vol. 24, No.2

WoRldVieW

Kevin F. F. Quigley, publisher

Erica Burman, editor

Contributors

Mark Duey Liz Fanning

JoAnna Haugen Karestan Koenen

Laura Kohler Sheridan Larson

Leslie Mass William Miles

Jonathan Pearson Sarah Singletary

Elynn Walter Tim Wellman

Steve Werner Susi Wyss

WoRldVieW adVeRTiSingPartyke Communications

[email protected] 374 9100

A magazine of news and comment about the Peace Corps world

www.worldviewmagazine.com

Innovations In Waterpublished by the NatioNal peace corps associatioN

Summer 2011 Volume 24 Number 2

WORLDVIEW

Elia

s A

ssaf

/ W

ater

for

Peop

leW

ASH

FeaTUReS

The Growing Momentum of WASH:Water, sanitation and hygiene seek higher profileby Steve Werner 16

Don’t Forget the Schools:Two years in Ethiopia set the stage for a life of public serviceby Mark Duey and Laura Kohler 17 Becoming a Water and Sanitation Advocate:Making a difference, two clean hands at a timeby Elynn Walter 19

Riding the Water Circuit:Third year Peace Corps Volunteers support rural water systemsby Tim Wellman 20

dePaRTMenTS

FRoM THe PReSidenTMoving Ahead: The Peace Corps’ 50th Anniversaryby Kevin F. F. Quigley 6

aRoUnd THe nPCaFrom the NPCA Office 10

Around the World with Around the World Expos 12

Group News Highlights 14

WorldView (ISSN 1047-5338) is published quarterly by the National Peace Corps Association to provide news and comment about communities and issues of the world of serving and returned Peace Corps volunteers. WorldView © 1978 National Peace Corps Association.

Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C. & ad-ditional mailing offices.

PoSTMaSTeR Pleased send address changes to WorldView magazine National Peace Corps Association 1900 L Street NW, Suite 404 Washington, DC 20036-5002

adVeRTiSingQuestions regarding advertising should be sent to [email protected] or Partyke Comunications 145 Harrell Road, Suite 119 Fredericksburg, VA 22405

SUBSCRiPTionSMagazine subscriptions may be purchased from the National Peace Corps Association by check or credit card. Prices for individuals are $25 and institutions $35 [add $10 for overseas delivery]. Order forms are also available on the NPCA website at www.peacecorpsconnect.org or www.worldviewmagazine.com

ediToRial PoliCYArticles published in the magazine are not intended to reflect the views of the Peace Corps, or those of the National Peace Corps Association, a nonprofit educational membership organization for those whose lives are influenced by Peace Corps. The NPCA is independent of the federal agency, the Peace Corps.

ediToRial SUBMiSSionSLetters to the editor are welcomed. Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or other illustrations will be considered. The editors prefer written proposals before receiving original material. Send queries or manuscripts to the editor at [email protected] or by mail to the NPCA address.

All inquiries can be addressed to the appropriate person at NPCA by fax at 202 293 7554 or by mail to NPCA, or through the NPCA website at www.peacecorpsconnect.org or www.worldviewmagazine.com

www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org WorldViewSummer2011�

COVERChildren Washing Hands at a School hand washing station in Pahuit, Guatemala.Copyright: Water For People/Nancy Haws

Visit www.clarku.edu/gsom or contact us at 508.793.7406 or [email protected]

Preparingglobal business leadersand change agentsClark University Graduate School of Management isproud to be a new Peace Corps Fellows/USA partner,and offers generous scholarships to former Peace Corpsvolunteers.

W O R C E S T E R M A S S A C H U S E T T S

EARNED EXCELLENCE

THE BEST BUSINESS SCHOOLS

IN THE WORLD

MBA inSocial ChangeCombine your businessstudies with elective coursesfocused on environmentalsustainability, social justiceand economic well-being.Prepare to lead in a diverserange of fields, frommicrofinance and ethicalinvesting to sustainabledevelopment and corporatesocial responsibility.

•• MBADevelop the skills requiredof business leaders in theglobal economy. Earn upto two concentrations inaccounting, finance, globalbusiness, informationsystems, management,marketing, or socialchange.

MBA/Master of Arts inCommunity Developmentand Planning

MBA/Master of Arts inEnvironmental Science andPolicyCombine an MBA and Masters of Arts into a singlecourse of study with a dual degree offered incollaboration with the University’s Department ofInternational Development, Community, andEnvironment.

•

•

On April 27th, NPCA representatives met with Sargent Shriver’s son Tim

at his Special Olympics office in downtown Washington, D.C. to present the family with a condolence book from members of the Peace Corps community. In the weeks following the death of this visionary leader, NPCA gathered responses online from Returned Peace Corps Volunteers all across the world who wished to pay their respects to the man whose vision shaped America’s peaceful diplomacy for the past half century. Within the book of condolences are the recollections from nearly 650 Peace Corps volunteers representing every decade of Peace Corps service. Contributors range from volunteers who were in the first group in their country, to currently serving volunteers, to the parents of

RPCVs. The collection tells of life-changing stories from dozens of Peace

Corps countries and demonstrates how Sargent Shriver’s visionary legacy lives

AroundtheNPCA

FROM THE NPCA OFFICECondolences delivered

by Erica Burman

10WorldViewSummer2011 NationalPeaceCorpsAssociation

DEEP IN THE HEARTs OF TExAs RPCVsby Jonathan Pearson

A ccording to Stephanie Wilson (The Gambia 83-84) of the Gulf Coast RPCVs, “My Peace

Corps experience had me wanting to do more to help society.” For her, that translated to a post-service social work degree and a decision to work in Houston’s area charity hospital, where patients were much more likely to be without insurance or benefits.

As NPCA Advocacy Coordinator Jonathan Pearson traveled across central and east Texas in mid-June, other Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) shared similar stories of how the Peace Corps experience ultimately benefits local communities. In

Dallas, the North Texas Peace Corps Association is preparing for the 25th anniversary of Hearts and Hammers, a project—started by RPCVs—that now attracts several thousand volunteers one day a year to help repair dwellings for homeowners who have fallen on hard times.

In Fort Worth, Mike Harrington (Ecuador 64-66) became a career classroom teacher following his service and recalled how his principal had earlier hired another RPCV. “If you’re half as good,” the principal said, “I knew I wanted you.” Fast-forward nearly a half-century later where Raymond Palko (Zambia 06-08) of

Groves was hired by the Southeast Texas Food Bank for similar reasons. Providing assistance to neighbors in need in an eight county area, Raymond says a lot of the intangibles he learned in the Peace Corps (rolling with the punches, making things work with limited resources) apply to his work today.

As our policy makers suggest that current economic needs in the U.S. require cuts to our international affairs programs, it is important to remind them that Peace Corps isn’t just about two years of service overseas. It triggers a lifetime of service to others. Quite often, service to others here at home.

COluMbIA RIVER PEACE CORPs AssOCIATION

Members of the Columbia River Peace Corps Association recently participated in the Portland, Oregon Rose Parade in front of 300,000 people, carrying flags of all 139 countries of service—it was very colorful. Writes Ed Gingras (India VIII), “The highlight for me was the crowd response with many people shouting ‘Thank you for your service!’ and ‘We need more Peace Corps!’ Many people stood as we came by—it was very moving.”

lOuIsIANA PEACE CORPs AssOCIATION

On March 7th, 2010 a jubilant group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) and Tulane Master’s International students took a break from watching Mardi Gras madness to be a part of it. Organized by the Louisiana Peace Corps

Association (LPCA), the Peace Corps Krewe, decked out in outfits representing dozens of countries of service and “disregarding any thought to uniformity” had an unforgettable experience walking with the Krewe of Orpheus on “Lundi Gras” night. Throughout the seven mile parade route enthusiastic onlookers screamed for beads, which, of course they gladly obliged. Joann Lee noted that the marchers were touched and somewhat surprised to hear shouts of appreciation for their Peace Corps service.

RETuRNED PEACE CORPs VOluNTEERs OF WAsHINgTON, D.C.

Each year on John F. Kennedy’s birthday, the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Washington, D.C. pay their respects and display their gratitude to JFK by laying a wreath at his gravesite. On Sunday, May 29, on what would have been JFK’s 94th birthday, a small group of RPCVs and friends reflected on JFK’s life and on the Peace Corps with a brief program just outside Arlington National Cemetery.

RPCV/W Community Service Director Corey Taylor (Benin 97-1999) spoke of JFK’s commitment to national service and led a moment of silence in honor of the 279 Peace Corps Volunteers who have died in service. NPCA Vice President Anne Baker (Fiji 85-87) reflected on the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps and of the pledge beginning in JFK’s inaugural speech to help others help themselves. Thomas Scanlon (Chile 61-63) offered poignant remarks. Following the program, the group walked to JFK’s gravesite to place 13 roses—representing the 13 original Peace Corps countries—next to the wreaths from RPCV/W and from President and Mrs. Obama.

AroundtheNPCA

gROuP NEWs HIgHlIgHTsA look at what NPCA member groups are up to

by Erica Burman



AMIgOs DE bOlIVIA y PERú

Some two dozen Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs)—12 of whom had served in Peru or were RPCVs who also worked there, albeit with other agencies—answered the call from the Peruvian consulate to assist at its Mid-Atlantic regional polling place during Peru’s presidential run-off election on Sunday, June 5th. Some 13,500 Peruvian nationals converged on the Falls Church, Va. location. RPCVs also assisted the consulate in the earlier April 10th run-off election. “It seems only natural to help out again, when asked to help Peruvians living here,” said Tino Calabria (Peru 63-65).

KENTuCKy RETuRNED PEACE CORPsVOluNTEERs

On May 21, the Kentucky Returned Peace Corps Volunteers celebrated the 50th at the Bernheim Forest and Arboretum; the director, Dr. Mark Wourms, is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV). The 10,000-acre forest, with its famous plant collections, lakes, trails, visitor center and public programs was the ideal place for a celebration. A highlight of the potluck picnic was a Peace Corps trivial quiz authored by Kenny Karem (Chile 66-68).

FRIENDs OF sIERRA lEONE

The Embassy of Sierra Leone honored the Friends of Sierra Leone with the Sierra Leone @ 50 Humanitarian Award on May 28th in recognition of its contributions to the development of that country. A number of RPCVs, including NPCA board member Gary Schulze (Sierra Leone 61-63), returned to Sierra Leone in April to mark the county’s 50th anniversary of independence.

Stay up to date on Peace Corps Community happenings. Visit www.peacecorpsconnect.org/npca/news and “like” us on Facebook.

The Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Programat Goucher College is a one-year curriculum ofcourses required for medical school admission.

� 99.5% medical school acceptance rate� Classes separate from undergraduates� Comprehensive advising and support� Linkage agreements with sixmedical schools

Visit goucher.edu/postbac or call800-414-3437 or 410-337-6559for more information.

GOUCHER | college

POST-BACCALAUREATEPREMEDICAL PROGRAMT

HE

Want to be a doctor?Make it a reality.

I n my speeches , I often open with the following lines: “Think about the first four or five

things you do every morning. Use the toilet? Wash your face? Brush your teeth and have something to drink? Now think about what your life would be like if you didn’t have access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation.” The majority of people in the world, I go on to say, don’t have the safe drinking water and proper sanitation that we take for granted. Currently about 900 million people lack safe drinking water and about 2.6 billion people don’t have access to proper sanitation.

As Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, we probably appreciate the importance of safe drinking water, proper sanitation and hygiene education more than most citizens. And that is why the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector needs your active support; because most citizens in Western-industrialized countries don’t realize that water-related health concerns are collectively the largest health problems in the world. Over 6,000 people per day—mostly children under the age of five—die from water-related health illnesses.

In recent years there have been positive developments. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) include two goals related to halving the proportion of people in the world who lack safe drinking water and proper sanitation. There has been progress on the MDG for safe drinking water, but sanitation has been much more difficult to achieve. The United Nations’ designated World Water Day has been an opportunity for annual celebrations, awareness and pledges to do more to improve water

services to those more vulnerable. More businesses and foundations are making water-related programs part of their philanthropic strategies. Organizations like Rotary

International and Lions Club International are encouraging their members to support WASH projects. Water is even a prominent part of Rotary’s new strategic plan.

Peace Corps has also made water an important part of its new strategic plan. Peace Corps’ Water and Sanitation department not only supports volunteers whose service is focused on WASH programs, but they also assist volunteers who find out that there are many water and sanitation needs in their community or school, so many volunteers make a water project a secondary project.

Secretary Hillary Clinton has been the featured speaker during the last two World Water Day celebrations in Washington, D.C. She articulately shared her view that addressing water-related health concerns was not only the humanitarian but strategically important thing for America to focus on. For people at the bottom of the pyramid, one of the best ways for our country to demonstrate its values is to help reduce the risk of premature death and suffering from water-related health concerns. As a tangible way to put words into action, USAID appointed Christian Holmes, an experienced and senior staff member, as a coordinator for global water concerns. Chris will help ensure that USAID’s water strategy is coordinated closely across the agency and with other

important development priorities. While the WASH sector is pleased

to have strong bi-partisan leadership in the U.S. Congress, the amount of funds in the foreign affairs budget (which is under assault by legislators that want to make drastic cuts even in effective programs like Peace Corps and WASH programs) is tiny compared to funding for other health concerns. The goal isn’t to cut funding from other important issues, but to invest in programs that are making a difference in people’s lives. WASH programs aren’t “hand-outs,” but “hand-ups.”

Finally, many RPCVs work in the WASH sector either overseas, in senior staff positions, or with advocacy efforts and many RPCVs were personally affected by the WASH problems where they served. The WASH Advocacy Initiative, an independent and effective advocacy coalition in Washington, D.C., welcomes the active assistance of RPCVs, former staff and friends of the Peace Corps. Please go to www.washinitiative.org for more information and to learn how you can get involved. If not you, who? If not now, when?

Steve Werner (RPCV South Korea 1976 to 1978) served as a health program volunteer. He was a NPCA board member from 1985 to 1991 and NPCA board chair from 1990 – 1991. Steve has worked in the international development field for about 25 years with several organizations, including as executive director of Water For People from 2002 to 2007, member of the steering committee for the WASH Advocacy Initiative, and is currently consulting for many international NGOs that work on WASH programs

InnovationsInWater

THE gROWINg MOMENTuM OF WAsHWater, sanitation and hygiene seek higher profile

by Steve Werner



s anitation graveyards—glance behind a rural school in Central America and chances

are good that you will see one. Their stories are all similar. The original school construction did not include funds for the provision of basic services so a parent dug a small pit and hung some curtains to create a makeshift toilet. Then an international NGO came in and built nice composting latrines—which are now full of compost that no one knows how to use. The school director reported the problem to the mayor who after three years convinced the national government to include it in a national school infrastructure improvement project. Modern flush toilets were built during the school holiday by a contractor from the capital without anyone even knowing —but are unusable because the school has no water connection. The sanitation graveyard now provides multiple options for students to hide behind while they do “number two.”

This is only one example of how water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects that are not properly planned or monitored can add to the problem. As my colleague Laura Kohler explains, creating a sanitation system is not enough if aid organizations or the local government do not have a proper monitoring system.

THE NEED FOR PROPER MONITORINg:

Even though Laura served in Honduras after me, she ran into similar problems of monitoring and evaluation. “As a water and sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer, my primary project was to increase water and sanitation coverage. Aside from the obvious obstacles of culture and language, I caught myself running into several

technical project-related obstacles. For every community I visited that did not

have water access or sanitation, I was asked to visit five more that had one, the

InnovationsInWater

DON’T FORgET THE sCHOOls!The future of every watershed is in its schools

by Mark Duey and Laura Kohler

www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org WorldViewSummer201117

other, or both. The problem was there was no existing record of where past PCVs or other organizations had been working. Without a proper recording system, I depended on word of mouth to guide me through my project. I spent a large portion of time re-visiting and re-working projects instead of expanding the blanket of water and sanitation coverage.“

lINKINg lOCAl HEROEs AND TECHNOlOgy TO CREATE A susTAINAblE sOluTION

Similar to Laura, I served as a water and sanitation Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras. During my tour, I saw the need to empower local leaders and create a proper monitoring system to expand the blanket of water and sanitation coverage. Fortunately, in my current position I see that with the support of some local heroes and a new monitoring technology, many communities in Honduras are on a path towards achieving sustainable water and sanitation solutions in their schools.

The heroes are the members of dozens of Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) who are taking the future of WASH in their schools into their own hands. In the communities participating in the Mi Escuela Saludable SWASH+ program of the Millennium Water Alliance, PTA members decide how best to provide safe water and adequate sanitation

in their schools, then purchase construction materials and contract local labor. In a process facilitated by Water For People-Honduras, PTAs take ownership and learn how to supervise a small community development project.

The new technology is the open-source Field Level Operations Watch (FLOW) baseline and monitoring tool developed by Water For People. FLOW combines the latest mobile phone technology—Android with Google Earth—to present location-specific

information on the water and sanitation situation of schools and communities around the world. World Water Corps volunteers and Water For People staff are currently training governmental officials to collect baseline information on the phones which instantly feed a web-based system called

Dashboard. As access to the Android platform expands in the coming years, water system users and PTA members will periodically update their situation, which will allow Water For People to help communities and governments provide maintenance where necessary.

The future of every watershed is in its schools. CARE and Catholic Relief Services recognize this and now include schools in their Global Watershed Initiative in Central America funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Water For People also recognizes this, as schools are a key part of the five-year strategic plan focused on achieving full water and sanitation coverage in every watershed and municipality it supports. When communities are empowered and projects are monitored throughout the life cycle, we are taking big steps towards preventing sanitation graveyards.

Mark Duey (RPCV Honduras 04-06) is regional coordinator of Mi Escuela Saludable SWASH+, an initiative of the Millennium Water Alliance implemented by CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and Water For People in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Laura Kohler (RPCV Honduras 88-10) is working with Water For People on their FLOW project.


non-functioning toilet stalls used to store old school furniture in linda Vista, la Trinidad, nicaragua.

Broken toilet bowls at a school in la Coyotera, el Salvador.

Paol

a Sa

n M

artin

/ W

ater

For

Peo

ple

Elia

s A

ssaf

/ W

ater

for

Peop

le


W hat does it mean to be a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)

advocate? An advocate for WASH comes in all shapes and sizes. I have been a “WASH advocate” for years but never knew it.

From 2003 to 2005 I served as a Peace Corps community health educator in small village in Turkmenistan. Like most Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) I experienced diarrhea, giardia and amoebic dysentery. During training, I remember sharing countless stories about poop with my fellow Volunteers. Although these stories always gave us a chuckle, I knew the causes of these diseases and had access to great medical care to treat them. The problem was this treatment wasn’t a long-term, sustainable solution. I realized very quickly that treatment was temporary and until I could prevent re-infestation and re-contamination I would continue toget sick.

In an effort to improve my health and that of my host family, I constantly nagged my five-year-old host brother to wash his hands. When he and the family finally did start washing their hands, my health improved, as did the health of the rest of my host family. At the time, I would not have called that advocacy. In retrospect, such a small, simple act led to changes in his behavior and health benefits for the whole family.

We know the facts: every 15 seconds a child dies from water and sanitation related diseases, globally nearly a billion people lack access to safe drinking water and over 2.5 billion lack access to proper sanitation, and water, and sanitation-related diseases account for 80 percent of illnesses in developing countries. These statistics can be overwhelming but we already know the solutions, we just have to put them in place. If this sounds simple,

it is. As a PCV you do not need to be a water and sanitation or health volunteer to take on these challenges in your communities. As a member of the community, PCVs are often viewed as a resource to help address issues the community thinks impede their ability to improve their lives such as lack of education, lack of employment, health problems and economic instability. Water and sanitation can often be at the root of these challenges. A PCV has the opportunity to make monumental long-term changes if he or she can address specific water and sanitation issues.

When most people think about water and sanitation they think infrastructure. In certain circumstances infrastructure or innovative technologies can be the answer, but there is more to WASH work then wells and toilets. Simple hand-washing with soap can reduce diarrheal disease cases by 45 percent. Any Volunteer can promote hand-washing in their home, at their workplace or with their neighbors and make sustainable, long-term changes for the health and wellbeing of people in the community.

Discouraging defecation in the open is another way to be a WASH advocate. This can be difficult if clean and well-maintained toilets do not exist. So what

is the solution? There are currently many options for sustainable sanitation. One example is the ArborLoo—a simple pit latrine that, when full, is planted with a new tree. This simple innovation helps make our world a little greener by planting new trees and keeping feces off the ground and out of water supplies.

Central to WASH is the reality that there is no silver bullet. Volunteers, together with national and international NGOs, governments and the members of the community can

help find the most locally appropriate and cost effective sustainable solutions.

As a PCV, it is you who can advocate on behalf of the community, on behalf of the school children, on behalf of the farmers, on behalf of the healthcare workers and support them in their efforts to lead more productive and healthier lives. Advocacy can be a simple conversation with a five-year-old host brother or a proposal for a latrine block and hand-washing station at the local school. No matter what the action is, every volunteer has the opportunity to become a WASH promoter through their primary and secondary projects.

Think about this: as a current or former Peace Corps Volunteer, what can I do today to advocate for the billions in the world without safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and hygiene education?

To learn more about the global WASH challenge and the solutions visit www.WASHinitiative.org or sign up for our newsletter at [email protected].

Elynn Walter (Turkmenistan 03-05) is currently the WASH sustainability director for the WASH Advocacy initiative.

InnovationsInWater

bECOMINg A WATER AND sANITATION ADVOCATE Making a difference, two clean hands at a time

by Elynn Walter


The author with her host family in Turkmenistan.

Elyn

n W

alte

r

In Panama, third-year Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) are helping rural water committees

improve the operation, maintenance and management of community water systems by using tools and activities geared towards rural and indigenous populations. This pilot project, modeled after the National Rural Water Association’s (NRWA) Circuit Rider Program, uses the knowledge and skills the PCVs acquire through training and first-hand experience during their first two years of service under the Environmental Health Program (EHP).

The project focuses on working with community water committees to identify deficiencies in their water system and create plans to improve the systems’ reliability or management methods. Once the deficiencies are identified, third-year PCVs, with the technical and financial assistance

from Waterlines, a U.S. based NGO, travel to rural water systems to work with the committee members on the identified deficiencies. The goal of the pilot project is to provide timely, consistent and specific assistance and training to rural water committees, thus allowing PCV and committee members to be effective in increasing consistent access to potable water supply for rural Panamanians.

THE CHAllENgEs OF ANEFFECTIVE WATER sysTEM

Panama has an abundance of water; it receives in the range of 70 to 100 inches of rainfall a year depending on the geographic location. With such an abundance of rain, communities can tap a variety of sources for water supply. With outside assistance, they can purchase pipes to convey the water to the community, and in some instances,

hire an engineer to design a system that will distribute the water to homes. But, the rain also causes landslides and washouts, which destroy or uncover intake works and distribution networks, exposing them to the elements and breakage every year.

In addition to these small-scale natural disasters, humans also place a challenge for many rural water system managers. Rural water committees struggle to collect user fees, maintain operation and maintenance or rehabilitate and repair the breakages and disruptions. Community politics and conflicts provide challenges for water committee members to fulfill their responsibilities and manage the water system.

While the Panamanian Ministry of Health and other aid organizations invest time and resources in rehabilitation, general operation and maintenance to keep the potable water flowing, these investments seldom see a return, and community water committees rarely experience a period of consistent service that allows for the development of community capacity to sustain the system. The infrastructure and community committee that manages the system is caught in a dysfunctional feedback loop where the faster the system deteriorates, the more dysfunctional the committee becomes and ultimately, the more houses that are left out of potable water service.

PEACE CORPs’ CIRCuIT RIDERs

EHP PCVs see this challenge first-hand as many are placed in communities to try to counteract this problem. When given sets of water system improvement tools and practical experience in implementing these tools, PCVs become quite adept at

InnovationsInWater

RIDINg THE WATER CIRCuITThird year Peace Corps Volunteers support rural water systems

by Tim Wellman


PCV and Waterlines Circuit Rider, Meredith Butterton works with a community water committee to visualize their water system.

WA

SH


providing basic assistance to rural water committees and can counteract the negative feedback loop of depreciation and dysfunction.

In addition, PCV’s cultural adaptation and understanding of non-formal education techniques allow them to easily engage water committee members, dive into the issues they confront by building trust and a working relationship. Working side by side with water committee members, PCVs provide various services including, completing supply and demand surveys, vertical profiles and plan maps of the system, hydraulic models, and operation and maintenance guidelines. All of which when discussed during water committee management seminars, allow the PCV and committee members to discuss real issues with the system and guide them in devising strategies for dealing with the issues.

Once a PCV has gained the practical knowledge, skills and cultural awareness to work with water committees, they become a fundamental asset to the EHP and other communities in the region. Many PCVs, by their second year of service, understand the issues water committees confront and are able to work with more communities. By extending their work for a third year as a circuit rider, they are able to assist even more systems.

We are in the second year of this pilot project and are already seeing the benefits of consistent visits and implementation of work plans. Water committees are building their own capacity working with these PCVs and gaining the knowledge, skills, enthusiasm and pride necessary to manage their potable water resources. In addition, third-year PCVs continue to gain valuable experience in managing potable water resources. The kind of experience the world needs based on the growing demand for potable water.

Tim Wellman is an RPCV from the Water and Sanitation Program in El Salvador. He worked for the New Mexico Rural Water Association for seven years. He currently manages the Environmental Health Program for Peace Corps Panama.


It’s not too late tobecome a doctorThe Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program at Bryn Mawr College

BRYN MAWR COLLEGEPOSTBACCALAUREATE PREMEDICAL PROGRAM

Canwyll House | Bryn Mawr, PA 19010610-526-7350 | [email protected]

www.brynmawr.edu/postbac/

Realize your dream to become a physician at one of the nation’s oldest, strongest, and most respected postbaccalaureate premedical programs.

• Forwomenandmenchangingcareerdirection• Intensive,full-timepreparationformedicalschoolinoneyear• Highlyrespectedbymedicalschools—manylookforBrynMawr

postbacs• Over98percentacceptancerateintomedicalschool• Earlyacceptanceprogramsatselectedmedicalschools—morethan anyotherpostbacprogram• Supportive,individualacademicandpremedicaladvising• Idealsize—smallenoughforpersonalattention,yetlargeenoughfor diverseperspectives• Widerangeofmedicallyrelatedvolunteerandjobopportunitiesand programs

In recognition of your completed service with the Peace Corps, you are eligible for a graduate education fellowship (equal to 30 percent tuition reduction) at Michigan Tech.

For more information, contact the Graduate School.

www.gradschool.mtu.edu/nsgfEmail [email protected]

You can continue to Make a Difference in the World!

Michigan Technological University announces the National Service Graduate Fellowship

Michigan Technological University is an equal opportunityeducational institution/equal opportunity employer.

Graduate SchoolHoughton, Michigan

CorpsAfrica, founded in 2011, brings the Peace Corps opportunity to Africans.

CorpsAfrica volunteers will move to high-poverty communities within their own developing countries and implement projects that the communities request and that help them fulfill their priority development needs.

We had the pleasure recently of sitting down with Senator Harris Wofford, one of the founders of the Peace Corps, its Special Representative to Africa, and Country Director in Ethiopia during the 1960s. (You can read his bio on our website at www.corpsafrica.org, along with the text of the full interview). He is a passionate advocate for public service and the benefits that volunteers bring to the world community through their hard work and can-do spirit they embody.

Corpsafrica: Has the idea of volunteers who are from developing countries serving in their own countries ever been discussed within the Peace Corps? do you think the founders would be happy that we’re taking this step?

Wofford: Sargent Shriver would be delighted and so am I. Indeed there was a lot of talk about encouraging volunteer service in countries all around the world. In 1962, Shriver convened the International Conference on Middle-Level Manpower to promote the idea. Many countries sent delegations, particularly South America responded. After Shriver left and the Vietnam War continued to grow, the Peace Corps was cut back from 15,000 to 10,000 volunteers, and then to 5,000. Money was very scarce,

and as a result, the promotion of home country volunteering never took off on a large scale. More recently, the creation of CityYear in South Africa came along with the Peace Corps going to South Africa. Mandela was personally supportive and participated in its launching.

The most riveting effort was in Ethiopia in the 1960s. Emperor Haile Selassie declared that if people can come from America to towns all over Ethiopia, Ethiopians should be able to do it themselves. He required every university student to spend a year in rural service in order to receive a degree. It continued for several years but their experience working in poor communities made those students prone to support the military coup overthrowing Haile Selassie, so it backfired on him. Life is not always fair. You and CorpsAfrica, like the peaceful revolutionaries in Tunisia and Egypt, are on a great venture. No one can predict where it is going to lead, but education and development in the modern world is in great need.

Corpsafrica: Have many Returned Peace Corps Volunteers come to you for advice on starting up nonprofits related to their Peace Corps service?

Wofford: The Peace Corps has been close to my heart ever since that extraordinary experience–both in helping Sargent Shriver, but even more, seeing it in action. I’ve had a chance to talk to many Returned Volunteers, and to hear them tell their stories. Even though the small size of the Peace Corps, compared to the “100,000 a year—a million a decade” that Kennedy imagined, is a great disappointment, the experience of Peace Corps Volunteers is one of the great stories of the last 50 years. It’s a proud story.

Many of the Volunteers I know have been engaged in efforts directly connected with their service, here at home or overseas. Former Volunteer and Vanity Fair Special Correspondent Maureen Orth created schools in Columbia that today serve as models of how far poor communities can advance with targeted assistance.

It has been a delight talking with RPCVs over the years and learning about what they’re doing and trying to be helpful.

Corpsafrica: Corpsafrica volunteers will be serving in their own countries, How do you think the benefits will differ from those brought about by american service?

Wofford: Like the Peace Corps, national service at home has an impact on the community and enormous benefits for the participants. It’s “education in action.” It enables them to solve problems by doing, not just by studying in a classroom. For AmeriCorps members, the experience of going from a well-to-do suburb to the inner cities is not unlike going into a developing nation. You are crossing

CommentaryandOpinion

CORPsAFRICA –sEEKINg INsIgHT AND ADVICE FROM sENATOR WOFFORD

Interview with Senator Harris Wofford

by Liz Fanning



a cultural frontier. It doesn’t matter whether the service is far or nearby, if it is important, if it is intense. It’s a kind of education that each new generation needs, whether in America or Africa or in other parts of the world.

Corpsafrica: What advice did you give Peace Corps Volunteers about to start their service? What would you say to Corpsafrica volunteers?

Wofford: I would tell them we need to be more inventive if we are going to do our duty. I would offer the advice a great teacher of Plato gave me, to remember the rule that Socrates practiced: to follow the question where it leads. It’s important our service not just be remedial—to help people in need of help—but also to ask the fundamental questions of how we change the education system, the public service system, the environmental status of the lands we live and work in. CorpsAfrica volunteers will have all those and other questions ahead of them. The answers will differ in countries, at different times, with the skills of different people. So seek the questions that most challenge you and follow those questions to the best of your ability. You are starting a journey and don’t know what stops will be along the way. You don’t know what the destination will be like, but you are lucky to have this adventure at an early age and then carry it with you for the rest of your lives.

Corpsafrica: do you think the Corpsafrica model can be applied across africa as a whole? What do you think will be our greatest challenges and opportunities?

Wofford: I think the greatest challenge and greatest opportunity is the same—dealing successfully with the fragile problem of any American initiative in Africa. You must pass the torch to the African young people who will run with it. If CorpsAfrica takes form and works in the countries where you are starting, it can well be a model that will catch fire and spread around the continent of Africa. Africa’s problems sometimes seem terrifying but its people are so full of potential. CorpsAfrica can play a part in the creation of a new Africa but it is crucial that it be carefully thought through. You need to make it very clear to the countries where you work that this is a spark that Americans are striking, but it is not going to be an American venture. Your goal should be to work yourself out of a job. But don’t worry—as you spread different versions of this idea, the potential for more is going to be even greater. This is going to be the greatest kind of fun in the future—moving this idea. I envy you.

Corpsafrica: We think that Corpsafrica can be as big as the Peace Corps, in fact bigger. do you agree?

Wofford: Yes. There isn’t the big overseas transportation problem. Also, in most cases, there would not be a linguistic problem, which requires a lot of investment. Money will of course be a limiting factor, but there is something special about a long journey that is part of one’s education. There should be long journeys in your life, whether in your own country or abroad. In the early Peace Corps years, we turned Shriver’s name into a verb; to “Shriverize” was to make something bigger and bolder, and do it faster. I wish CorpsAfrica good luck. Be big and bold and do it as fast as you can.

Liz Fanning is Founder and Executive Director of CorpsAfrica, a project that helps Africans to be “Peace Corps Volunteers” in their own countries. Learn more at www.corpsafrica.org.


Harris Wofford joins President Kennedy on the White House lawn to send off 610 Peace Corps trainees, august 9, 1962.

On the year of its 50th anniversary, the Peace Corps has found itself in the

midst of controversy. Prompted by a January 14 ABC News 20/20 report about the Peace Corps and sexual assaults, on May 11 2011, the full U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings entitled “Peace Corps at 50.” Three Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, Carol Clark, Jessica Smochek and I testified about our experiences of being raped during service and the Peace Corps’ devastating response. Lois Puzey, the mother of murdered Peace Corps Volunteer, Kate Puzey, also testified about the failure in Peace Corps policies and procedures that ultimately led to her daughter’s murder. [Editor: Full video of the hearings can be found at C-SPAN.org. Affidavits collected by Casey Frazee, founder and director of First Response Action, document that the problem spans five decades.]

The goal of the hearings, from the perspective of the women who testified, was to motivate Congress to pass legislation to reform the Peace Corps’ prevention of, and response to, physical and sexual assault. I have been encouraged by the positive steps taken by Director Williams to better prevent and respond to sexual assault. These steps include establishment of a Sexual Assault Working group, hiring a Victims Advocate, and signing a memorandum of understanding with RAINN, the internationally-recognized sexual assault advocacy group. The Peace Corps has also invited a representative from First Response Action to serve on its Sexual Assault Panel. However, I believe that legislation is necessary to codify improvements so that we do not hear the same complaints from another generation of Volunteers. The

Peace Corps Director and staff are subject to five-year term limits—meaning, in our opinion,

that there is no guarantee without legislation that the commitments and reforms of Director Williams and the current agency leadership in Washington will be maintained over time.

In addition to being an RPCV and rape survivor, I am an academic whose work has focused on psychological trauma, such as rape, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Over a decade of research has demonstrated that social support, which empowers survivors in the immediate aftermath of an assault, is key to promoting long-term recovery. Immediately following an assault, survivors are almost in denial about what occurred. Then, they try to make sense of what happened and, in doing so, obsessively examine how their own actions might have contributed to the assault. This is why survivors are so vulnerable to others’ reactions in the acute aftermath of an assault.

In fact, a meta-analysis of risk factors for PTSD identifies social support in the aftermath of a trauma as one of the primary determinants of whether a survivor develops PTSD. An important point to note about PTSD is that, although almost all women who are raped show PTSD-like symptoms in the first days and weeks after an assault, only about half go on to develop the actual disorder. Much research has focused on which factors influence the risk of developing PTSD following an assault and, as mentioned above, social support in the aftermath of trauma is key.

Because of these survivor realities, the Peace Corps staff’s in-country response to rape survivors is vital to guiding both the physical and psychological recovery of survivors. Naturally, a survivor’s safety must be the Peace Corps’ first priority. Once survivors are safe, the Peace Corps should inform them about and provide access to prophylactic treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. They should also provide survivors with access to a post-rape exam to preserve evidence that can be used in court. In-country doctors must be provided with the training and resources they need to do this. Research has shown that—done in a way that fully informs the survivors of the process—forensic rape exams can improve a survivor’s recovery. But, in addition to their duty to take the necessary physical precautions, Peace Corps’ in-country staff also have the opportunity to jump-start the recovery process by giving survivors the proper emotional and social support. They must treat the survivor with concern and respect. They should alleviate, rather than compound, the self-blaming survivors are prone to experience. They should provide the survivor with immediate access to an advocate, so the survivor doesn’t feel like she is navigating her recovery alone. The staff should also give the survivor information on the procedures for prosecuting her perpetrator in her country of service. Finally, survivors should be given the option of returning to the United States with an accompanying support person—whether another Volunteer or Peace Corps staff member, rather than having to travel alone.

Once back in the United States, survivors must be empowered to make basic decisions over their medical care.

Commentary and Opinion

A WAY FORWARDRPCV trauma expert says Peace Corps has potential to be an international leader in sexual assault response

by Karestan Chase Koenen

26 WorldView Summer 2011 National Peace Corps Association


Systems should be in place so that healthcare practitioners who victim-blame and provide poor care are dismissed. I am encouraged that the agency has hired a Washington, D.C-based advocate who can support and inform assault survivors; I would like to see similar advocate in each Peace Corps region. Advocates should also protect the survivors’ ability to make choices about their in-country post-reporting procedures, their domestic appointments upon return, and even their post-service care. Further, the workers compensation deadlines for obtaining treatment should be eliminated, as we know from empirical data that many rape survivors who genuinely need treatment do not seek it for months or years after the rape.

I recognize that some have used the current controversy to malign the Peace Corps. However, I continue to believe the Peace Corps is, as I stated in my testimony quoting Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, “the foundation of a public service movement that represents the best the United States has to offer.” The current crisis offers the opportunity for the Peace Corps to better support its Volunteers and thereby the countries they serve. By bringing its policies and procedures related to sexual assault in line with best practices in the field, Peace Corps will become an international leader in this area. I am encouraged by the positive steps being taken and the ongoing dialogue and believe that if it can meet this challenge the Peace Corps will be stronger in the next 50 years.

In an age dominated by fear and xenophobia, the Peace Corps’ mission is more relevant than ever before. Put simply, by living and working among local people, Peace Corps Volunteers help promote a positive understanding of Americans abroad. When they return home, former Volunteers promote a better

appreciation of other peoples on the part of Americans. This mission or promoting “a better understanding” may seem naïve to some, and even irrelevant. But I would argue, as Emerson wisely said, “The best antidote to fear is knowledge.”

Editor: For more information on this issue, visit www.firstresponseaction.org, www.katesvoice.net, and www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learnsafety. Visit www.peacecorpsconnect.org/advocacy to take action on the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act.

Karestan Chase Koenen, PhD (Niger 91-92) is licensed clinical psychologist and epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Harvard School of Public Health. She does clinical work and research on traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder. Her email is: [email protected].


The author, as a Volunteer

in niger.

Kare

stan

Koe

nen

When they return home from serving in the Peace Corps, most Volunteers are, in

some way, inspired and motivated. Some choose to pursue careers in the non-profit sector, and many go on to work in government service. For others, the images, moments and memories collected from two years of service are kept alive with a passion for the arts.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers-turned-artists have something in common, and yet they share their impressions so differently and distinctly. Cy Kuckenbaker creates films, Sandra Meek writes poetry, Bill Owens takes photos and Michael Shereikis makes music; all have taken diverse artistic paths in life, yet they’ve all been inspired in some way by their Peace Corps experiences.

MICHAEl sHEREIKIs, MusICIAN(Central African Republic, 1992)

When Michael Shereikis’ sister returned home from her Peace Corps service in Gabon, she brought with her several cassette tapes of the local music. This introduction to the big band style of African music piqued Michael’s interest, and that interest only increased in intensity when he also accepted a Peace Corps assignment in Africa.

Today, Shereikis is one of the twelve members of Chopteeth, a Washington, D.C.-based Afrobeat band. Well received on the local circuit, the band is particularly popular with the internationally diverse D.C. population. The musicians perform music in many different languages, and it’s not uncommon to find audience members who relate with the music. “People have come up afterwards with a tear in their eye and said, ‘Wow, thank

you. That music brings it all back,’” Shereikis says.

Though he hasn’t been back to his Peace Corps country since serving in 1992, the values and vibe inherent in Chopteeth’s music are very much

engrained in African roots. “I’m not sure what I offered to people in the Central African Republic,” Shereikis says, “but I know what I got from them, and part of what I got from them is what allows this band to happen.”


THE PEACE CORPs PERsuAsIONFour Returned Volunteers pursuing artistic careers

by JoAnna Haugen


Members of the band Chopteeth. Michael Shereikis is wearing the red baret.

Michael Shereikis as a Volunteer.

Cho

ptee

thM

icha

el S

here

ikis

Cy KuCKENbAKER, FIlMMAKER(Lithuania 2000-2002)

“I didn’t decide to become a filmmaker until I joined the Peace Corps,” says Cy Kuckenbaker, who bought a video camera halfway through his service and has been shooting film ever since.

One of his recent projects, a documentary called “Bush League,” follows the story of Jake, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, and his relationship with people in his village, all of whom share a passion for soccer. As he was finishing filming “Bush League,” Kuckenbaker took on a new project in Iraq, which led him to shoot another documentary, “Indentured,” which explores the lives of South Asian laborers working for the U.S. military in Iraq. It premiered at the United Nations Film Festival at Stanford University in October 2010 and has caught the attention of people interested in sharing the film with the House Armed Services Committee in Washington, D.C.

“My work is very much about exploring foreign places,” Kuckenbaker says. “I take an ethnographic approach, and the reason that is is because, starting with my Peace Corps experience and continuing onward,

every time I’ve gone to a foreign country, the reality on the ground is completely different than the narrative I’ve learned (in the United States).”

sANDRA MEEK, POET(Botswana 1989-1991)

Poet Sandra Meek began writing in junior high, but since serving in the Peace Corps, her work has reflected a sense of discovery. “The poems of my first book came directly out of my experience in the Peace Corps and Botswana,” she says. “Since that first book, much of my writing has continued to be focused on place, and travel is an important part of that.”

Meek was recently awarded a National Endowment of the Arts grant, which she’ll use to help complete her fifth book of poetry, “An Ecology of Elsewhere.” A professor at Berry College in Georgia, she will take a fall 2011 sabbatical and travel to southern Africa to conduct

research for her book. “’An Ecology of Elsewhere’ is a collection of poems that begin from place, from specific sites in southern Africa as well as the U.S.,” she says. “Grounded simultaneously in the present moment, through direct observation, and in memory, both public and private, many of the poems begin, or will begin, from revisiting places from my life and travels twenty years ago when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana and southern Africa was a vastly different place.”

JoAnna Haugen (Kenya 04-05) is the community news editor for the National Peace Corps Association.

�0WorldViewSummer2011 NationalPeaceCorpsAssociation

Sandra Meek reunited with a former student, Kitsoyabone, in 2008. “i’d written a poem (published in nomadic Foundations) in part about Kitso’s near-death experience, being struck by lightning in the field, a poem i had dedicated to him. When i found him in 2008 (now a policeman in Thamaga, Botswana, and in his mid 30s) i was able to show him the poem and give him the book.”

at the Cape Cross seal colony in namibia, January 1992.

Cre

dit

Her

e

Sand

ra M

eeks

Sand

ra M

eeks


In the summer of 2009, I and two other former Peace Corps Volunteers to Pakistan

returned to work with The Citizens Foundation, training teachers and working with children from the slums of Karachi and Lahore. In the course of the summer, I came away with a new understanding and appreciation for the people of Pakistan and a renewed hope for their future.

In 1962, when I first arrived in Pakistan, the country was just fifteen years old. The nation existed in two wings, partitioned from India when British colonial rule withdrew from the subcontinent in 1947. At that time, most of the fifty million people in East and West Pakistan were Muslim and were either original inhabitants of their region or emigrants from India. There was an elite middle and upper class minority employed in the civil service, military, and professions, but the majority of Pakistan’s citizens were displaced and illiterate farmers, shopkeepers, or landless tenants. As a community development worker, I was to assist this majority.

In 1971 when East Pakistan broke away from the western wing and became Bangladesh, West Pakistan became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or simply, Pakistan. Since that time, the country has been governed alternately by civilian and military rule, the population has tripled, and the government has not been able to fully address the social and educational needs of the majority.

For many decades, Pakistan’s federal government has allocated only a small percentage of the GDP resource to education, and most programs that were supported by the government failed because of the corruption,

inefficiency and dysfunctional operation of the government itself. Government schools, since the early 1970’s, have been plagued by corruption, incompetence, bloated payrolls, ghost schools, and financial malfeasance. Today in Pakistan, of the sixty-two million children eligible for school, more than half of them are not enrolled.

When I re-entered Pakistan in 2009, I viewed the problems of Pakistan’s educational system through the lens of memory and the Madrassa-focus of the western press. As I worked with and interviewed teachers and Pakistanis from a variety of philanthropic, social, and educational organizations around the country, however, and became reacquainted with the people in my original village in rural Punjab, my lens became sharper. My view of Pakistan changed dramatically.

“In 1995 some friends and I looked around,” Ahsan Saleem, one of the founders of The Citizens Foundation (TCF) told me. “Half of the Pakistani children never saw the inside of a school... education to create good citizens was gone…We looked at another issue: ‘What do we want from the children?’ We want them to compete with children of people like us and have


bACK IN PAKIsTANA fifty-year journey

by Leslie Noyes Mass

www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org WorldViewSummer2011�1

leslie and a dhamke woman and child in 1962.

leslie and the TCF ayahs, 2009.

Lesl

ie M

ass

Lesl

ie M

ass

more success. Just learning to read and write is not enough…you must be in the system of the formal school.”

A system of the formal school meant, for Ahsan Saleem and his friends, schools that were accessible and affordable to both boys and girls in their own neighborhoods, staffed by trained teachers instructing in Urdu, the national language, and English, the official language of country. It meant schools where learning to be a good citizen and becoming an agent for positive social change was as important as becoming literate or learning an employable skill.

“Formal schools have to have a building,” Ahsan Saleem continued. “They should be something people would be attracted to. A sanctuary. And the teachers and principals need to show up. The children cannot be left without a teacher or crowded into a classrooms with only one teacher and fifty or sixty other children.”

So Ahsan Saleem and his friends set out to build a school system.

“We thought if we tackled education from the paradigm of management, we could use our strengths as managers…we were all CEO’s of our companies…we all brought to the table a little madness, passion, empathy for people…and managerial skill… to help solve the problem… We hired one of the best managers in the business to run this organization and restricted our Board to oversight and fundraising—the things we could do. We called

ourselves The Citizens Foundation—no apostrophe because it is for all citizens.

We have a unique system. We stumbled upon it. We said we would go into a community. How do we get the trust of the community? How do we get them to send us the girls? We wanted to enter into a dialogue with people in the community.

To be able to open doors we hired one woman from the community to do hygiene work. She is the Ayah. She teaches the children how to use the toilet, wash their hands, comb their hair, brush their teeth. She is the door opener to the homes of the children in our communities. Every school also has a guard/groundskeeper-type

person, the Chowkidar. Part of his job description is to sit around in the evening, smoking and talking with the fathers, convincing them to send their children, their girls, to school. We had to go into the community to scout for the right persons for these jobs.”

In the 1960’s those right persons were Peace Corps Volunteers. Since 1996, the year the first five TCF schools opened, these right persons are Pakistanis.

As of this press, The Citizens Foundation has built 660 school units across Pakistan. They employ 4,800 female full-time teachers with a total employment of 7,000, and have 92,000 Primary and Secondary of Pakistan’s poorest children enrolled in their schools. Fifty percent of their students are female. Ninety percent of their Secondary School students have passed the Matriculation examinations, forty nine percent with a grade of A or better. Many TCF graduates continue their education at the university level. This is a significant change in Pakistan.

For me, the most hopeful change in Pakistan is the recognition by the upper class that their privileges come with the duty to give back to their country. This privileged minority use their own resources of opportunities and connections, their managerial experience in business, their country’s resources of disciplined and like-minded people, and their knowledge of the culture to lift the country out of seventeenth century ideas of feudal rights and dependence on others to become self-sustaining and secure.

They are a curious blend of East and West.

Perhaps they are our Peace Corps legacy.

Do we still have unfinished business in Pakistan?

Leslie Noyes Mass, Ph.D served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the community development sector in Pakistan from 1962-1964. Portions of this article originally appear in the forthcoming book, Back to Pakistan: A Fifty Year Journey by Leslie Mass (Rowman & Littlefield, Sept 2011).


inside a TCF classroom.

nancy Parlin, leslie noyes Mass, Barbara Janes, 2009.

Lesl

ie M

ass

Lesl

ie M

ass


M y first sight of a naole was nothing short of hypnotic. Having been told by my

host family about the custom of men who, for a month out of the year, dress up in leaves and run around hitting people with sticks, I was intrigued. But I was not prepared for the magnetism I would feel every time I heard the rhythmic clacking of hollow pods worn around the men’s ankles or the soft swish of leaves as they passed by in pursuit of their next destination. Entranced by the naole’s exotic confidence, I found myself openly gawking when I was supposed to be respectfully oblivious.

My husband and I are Peace Corps Volunteers at a school on the island of Maewo, one of the least developed islands in the nation of Vanuatu. When not observing the naole roaming the island’s road (yes, singular), our primary project assignment is training the school’s teachers, many of whom are untrained volunteers from the village. The idea is to run workshops or co-teach with the staff to help improve their skills. In theory, it is an ideal, grassroots way to improve the volunteer staff of rural schools. But in this remote society, where the concept of openly sharing knowledge is still a very new one, the school is doing everything it can to survive, let alone improve.

The way that the culture regards the naole sheds insight into the local people’s perception of knowledge. One naole in particular caught my eye for its horrific, tar black mask. Since the costumes strictly follow age-old custom, imported products like paints aren’t an option for their construction. Wondering out loud to my bubu, I commended the mask and asked how it got such rich color. The petite, turtle

of an old man summed up Maewo’s attitude towards education when he sagely chuckled at my musing. “Wan kastom samting olsem bae yu no gat janis blong save.” Custom things like that aren’t for you to know.

Grappling with this mindset is the core of my life here. I grew up with a mother who bred curiosity and question-asking into me early and deeply. Not a car ride was wasted. I can see myself sucking on a pacifier and staring out the backseat window, her dialogue in the background. “See those tractors out there Sher? Two of them: a red one and a green one. Do you know what they’re doing? It’s time for fall harvest…” My mother, an educator herself, was pumping me with information before I could even ask questions.

In stark contrast, the children of Maewo are expected simply to watch

and learn. Kids gather around women weaving, staring and memorizing the actions. But never will you see a mother guiding her child’s hands and explaining the technique. Shared information is an honor. Whether elder, teacher, or mother, when someone opens their mouth to share information: complete silence from the recipient. This knowledge may be shared only once and must be remembered verbatim. Asking questions would be rude, a sign that the questioner wasn’t listening attentively, a sign of stupidity.

Such a mentality breeds a lack of community support for the school. And a school isolated from the constant flow of supplies and resources sorely misses the support of its community. Secrets about traditional medicines, weaving patterns, and recipes have been the key to maintaining a given families’ status


THE POWER OF KNOWlEDgE (FOR bETTER OR WORsE)A Volunteer grapples with custom in Vanuatu

by Sheridan Larson

www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org WorldViewSummer2011��

The author hanging out with the year 3 class at her site.

Just

in B

rull

within the community for generations. To a society where knowledge is power, hoarded for the good of oneself and one’s family, the very essence of school is intimidating. Parents are leery of a system that threatens to make knowledge public and accessible to everyone, potentially jeopardizing their family’s position in the community. They see more immediate and material results when their kids spend the day helping out in the garden instead of in a classroom. They scoff at the idea that a teacher would freely share all that they really know with their students.

Without the support of parents in the community, the school finds itself without, essentially, students. As of the 2010 school year, school from grades 1-6 is free in Vanuatu. Since this school is one of only two on the northern half of the island, the school should be swamped with students. But, without parents who support education, most of those children just don’t come.

Additionally, the isolation and mystery that surrounds Maewo is intimidating to potential teachers. Trained teachers are assigned to their work place by the government. Teachers who are assigned to Maewo often appeal their posting or even quit teaching altogether. We fear

what we don’t know; and few people know Maewo. The island is notorious nationwide for its strong adherence to custom and use of “black magic.” Talk of black magic has potential teachers fearing for their health and their lives; many decide having a job for the year isn’t worth the risk.

Getting teachers here is just the first step. Even in working with teachers who are from other islands, I find echoes of this mindset. Soliciting questions or comments during my workshops is like pulling teeth with

Vaseline coated hands. If the answer has not been told to them before, they don’t know it. Simple as that. No room for invention or creativity.

Maewo custom, like that of the naole, is unique to the country and a source of pride to the island. While seeking to validate custom as a shaping force in the lives of the people of Maewo, I struggle to support it unconditionally when it is hampering their access to education. In some situations, custom calls for alarmingly strong penalties or interpretations of events. In one situation, two young men were killed because they were suspected of using black magic. In another, people decided not to prepare for an imminent hurricane because a man had “worked custom” to block it from affecting the island. Preserving and respecting custom is one thing, but fully applying it to contemporary life is another.

Maewo needs its next few generations to be literate problem solvers who can look at the past and decide whether or not custom needs to adapt to the needs of today. With education taken out of that equation, I struggle to see how that will take place.

Sheridan Larson was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu and completed her service in 2010. You can read more about her life and experiences on Maewo on her blog at www.mytb.org/sheridan.


a naole running down the island’s only road.

Students practicing phonics.

Just

in B

rull

Sher

idan

Lar

son

hovering back and forth all week finally unloaded their baggage. Coming up on the end—and, therefore, the hungriest part—of a phenomenal famine year, the whole country is holding its breath that this season’s more regular rains will reap a more fruitful harvest. For a hand-to-mouth economy like Niger’s, the survival of millet determines the survival of the people.

In many places, it looks promising. Yet, as my counterpart gravely informed me yesterday, my commune already fears a sequel to the famine. Millet is very sensitive to extremes in the period right after it has sprouted, requiring some rain, some humidity, and some heat, but too much of any and its growth is stunted. Whereas some neighboring villages planted at the start of May, most of Doumega waited until June 26 because the rains in our area had not been sufficient to that point. Then the rains came too much, too fast. The food security situation will not be certain until the harvest begins in late September, but some people are worried.

The rain is speeding up again. Against my tin roof, it is as Niagara roaring. As raindrops furiously pelt the ground, they pop back up on impact in instantaneous starbursts

of pirouetting fairies. My tiny yard is one fat puddle. By this time tomorrow, a mess of clover will have blanketed my yard.

Ruwan sama: water from above. You temperamental trickle. You carry us, you ruin us, and all we can do is watch. Aren’t you on our side?

Sarah Singletary was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, until the program was suspended for security reasons. She was reassigned and is currently completing her service in Cameroon.


The author, in niger.

Rain over the niger River.

Dom

inic

Cro

usha

re


W e will give you twelve mature bulls,” the wizened woman, seated on the

ground of her farm on the island of Lamu off the East Coast of Africa, said in Giriama. “And twenty thousand shillings.” It was an offer I had never received during my own two years of Peace Corps service in West Africa. But how could I have? I was a bachelor back then, not to mention childless. Now, though, I was an elder Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), and I was being offered considerable bovine and cash so that my first-born—herself a Volunteer—would become this woman’s daughter-in-law.

That’s what can happen when your offspring follow in your Peace Corps Volunteer footsteps, and you take that proud and magical trip to see how s/he is faring.

I mulled over the offer. “I’ll need to discuss it with Karembo’s mother,” I finally replied, surprised at how used I had become to calling my daughter by her new, Peace Corps service name.

When RPCV parents produce PCV children, they are making an even greater commitment and sacrifice than when they themselves set out into the unknown of grassroots international development work. And when they go visit, it is an experience that inevitably jumbles memories of their own cross-cultural adaptation with wonder for the current generation’s technological savvy and embrace of sophisticated assignment. Seeing the results of “Peace Corps reproduction” up-close is a unique and marvelous experience.

In our case, experiencing Peace Corps through the same program assignment (secondary education) intensified the trans-generational Peace Corps tie all the more. At the same time, I marveled at the close

collaborative relationship Arielle—I mean, Karembo – has established with virtually all her colleagues. It was not so with me at a similar age, on the other side of the continent, in the late ’70s. Back then and there, Peace Corps teachers bonded more easily with other expatriate African teachers (Beninois, Ghanaians) than with their host country counterparts. “Integrate, integrate, integrate,” Karembo now tells me is the Peace Corps mantra that she has internalized as her own modus vivendi. It is marvelous to see how much better she does it than I did, going out of her way, for instance, to introduce herself to staff and students at nearby schools. And whereas I picked up two languages during my Peace Corps service, my PCV of a daughter jabbers away in three vocabularies that are completely beyond my ken: Swahili, Giriama, and Chemistry. (I taught English as a Foreign Language; she imparts Chemistry and “Maths.”)

Even as a strong advocate of multicultural integration, I do admit that it came somewhat as a jolt when, at the airstrip in Malindi soon after my touchdown, my daughter introduced me to a slight, dark man with these words: “Dad, this is my father.” The strange sensation reoccurred several hours later when, standing next to an unfamiliar woman in a rural homestead—no relation to the man at the airstrip—my only daughter explains, without a trace of irony or levity, “Dad, this is Mom. Mom, this is Dad.” Assuming communal responsibility for resident strangers without family is a very serious matter in this part of Africa, and in Giriamaland it takes the form of veritable adoption. As the eldest teacher at her school, John Thethé, the man at the airstrip, fully assumed the role conferred upon him by his colleagues to

LetterfromKenya

PEACE CORPs REPRODuCTIONWhen an RPCV father visits his Peace Corps daughter

by William Miles

www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org WorldViewSummer2011�7

Life is calling. So is SPEA.

Lizzie KingMPA/MSES ’12

– Environmental Policy and Natural Resource ManagementConcentration

– Water Resources Concentration

Peace Corps’ Coverdell Fellows and Master’s International (MI) students

receive tuition benefits and credit hour waivers.

[email protected]

be Karembo’s Kenyan father. Similarly, Beatrice Kazungu, widow of the late leading village light Lawrence, agreed to take on an additional obligation of motherhood over this light-skinned stranger from America. While reassured that these parental counterparts were looking out for my daughter’s safety, I couldn’t help feel a twinge of displacement from my previous life’s role as sole father of this PCV daughter of mine, and sole husband of her mother. The closest I came to having an adoptive Peace Corps parent was the Togolese mama who sent stew to my home for lunch during siesta.

Although I said that Karembo is “light-skinned,” that is only relative. During our travels throughout the region, random denizens of the Rift Valley—complete strangers—would inquire if she was “half-caste.” In fact, although I met my future wife after my Peace Corps service, there is no doubt that I married the woman I did thanks to the kind of profound cross-cultural and inter-racial bonding that the Peace Corps experience engenders. And had I not married that woman, I would not have had this particular daughter. Nor would this offspring of a New York father and West Indian mother have grown up her whole life

hearing about the incomparable virtues of the Peace Corps experience, and sought to become a Volunteer herself. It’s a commonplace to say that “Peace Corps changes your life.” But many are the ways that this actually occurs; sometimes, Peace Corps actually reproduces itself.

In her own modest way, Karembo discounts the status of being a second generation PCV. “I grew up with it,” she says matter-of-factly. “It was always in the background as a possibility. I have so much more admiration for those Volunteers who found out about it on their own, and took the plunge of signing up without the lifelong encouragement of a parent.” Still, not all children of RPCVs follow in their parents’ footsteps. Some feel—and this we all, parents and RPCVs alike, must learn to accept—compelled to “do their own thing.”

When my own father came to visit me at my Peace Corps post, he made quite a hit. Adults in my Sahelian community had not seen a white man with white hair since colonial days; schoolchildren used to Peace Corps Volunteers had never seen a white person older than thirty. Both my parents had been initially skeptical about my joining Peace Corps. But my

father’s visit brought us closer together than at any other time in our lives. Neither of us knew then that he had only three more years to live.

Watching her wash my laundry by hand during the day (“people in the village would think I’m not a good daughter otherwise”), and tuck her mosquito net around me at night, reminded me of my visiting father’s words: “I’m in your hands, Son. I don’t even speak the language.” Those were the words that, at age twenty-three, turned me into a man. Seeing my daughter care for her RPCV of a father three decades later also reminded me what countless Peace Corps host communities teach us: that we are transients in this life, that we must make do with and enjoy what we have, that family is precious, and that love is at the same time universal and multi-formed, uplifting and humbling.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes more than one Peace Corps generation to learn all its lessons.

William Miles (Niger 77-9); is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and the author of My African Horse Problem, a Peace Corps memoir (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).


Two generations of Peace Corps

teachers: left, William Miles, Ceg-Magaria,

niger school, circa 1978;

right, arielle Miles, Kakoneni girls Secondary

School, Kenya 2010.

Will

iam

Mile

s

it. Much harder to bear was her guilt over the lie she’d told her family—a lie that created a gulf that was further widened by their disagreement over Adjoa and Kojo’s savings. How ironic that when she lived in Abidjan she’d called them every week, and now that she lived in the same city she saw them as rarely as she could.

“Madam?”Adjoa spun around. Yaa, the

assistant she’d hired the previous week, stood in the doorway, sensibly dressed in loose pants and a short-sleeved blouse.

“Come in, come in,” Adjoa said. “I’m glad to see you’re so prompt, Yaa.”

“Yes, Madam,” she answered, as she stepped inside.

“I think I’d prefer if you called me Adjoa.”

Yaa nodded. “I noticed the new sign outside,” she said. “Surely your brother will be pleased to be recognized.”

“The sign maker put it up yesterday,” Adjoa explained, ignoring the second half of Yaa’s comment—after all, she knew nothing about her family or Adjoa’s loss. “I think he did a fine job.”

The sign maker, as it turned out, had been a lazy and possibly dishonest man, coming up with excuses why he needed more time to complete the job, and even asking for more money weeks after they’d agreed on the price. She’d finally asked her eldest brother, Kobby, to call the man to bully him into bringing the sign—just the type of complication Kojo would have stepped in to fix had he been alive. “You haven’t even opened the business and already you’re running across problems,” Kobby said, prompting Adjoa to vow never again to ask him for help. Somehow she would just have to manage on her own.

But once the sign—with letters painted in blue, graceful cursive—was delivered and affixed, she immediately forgot about the annoyances she’d had with the sign maker. She was particularly pleased by her decision to add the Nkonsonkonson Adinkra symbol, signifying “we are linked in both life and death.” As for the name, it had come to her one day

when she looked at the rear bumper of a tro-tro bus on Tetteh Quarshie roundabout. The driver had painted an Akan expression, a public display of his gratitude for his brother’s financial support for the bus: a good brother is precious.

As if she had already been working there for weeks, Yaa approached the shelf above the washing station and pulled down one of the folded candy-pink smocks stacked there. She shook it out and pushed her arms through the sleeves. “Shall I make you a cup of tea?” she asked.

Adjoa smiled. She’d made a good choice in hiring Yaa, a recent graduate from the same beauty school Adjoa had attended years ago. In fact, the girl reminded her a bit of herself at a young age. She’d also hired two teenaged girls as apprentices, but her hopes for them were much more modest. They were awfully young and would need to be supervised closely—even to make sure they came to work on time, Adjoa thought, as she checked her watch and noted it was already past their official opening time of seven o’clock.

“Yes, please, Yaa, make us both some tea. And when the apprentices come, be sure to instruct them that making tea will be one of their responsibilities.”

While Yaa went into the back

room—a large closet, really—to heat the water on the hotplate, Adjoa looked down at the appointment book splayed open on the counter before her. The week’s schedule consisted of vast blocks of white with only a smattering of names, a few clients from her previous job at a different salon. For today, she’d written down the name of a single client: her friend Gifty.

Adjoa had invested all of her and Kojo’s savings into the salon—with nothing left over to pay the first month’s bills—and only one client was scheduled to come in the first day. She rubbed her right arm, trying to massage away the ache. Could this possibly be typical for the first day of a new salon?

Kobby was right—she knew nothing about running a business.

Susi Wyss was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central African Republic from 1990-1992. “The Precious Brother Salon” is excerpted from The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories (2011, Holt Paperbacks), which was inspired by her two-decade career working on international health programs in Africa. She holds master’s degrees in public health and fiction writing, and currently works for Jhpiego, an international health organization affliated with Johns Hopkins University.


Susi Wyss.


For many people, the idea of working in the chocolate industry is a dream job. But if you redefine a chocolate product so that it’s more than a just a sweet dessert

and instead represents a sustainable, value-added solution in a developing country, it becomes a dream job made for a team of former Peace Corps Volunteers.

Founded in March 2006, Madécasse is a chocolate production company based out of Madagascar. It doesn’t have the name recognition of Nestlé or the bank account of Hershey, but what it lacks in mainstream status, Madécasse makes up for in social innovation. The company is the brainchild of Tim McCollum and Brett Beach (Madagascar 99-01), both of whom recognized that Madagascar’s rich cocoa resources were not benefiting local communities and that people around the world didn’t have exposure to the high quality beans coming out of that corner of the world. They teamed up with the Ezaka Cocoa Cooperative, took out the middlemen, brought a local chocolatier into the picture and Madécasse was born. Joe Salvatore (Madagascar 06-08) joined the team as marketing director about a year and a half ago, and the company now offers products in approximately 700 stores in 45 states across the United States as well as online. Fast Company recently named Madécasse as one of the world’s 50 most innovative companies.

Running Madécasse is more than a full-time job for the three former volunteers, and Salvatore says it’s the Peace Corps mentality that makes it work. “It’s not just a job, it’s a passion,” he says. “It’s something we really believe in.”

Madécasse is also more than just a run-of-the-mill

chocolate company. One of the things that makes it stand out from other similar companies in developing countries is the fact that it’s not marketed as “fair trade.” “Fair trade just isn’t enough,” Salvatore says. “We can do a lot more than that.”

The business model behind Madécasse puts the entire chocolate production cycle in the hands of the Malagasy. Approximately 40 farmers work with the cooperative, which provides technical assistance, equipment and bookkeeping services. Once the beans are plucked from the trees, farmers are able to dry and prep the beans for production in the community without enlisting the services of a middleman or being paid just slightly above market price for them (which is generally the case with fair trade products). From there, the beans are sent to a chocolatier in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital city, who creates the finished product. Factory workers in Madagascar are tasked with wrapping, packaging and tying the ribbon on the top of the bars. Only then are the finished chocolate products sent to the United States for marketing, sales and distribution.

Two team members on the ground in Madagascar oversee the entire operation to ensure the process works smoothly and the social impact of the company is a positive one. “The reason why the entire process is done in country is because we feel that creates more value,” Salvatore says. “That is real sustainable development. You can’t run a development program from thousands of miles away. You have to be in a partnership locally. We’re involved in the entire process, but in the U.S., we’re only focused on sales and distribution.”

ProfilesinService

THE sWEET sMEll OF susTAINAblE suCCEssMadagascar RPCVs pioneer a “bean to bar” chocolate company

by JoAnna Haugen


Cacao pods.

left: The founders, Tim McCollumand Brett Beach.

Mad

écas

se

Mad

écas

se

U.S.-based Madécasse team members make it a point to each travel to Madagascar for at least one month out of each year to visit with members of the cooperative and make sure the product meets sustainability standards. The company focuses on quality over quantity and therefore educates and encourages farmers to diversify their crops, reuse organic

by-products and preserve the soil. Farmers are paid directly for certain crops, and because Madécasse works with each farmer individually, the company can help each member of the cooperative address specific issues regarding land, crop and equipment needs. In addition, it rewards particularly high quality products (a direct result of higher quality work) with bonuses because those specific beans make a higher quality chocolate. Keeping the entire chocolate-making process in Madagascar and allowing everyone to share in the profits of the company so that there is actual economic growth in the community is what adds real value to the product.

Despite the innovative vision of Madécasse, it’s not an easy company to manage. With thousands of miles between the production team in Madagascar and McCollum, Beach and Salvatore (two of whom live in Brooklyn, New York, and one of whom is based in Oakland, California), logistics and communication are difficult. Even though they speak the local language,

Salvatore says actually getting in touch with the farmers is a challenge. The bureaucracy involved with exporting and importing products isn’t easy either, though it does help that the bars are completely produced when they leave Madagascar. One of the biggest challenges, however, is that Madécasse is not willing to compromise quality or sustainability to meet market demands. “The U.S. market is quick to respond, and they want results quickly, but we have a different business philosophy,” Salvatore says. Companies based in the United States can turn new products out in a couple weeks, but because chocolate bars are being made on the ground in Madagascar, it can take months to introduce a new Madécasse product.


Brett inspects cocoa trees with a farmer.

loading cocoa.

Tim discusses production with farmers.

Mad

écas

se

Mad

écas

se

Mad

écas

se


The company currently offers nine chocolate bars, which vary in cocoa content. Three specialty bars—sea salt and nibs, pink pepper and citrus, and exotic pepper—are also available in stores across the United States and online. A new partnership with the National Peace Corps Association supports alumni outreach and gives back to the Peace Corps community that spurred the creation of Madécasse in the first place. Popularity of the chocolate product and the growth of Madécasse indicate only positive things are on the horizon. “We want to showcase what Africa is capable of,” Salvatore says. “We want to grow as big as possible, but not at the expense of our farmers and not at the expense of our product.”

JoAnna Haugen (Kenya 04-05) is the community news editor for the National Peace Corps Association.

GivingBack

THE PEACE CORPs COMMuNITyMAKINg A DIFFERENCE

by JoAnna Haugen

www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org WorldViewSummer20114�

PROVIDINg ClEAN WATERIN THE PHIlIPPINEsIn 2006, Kevin lee (Philippines) joined Gemma Bulos in her mission to make sure people have access to clean water through the organization she founded in 2004 called A Single Drop. The demand for clean water was so great in the Philippines that ASD’s Philippines office, A Single Drop for SafeWater, was opened shortly after Lee came on board. In less than four years, the organization provided more than 120,000 people with improved access to clean water and sanitation. Lee (who is now ASDSW’s executive director) and Bulos were awarded with an Echoing Green Fellowship in 2007.www.singledrop.org

EsTAblIsHINg QuAlITy EMERgENCyHEAlTH CARE IN ugANDAdr. Stacey Chamberlain (Senegal) is one of the founding members of the non-profit organization, Global Emergency Care Collaborative (GECC), which has developed an emergency room and training program for nurses in Uganda. Incorporated in 2008, GECC identifies areas in the world that do not have access to quality emergency care then partners with existing hospitals and trains nurses to provide this needed care. The first partnership site was at Nyakibale Hospital in Uganda, and the organization hopes to expand to other hospitals in Uganda and other developing countries. www.globalemergencycare.org

HElPINg sTuDENTs IN THE FEDERATED sTATEs OF MICRONEsIAThe HABELE Outer Island Education Fund, a non-profit organization established in 2006 by a group of former Peace Corps volunteers, offers scholarships and tuition-assistance grants to children living in the “low” or “outer” islands so they can attend independent schools in the larger district centers. Assistance is also provided in the way of book donations, material support and native language curriculum development. In 2010, the organization provided tuition scholarships to 21 students attending non-public elementary and high schools in the Federated States of Micronesia.www.habele.org

DElIVERINg TECHNOlOgy IN guATEMAlAdon livingston (Guatemala 67-70) is the brainchild behind Computers for Hope, an organization that provides computers to schools in Guatemala. Since starting the organization in 2005, he has delivered more than 1,000 computers, each of which is used by approximately 15 kids. Computers for Hope originally donated the computers but now charges for them, and the proceeds go toward building a new high school. www.computersforhope.com

Sun drying beans.

Packaged chocolate.

Mad

écas

seM

adéc

asse

bOlIVIAIn 2005, Melissa Meno and her brother and sister founded Wear Earth, a company that designs reusable bags and has them manufactured in a fair trade-certified factory in Bolivia. New colors, shapes and sizes of bags come out every year, all of which are partially made out of recycled plastic bags. In addition to reusing materials to create the bags, Wear Earth also offers a buyback program, which allows customers to send in their bags if they’d like to trade for a new color or style.

DOMINICAN REPublICGlobal Connections Television (GCTV) recently won the bronze Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation UNCA Global Prize. Awarded by the United Nations Correspondents Association, the honor was bestowed upon GCTV for its programming based on sustainable development and climate change. Bill Miller is creator and moderator of GCTV.

guATEMAlAnicole Strong (99-01) has been awarded with the Oregon State University Women’s Center’s Women of Achievement award, which honors women who have worked on behalf of women or advanced the status of women on campus and throughout Oregon. Strong’s Peace Corps experience inspired her to join OSU Extension Service’s Forestry Program in 2004. In her position, she has taught courses throughout the state to owners of forested land, which ranges from just a few to several thousand acres. In addition, Strong launched the Women Owning Woodlands Network five years ago, and this network of women land owners has come together to learn new skills in order to maintain their property and become a part of the typically male-dominated forestry community.

HONDuRAsRyan Van duzer (03-05) has landed his dream job as the first host for the travel-oriented television show “Paradise Hunter,” which will air in Canada. Duzer received the job through an internet competition. In addition to becoming the host of the show, he will also earn a $60,000 salary and be given $150,000 to put toward a home in the paradise of his choice. His most recent gig was on a Discovery Channel TV Series called “Out of the Wild.”

INDIARetired orthopedic physical therapist Paul Stefanacci (66-68) opened a walk-in physical therapy clinic in Elbasan, Albania, this past September, which provides rehabilitation services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. He is also currently mentoring a young man named Kristaq Marku, a student in physical therapy who graduates from the American University later this spring. Stefanacci will be returning to Albania in June for a two-month stay, and at that time, he and Marku will open the clinic completely. To help minimize costs for supplies, Stefanacci has joined Lantern Projects, a nonprofit organization that raises money for small international businesses.

KENyAChris gaido (91-93) has been very involved in water and crop sustainability projects in the Kenyan

community of Oyani in the province of South Nyanza since serving in the country as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Currently a project engineer for Caltrans, Gaido has actively worked to educate community members on agricultural and water issues. His most recent visit to Oyani was in December when he and another civil engineer helped the community improve a well by installing a solar pump system.

MOROCCOThomas Hollowell (02-03) is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Barefoot Running, which was released in February. Dr. Craig Richards is the co-author of the book. Hollowell is also the author of “Allah’s Garden: A True Story of a Forgotten War in the Sahara Desert of Morocco” and “The Everything Travel Guide to Ireland.” He also runs a travel company in Morocco called Journey Beyond Travel.

PARAguAyBrooke Magid Hart (84-86), a counselor at Spring Lake Park High School, has been named Minnesota Secondary Guidance Counselor of the Year. This is her 15th year as a guidance counselor. Prior positions include work as a family resource specialist for a family forum / head start program, a project assistant for Project REACH, a consultant and trainer for a teen program and an assistant human growth and development coordinator.

sENEgAlA 2010 graduate of the documentary program at the University of California Berkley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Clare Major (04-06) is one of 33 students selected as a finalist in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and

CommunityNews

RECENT ACHIEVEMENTs OF OuR COMMuNITyby JoAnna Haugen



Sciences’ 38th annual Student Academy Awards competition. Major’s film, “Feast & Sacrifice,” examines globalization as it follows a Senegalese family preparing for the Islamic Feast of the Sacrifice. The film was one of nine documentary finalists. Major is a Bay Area freelance filmmaker and video journalist. Her film was partially funded with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

sIERRA lEONEKelly Russell (80-82) has been named as the new forest supervisor for the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico. She has worked with the U.S. Forest Service for 25 years, and previous appointments include posts in Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma and California. Prior to this new position, Russell was the deputy forest supervisor for Klamath National Forest in northern California.

THAIlANDUniversity of Missouri chancellor Brady deaton (62-64) has been named as chair of the Board for International Food and Agriculture Development, which advises the Agency for International Development on strategies to promote food production, nutrition and food security worldwide. He has developed

and led international assistance programs in Haiti and Zambia and conducted research on agricultural development in Grenada and Kenya. Deaton has honorary degrees from Prince of Songkla University in Thailand, Chonnam National University in Korea and Kutasi University in the Republic of Georgia.

uKRAINEDuring her Peace Corps service, Sarah Whelan (07-09) created Eastword Oral History Project, a nonprofit organization that collects oral histories in her region of service and translates them into English in order to foster cultural understanding. The organization is currently supporting fellow Ukraine RPCV Brian Woods in his effort to create a short film documentary about the culture, history and art of the Crimean Tatar. Supported by the International Committee for Crimea, it is slated to begin in June of this year with a final product release date in March 2012.

ZAIREdan W. Mozena (74-76) has been nominated by the president as the next U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh. Mozena, who currently teaches at the National War College, joined the Foreign Service in 1981. He served as U.S. ambassador to Angola, director for the Office of Southern African Affairs, deputy chief of mission in Zambia, political/economic counselor in Dhaka, deputy political/economic counselor in both Islamabad and New Delhi and political/economic officer in Zaire, where he and his wife both served as Peace Corps volunteers.

For more Community News go towww.peacecorpsconnect.org/npca/news/community-news


ADVERTISERS INDEX

American Friends of Humboldt, 29

American University, College of Arts & Science, 7

American University, School of Public Affairs, 5

ASAP Africa, 8

Brandeis University, Heller School, 11

Bryn Mawr, 21

Center for Cultural Interchange, 11

Clark University, Graduate School of Management, 7

Cornell International Institute, IGERT, 17

George Mason University, School of Public Policy, 27

Goucher College, Postbacc PreMed, 15

Harvard University, Kennedy School, 9

Indiana University, SPEA, 37

Johns Hopkins, School of Nursing, Cover 2, 1

Michigan Technological University, 21

Monterey Institute of Int’l Studies, 5

Oregon Leadership in Sustainability Program, 29

Peace Corps, 22, 23

Tufts University, Fletcher School, OPTOC

University of California San Diego, Int’l Relations & Pacific Studies, 9

Western Illinois University, Peace Corps Fellows, 35

World Learning / SIT, 39

Several RPCVs are involved with the American University of Afghanistan. Recently Ambassador Karl Eikenberry (center) joined RPCVs and AUAF board members Kevin Quigley (far left) and Bob Pastor (far right) at the inaugural graduation in Kabul.

Documents

Summer 2011 - Innovations in Water - Vol. 24, No.2