ED 028 361ItBy-Vaughn, Jack, EdPeace Corps Seventh Annual Report.Pub Date Jun 68Note- 54p.EDRS Price MF 40.25 HC-S2.80Descriptors-Annual Reports. *Cross Cultural Training. *Developing Nations, Field Experience Programs, ForeignPolicy, Indigenous Personnel. Language Instruction, Poverty Programs, Program Costs, *Program Evaluation,Statistical Data. Training Techniques. Volunteers, *Volunteer Training

Identifiers-*Peace CorpsThis seventh annual report of the Peace Corps states that the two greatest

achievements of 1968 are intangible. First. the Peace Corps achieved a new measureof cooperation with the people in its host countries. In the summer of 1968 for thefirst time, hosts helped to recruit volunteers in the United States and becamemembers of overseas staffs. Second, as volunteers came home. hundreds answeredthe call of large cities seeking high-quality teachers for low-quality schools. Alsoduring 1968. the Peace Corps shifted a large portion of its training out of the UnitedStates and into host countries. Pre-service language training was further intensified.In the future, as more Volunteers apply to the problems of the United States theknowledge and insight acquired in helping people overseas, the full value of the kindof "education" Peace Corps experience can provide will be realized. (The documentincludes a statistical profile chart for 1968.) (se)

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. . I w'ant you to knowthat my Government .andindeed the people ofBotswana deeply valueservice which the Pe'aceCorps_ have provided inthis country . . . When Iread and, hear of -thegrowing disenchantmentin the developed nationsOver externa1 aid 11-Aci

technical issis I a nce,PEACE tA,Then I learn ol fife iCORPS

n b-flU liondl resources which_are being consumed inmilitary confrontations, Icannot help wishing thatthere were a few more

,\ people who could recog-nize the impact 'whichfifty-tvvio young men andwomen are capable ofm.aking in a country suchas mine . .

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SEVENTHANNUALREPORT

Vhile the Pedce Corp d fter seven years is an establishedinstitution, its ideds dnd doprodch to foreigndssist,ince continue to generdte comment and debate. Wh

" . . . The Peace Corps . . . is not an instrument of change,but an instrument of the status quo; not a revolutionaryorganization, but a counter-revolutionary organization, it isthe advance guard of the marines counter-insurgency in avelvet glove. Young people who sincerely want to see prog-ressive change in the world would be best advised to stayout of it."

Marshall Windmiller, Associate Professor ofInternational Relations. San FranciscoState College, in the Los Angeles Free Press

. The premise of world need that gave the Peace Corpsbirth is as valid today as it was in the first days of the Ken-nedy presidency. And it will take a good deal more evi-dence than we have yet seen to convince us that the con-cept of voluntary service has lost its relevancy to Americanyouth."

Editorial in the Kansas City, Mo., Star

tt Qualitative analysis of the 'microscopic good' thismodern-day Children's Crusade has done may be hard tocome by. Certainly the fatuous accounts put out by thePeace Corps itself cannot be heavily relied upon . . . it hasconsumed more than half-a-billion dollars of tax money,floating eager neophytes of good will across the oceans ofthe world."

Editorial in the Manchester, N.H.,Union Leader

"Newsweek, a well-informed Yankee weekly which oncein a while serves up some gossip, reportedor maybe itjust slipped byIthat last year the Peace Corps recruiterscould not find a single North American who wanted to belongto the Peace Corps. Now everybody resists. Only for moneyor by force do the mercenaries join the Peace Corps. This isthe famous Peace Corps, which is neither a corps nor peace-ful."

Radio Havana

" ...A special word to the Peace Corps teachers in this parish,as well as the whole Peace .Corps operation in this country.. . . this is really the type of cooperation aniong nationswhich is most fruitful. It is something apart from considerations of big power diplomacY. It is on the level that the peple of this country can understand, and which they creadily accept. . . . "

Minister of,Educalion Erskine Sandiford, oBarbados. in a speech at groundbreakingfor a new teacher-training center

,1

eople Say" Considerable concern lets been expressed regardingthe Ivkdont or imposing the unschooled and untrainedbrashness of youth upon the long-established protocol ofnations. Our mill-trained embassy staffs and career dip-lomat- have L'ouble enough maintaining peaceful relationsthrougeout btu vorld without the dabblings of youthfulzeal blessed vith diplomatic immunities."

Willis E. Stone, Publisher.Freedom NI:aid/Am'

" . . The success of the Peace Corps should also provideus with food for thought.... If the altruism of young Ameri-cans has produced positive results in spite of the fact thatthe Peace Corps' intrinsic nature is to serve the policy ofAmerican imperialism, think of the results the altruism ofour own people could produce if their efforts were alliedwith the humanistic goals of our own foreign policy. . .

Nlezinarodni Po litika(Ciechoslovilkiiin journal)

Inspiration exists. A refreshing spiritual impact, notrequiring any materU substance, it can make people feelthe joy and meaning of life. Inspiration comes not neces-sarily ,f'rom the great man or the monumental happening:One can foul it when the gentle wind blows the leaves onthe tree, 1,Vhen On the night of January 7, 1968, 1 saw 69young American men and women speaking and singingKorean on television, such an inspiration was mine. Theywere a Pence Corps group who had come to Korea to workin public health... .

Editorial in Chosum IlboIKerean newspaper)

... This institution of the Peace Corps constitutes a workof peace, as well as a work of mutual comprehensionanidea which includes affection, respect and understanding,which can develop, endure and extend to all areas of activ-ity. It is in this spirit that I wish to thank you for what thePeace Corps has brought in the way of aid to Tunisia. .. .

Prysident of Tunisia 'Habib 13ourguibain a speech al a Peace Corpsconference in Tunis

"1 predict that '1967 will be the last year of the PeaceCorps!"

--loron King Criswell in "Criswell Predicts!"(syndicated column)

410

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION: A Time for Hope... 2Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn assesses theagency's 1968 record.

II. YEAR IN REVIEW:Several Steps Forward 4

1968 brought changes. Among them: newcountries, host involvement, young leaders,applications, honors.

III. COUNTRY REPORT: Nepal 11

The Peace Corps in microcosm is repre-sented by Nepal, where Volunteer projectsrange from teaching and health to agri-culture and public works.

IV. TRADITION: Training Gets Cool 21How the art of preparing a Volunteer haschanged from uncertainty to understanding.

V. STATISTICAL SUMMARY:Growth and Change 27

Charting the year's activities through proj-ects, people and jobs. Where they are,what they do, where they come from andwhat it costs.

VI. IMPACT: HEALTH 36While much of Peace Corps' work is in theinvisible realm of custom and tradition, theresults of public health projects are verytangible.

VII. RETURNED VOLUNTEERS 42Through their own words and deeds, formerVolunteers define the meaning of the PeaceCorps experience.

I. INTRODUCTION

A TimeFor Hope

elm ow aim ow 01110 ow Inno dem min

Peace Corps Director lack Vaughn with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, chairmanof the Peace Corps' National Advisory Council, and Deputy Director Brent Ashabranner.

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Chile

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Red denotes Peace Corps countries.

This report is traditionally ashowcase for quantified results

of Peace Corps activities. But to methe two greatest achievements of1968 are intangible:

First, in a world of mountingconflict between nations and racialgroups, the Peace Corps achieveda broad new measure of coopera-tion with the people of its hostcountries in day-to-day operations.This summer for the first time, ourhosts helped us recruit new Volun-teers in the United States. Also f orthe first time, numbers of host of-ficials became full-fledged membersof our overseas staff. The PeaceCorps shifted a large portion of itstraining out of the United Statesand into host countries, to giveprospective Volunteers the mostrealistic preparation possible foroverseas service. Pre-service lan-guage training was further intensi-

fied to increase the Volunteer'sability to communicate with andunderstand his host people.

Second, as thousands of Volun-teers came home searching for waysto extend their commitment toservice, it became clear just howimportant the Peace Corps expe-rience is to young people who com-bat inequities in their own country.For example, hundreds of formerVolunteers answered the crisis callof large cities seeking high-qualityteachers for low-quality schools.Two-thirds of these teachers choseto teach at home as a direct resultof their Peace Corps service. Theseformer Volunteers are committedto working for a better countrythrough social change, and com-mitted to achieving their goals byconstructive, not destructive, ac-tions.

With gratitude and humility we

recognize that Peace Corps Volun-teers often receive more from theirservice than they give, learn morethan they teach. In the future, asthousands more Volunteers applyto our own problems the knowl-edge and insight acquired in helpingour overseas friends with their de-velopment problems, we will in-creasingly realize the full value ofthe kind of "education" the PeaceCorps experience can provide.

I sincerely hope that you will findthe following report an honest por-trayal of what your Volunteers haveaccomplished in 1968. For this, ourseventh good year, my thanks go tothese Volunteers and to our hosts.

II. YEAR IN REVIEW

Several Steps Forward

In its seventh year, the Peace Corpsrecorded many gains. Some of the

highlights:COUNTRY SCORE: 1968 broughtseven new Peace Corps countries.The first groups of Volunteerstrained and departed fcr Dahomey,Fiji, The Gambia, Lesotho, Tonga,Upper Volta and Western Samoa.New programs were also announcedfor Nicaragua and Swaziland. It wasthe biggest year for new countriessince 1963, when the world suddenlyrealized the Peace Corps had some-thing special to offer and some 25nations received their first Volun-teers. Although Gabon abruptly in-vited its Volunteer contingent toleave in December 1967, the countrytotal reached a new high of 59.PROFILE: The picture of the aver-age Volunteer changes little fromyear to year. He is 24 and a recentliberal arts college graduate. Theratio of males to females among ap-plicants and Volunteers hovered atthe 65-35 mark. As of June 30, 1968,there were 149 Volunteers and train-ees aged 50 or older.APPLICATIONS: Despite well-pub-licized rumors that interest in thePeace Corps was on the decline, thenumber of "prime applicants" (thosebasically qualified and available forservice within the year) rose slightlyover the last year's total. Even moreencouraging, undergraduates askingfor a place on the waiting list forPeace Corps service numbered morethan 20,000 over the previous year.

Of the total number of applicants,

the percentage classified as primewas higher than ever before: an en-couraging 69 per cent compared to53 per cent as recently as two yearsago. The Peace Corps interprets thisas a sign that it is reaching moreserious and better qualified appli-cants through refined recruiting tech-niques.TEAMWORK: During the past year,the host country officials for whomVolunteers work have assumedgreater responsibility than ever be-fore for supervising and supportingVolunteers and planning jobs.

In the early days of the PeaceCorps, the prerogative for develop-ing and overseeing Volunteer activi-ties was exercised mostly by its ownoverseas staff. Now, the goal is inte-gration of Peace Corps staff func-tions into whatever structure thehost country can provide.

In philosophical terms, this is be-cause Volunteers are a no-stringsform of foreign assistance, to beemployed in pursuits that their hostcountries not the Peace Corpsdeem appropriate.

From a purely practical stand-point, it is being done because proj-ects work better that way. Volun-teers know they are performingneeded jobs, and local officials be-lieve they get more mileage out ofVolunteers who are "their" Volun-teers.

There are other advantages, too.Arthur Purcell, country director inthe Philippines, described how Fili-pino officials began planning ele-mentary education programs for the

4

Volunteers: "I asked the PhilippinesBureau of Public Schools to takeover full supervision and write upthe request for the Volunteers theyneed, which I will forward on toWashington. If they will take onthese responsibilities, it also enablesus to cut down our staff."

In the Eastern Caribbean, shiftingthe responsibilities has become amatter of absolute necessity. There,Country Director Carolyn Paytonmust daal with eight host countries:Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Gren-ada, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, St. Lucia and St. Vincentare all separate states, each with itsown government and each with aseparate request for Peace CorpsVolunteers.

She has asked every governmentto prepare a statement of problems,needs and jobs for Volunteers. Theeight papers are included in the"Eastern Caribbean Program Mem-orandum," the Peace Corps' bureau-cratic designation for the paper thatdescribes its activities in the hostcountry.

Like several other Peace Corpsdirectors overseas, Regional Direc-tor Julian McPhillips, in Calcutta,India, has found that one of the bestways to dovetail his projects intothe country's programs is by hiringa local resident to serve on his staff.The Indian staffer is on leave ofabsence from his regular job witha local agricultural agency, whichemploys Peace Corps Volunteers.

"Of course, his main job is togive Volunteers technical assist-

6

S" h"ef) highIdnd pa,tures oi Bolivia. but thenation \till import, m0,1 ot it, wool. To help increJNO 10Cdi

uni produt tion and income oi ,mall farmers, Peace Corp,1'oltinteer, hae joined with Ai() and L'tah State Uniker,i0tea( h modern sheepchearmg method!, and 14,Ip upgradeqUaNY f1ot.10. Barbara Belden, ohe oi two femalesheepshearer, in the nearly all-male projecl, tackles a sheep indemonstration IesNon tor farmer, C011fIllt1110 011 the

ithiplano, Bolivia's high Andean plateau.

411.1170.

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Bill Dyal, Peace Corps Director in Colombia, receives thatnation's highest honor, the Francisco De Paula Santander Medal,from Co!cmbian President Carlos Lleras Restrepo.

ance in the field," says McPhillips."But we find he has been a greatcultural resource, too. He interpretsthe local scene to us, and he inter-prets us to Indians who ask whatthe Americans are up to."

This summer in Senegal the firstAfrican was appointed to serve onthe Peace Corps overseas staff. Heis Alioune N'Diaye, formerly thetraining director of Rural Vitaliza-tion, a community development pro-gram that helps residents of ruralareas improve their living condi-tions. A number of Peace CorpsVolunteers work with this agency.

In Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Pan-ama and Venezuela, the Peace Corpsemploys Latin Americans to givetechnical support to groups of Vol-unteers working within various pro-fessional fields. In Colombia, forexample, a former secretary-generalof the Ministry of Education nowhas the job of developing and guid-ing all education programs involv-ing Volunteer teachers.

This summer also marked the firstrecruiting campaign in which hostcountry officials had ever partici-pated. An African diplomat and twostudents traveled to college cam-puses to talk to prospective appli-

cants for Peace Corps programs inAfrica. Widespread recruiting byAfrican students is planned for1968-69.

The most extensive participationby host country people in PeaceCorps activities has been in trainingprograms. A dozen or more citizensof the country for which Volunteersare bound work as language instruc-

tors in every training session. Usu-ally, the instructors also live akmg-side the trainees and participate incross-cultural study sessions. Insome training programs, host agencyofficials have assumed full respon-sibility for training Volunteers whowill be assigned to work with them,and they have helped assess thesuitability of trainees for serviceoverseas.HONORS: Colombia's highesthonor, the Francisco De Paula San-tander medal, was presented to thePeace Corps by President CarlosLleras Restrepo in May 1968 in rec-ognition of the Peace Corps' workto advance education and relationsbetween Colombia and the UnitedStates. It was the first time a non-Colombian had received the award.The award is presented annually tothe group or individual contributingmost to the country's educationaland cultural life. It is named for ageneral and statesman who servedas chief executive of his country inthe early 1800s.

The Peace Corps' Colombia pro-gram has 576 Volunteers. About180 work in education, includingteacher-training for a national edu-cational television system; another280 work in community develop-ment projects, with the rest in agri-culture, health and public adminis-tration projects.

In June, Director Jack Vaughn re-ceived on behalf of the entire PeaceCorps the Ton Hat Award of theNational Federation of Business and

e54

The number of host country nationalsparticipating in planning and administrationof Peace Corps programs reached a new

high in 7968. Typical was Abdalla Maitti, whojourneyed to US. to help train Volunteers

for first Peace Corps program in Libya.While Maitti and c...her Libyans taught thetrainees Arabic, the trainees taught them

English.

Professional Women's Clubs, Inc.Top Hats are given annually in rec-ognition of outstanding efforts byindividuals and organizations toadvance the status of employedwomen.

Deputy Peace Corps DirectorBrent Ashabranner was honored inMarch for distinguished service inthe federal government by the Na-tional Civil Service League. Asha-branner was one of ten winners ofthe League's annual Career ServiceAwards.TEACHER TALENT: The growingdemand for returning Volunteerswas never more evident than in thelast months of 1968.

For several years, U.S. schoolsystems have devised special re-cruiting campaigns to attract return-ing Volunteer teachers. Last year,for example, the enterprising Phila-delphia Board of Education sentcontracts to Volunteers, sight un-seen, to be signed overseas andreturned by mail, and netted 175new teachers.

This year, the District of Colum-bia went Philadelphia one better.It sent two ranking officials directlyto the Volunteers in their overseasposts. The two recruiters, Edward

New Breed ofYoung Leaders

"1>

Cambia Director,Rich Wanush.

These are the six former Volun-teers who became country directorsin their 20s. They handle a "com-plicated, delicate" job, says PeaceCorps Director jack Vaughn (see

"New Leaders" in the text on page 8).

Don Cameron, 29, Director of thePeace Corps' newest program, Nica-ragua . . . first former Volunteer to

M. m.

AS

lead a program in a Latin Americancountry .. . born in Cuba, lived there

until 1950, majored in Spanish atLouisiana State University. .. . Volun-teer in the Dominican Republic . . .

Associate Peace Corps Director inChile . . . Deputy Director in Guate-

mala . . . met and married his wife,Herta, in Chile . . . two sons, Donand Charles.

Richard Wanush, 26, Director in TheGambia . . . native of New Kensing-

conuhued on page 8

Winner and William H. Bolden, tooka six-week swing through Tunisia,Ghana. Ethiopia, the Philippines andKorea, interviewed about 250 teach-ers completing Peace Corps service,and brought back 116 applicationsand 30 signed contracts.

The trip not only was highly prof-itable in terms of numbers of pros-pects interviewed, but also gave thefaculty recruiters a direct line tothe type of teacher they are rarelyable to find: the liberal arts collegegraduate.

"Most people coming out ui teach-ers colleges are not as well-preparedas those coming out of liberal artscolleges," explained Winner. "Butin the Peace Corps, a math teacherwas most likely a math major, notan education major wl.o had a fewmath courses.

"We are dealing here with peoplewho are committed, who see teach-ing as a valuable contribution tosociety, who are liberally educatedwith a strong foundation in a sub-ject, and who have two years ofexperience," said Winner.

With a view to enlarging the pipe-line to the new pool of teachingtalent represented by former Volun-teers, Peace Corps Director JackVaughn wrote school superintend-ents in Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleve-land and New York, pointing outthat Volunteers were willing andable candidates for teaching postsin hard-to-staff inner-city schools.

The response was immediate. Allthe cities (plus Minneapolis, which

John Hurley, standing, far left, withofficials of Fiji who are signingagreement to bring Peace Corps tothe South Pacific nation.

heard about the letter and askedwhy it wasn't included) are nowworking to develop programs thatwill make the most effective useof fomer Volunteers in statesideschools.

NEW LEADERS: "The job of aPeace Corps country director is inmost ways as complicated, delicateand responsible as that of an Am-bassador," says Jack Vaughn, him-self a former Ambassador to Pan-ama.

Ir. 1968, seven country directorpos,s were held by men under 30.

This statistic is evidence of thefact that no other overseas agency,public or private, gives as muchresponsibility to members of theunder-30 generation as the PeaceCorps.

Begimiing with Volunteer service(average age, 24) up through stafflevel (40 per cent of the overseasstaff members are former Volun-teers), no man or woman is deniedthe chance to do a Peace Corps jobbecause of a chronological defi-ciency.

The Peace Corps has learned thatage is the least reliable predictorof performance in the field. Whatmakes a good country director arethe same qualities necessary forsuccessful Volunteer service ini-tiative, flexibility, awareness andconcern. Peace Corps service itselfis the best proving ground for po-tential country directors and otherkey staff. For example, six under-30

Continued from pap 7

ton, Pa. . . . graduated in 1963 fromUniversity of Pittsburgh, B.A. in his-tory . . . . Volunteer teacher in Liberia. . . Peace Corps Operations Officerfor West Africa with 16 Volun-teers, heads the Peace Corps' smallestprogram . . . son Michael born Sept.1967 in The Gambia.

John Hudey, 30, Director in Fiji . . .native of Carbondale, ill. . . . B.A.degree from DePauw University, grad-uate work in pre-med science . . .Volunteer in Malaya (now part of theFederation of Malaysia) .. . Associate

8

directors (plus three more under40) are former Peace Corps mem-bers who performed effectively asVolunteers, then spent some timelearning their way around the bu-reaucracy in Washington or infield posts and eventually returnedabroad to manage their own coun-try programs.

Now, as country directors, theymust plan and carry out every detailof overseas Peace Corps operations,from the initial meeting with hostcountry officials to fit Volunteersinto five-year plans for develop-ment, until the day more than twoyears later when those Volunteerscomplete service and board a planeto return to the United States.

In addition, to help ensure thathis program is responsive to localneeds, the country director mustspend nearly full time simply talkingto people the poorest farmers aswell as diplomats.

Meeting those people more oftenrequires a long, bone-jarring jeeptrip in khakis than coat and tie ata state reception. In fact, no otherpost held by Americans abroadrequires a greater degree of directphysical involvement with a devel-oping nation and all its citizens thanthe job of a Peace Corps countrydirector.

CONFRONTATION: The ForeignPolicy Association doesn't oftenhold convocationsonly once every50 years.

But when it does, as in May 1968,it strives to live up to its founding

Dave Sherwood's usualtransportation in mountainousLesotho is his horse. Plane takeshim to visit far-distant Volunteers.

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oi IT PI"IE t. COW, Yoluntcet, tet tui.ti 1() h

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Peace Corps Director in Malaysia ...married a Peace Corps Volunteernurse in Malaysia, Rita Franzone . . .

son, Mark, and daughter, Laura.

David Sherwood, Director in Lesotho. . . only 26 when appointed to postin 1967 . . . native of Tewksbury,Mass. . . . 1962 graduate of BowdoinCollege . . . taught school as PeaceCorps Volunteer in Sierra Leone . . .

worked in a special teaching internprogram in the District of Columbia. . . Deputy Director of Peace Corpstraining camp in Virgin Islands, thenDeputy Director of all training pro-

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Russ Schwartz with headmaster andstudents at up-country school nearthe village of Mathubudukawanein Botswana.

9

grams for Africa-bound Volunteers. . Sherwood heads the first Peace

Corps program in Lesotho.

Russell Schwartz, Director in Botswana. . . at 25 became first country direc-tor picked from ranks of former Vol-unteers . . . native of Rochester, N.Y.. . . B.A. in international relationsfrom Harvard . . . Peace Corps servicein Sierra Leone . . . Operations Officerfor Peace Corps programs in WestAfrica . . . in 1966, led first PeaceCorps program to Botswana, newlyindependent nation in the heart of

Continued on page 10

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers ruffled the ager da of Foreigo

Policy Association's semicentennial meeting in New York by askingexperts hard questions about CIS. foreign policy. Swedish economistGunnar Myrdal loads session with former Volunteors,who were invited

to attend the convocation as future leaders of American society.

principle: to be an educationalforum on American foreign policy.

To achieve its educational objec-tives, the FPA invited two types ofdelegates to its three-day affair atthe New York Hilton. They werecalled the "leaders" and the "futureleaders."

Continued from page 9

southern Africa . . . currently worksin Peace Corps' headquarters, Officeof Planning, Program Review and Re-search.

Sam Stokes, 27, Director in Dahomey. . native of New York City. . . . Yale

graduate . . . lived in Paris and Eng-land . . . Volunteer in the Ivory Coast

. staff member of Peace Corpstraining programs . . . OperationsOfficer for Peace Corps programs inWest Africa directs activities of 25Volunteers in "Dahomey's first PeaceCorps program.

The leaders in foreign affairs wereabout 400 State Department offi-cials, international business execu-tives, college professors and othersover age 35.

The future leaders consisted ofan equal representation of peopleunder age 35 with proven interest

in foreign affairs. Former WhiteHouse fellows, newly appointedForeign Service Officers, returnedRhodes Scholars and corporationjunior executives were invited.

So were returned Peace CorpsVolunteers about 175 of themand they comprised the largestsingle group represented at the con-vocation. The FPA helped pay fortravel and lodging to ensure PeaceCorps representation.

While the FPA expected a healthyexchange of ideas, it didn't antici-pate the confrontation that tookplace. Parts of the agenda werescrapped. Talk sessions extendedlate into the night.

Those under 35 wanted answersto uncomfortable questions theyposed to those over 35. ReturnedPeace Corps Volunteers asked forexplanations of American policiesthey observed in action overseas.Basically, the future leaders wantedto talk about what must be donenow to build a better world 40 yearsfrom now, rather than speculateabout what the world is going tobe like in the year 2018, as theagenda dictated.

"The dynamics of the convoca-tion were more interesting than itscontent," said one participant."These young people don't wantto sit in easy chairs and theorizeabout the world of tomorrow. Theywant to build their tomorrow them-selves, and I don't blame them abit."

04,11.

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Sam Stokes, center, talks to director of Dahomey's Boy Scouts,who work under guidance of Peace Corps Volunteers.

10

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III. COUNTRY REPORT

Peace Crps in .-lepal

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Fishasew'ANT A

Because increa,ing agricultural yields is top priority in Nepalidevelopment plans, it is also the Peace Corps' principal concern in thiscountry. Michael Gill was a history major and now is a Peace Corps"generalist" trained to help Nepali farmers produce better crops.

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Tales From a T

Nothing tells the Peace Corpsstory better than an account of itsexperience in one country, focusedon the work of individuel Volun-teers. Over the past six years, thePeace Corps has flourished in theheady climate of Nepal. The stozyof its progress in this country sug-gests the pattern of Peace Corps-host country activities and personalrelationships throughout the world.

Nepal? It was Shangri-la, Hillaryon Everest, photos of blue sky

and white snow in old NationalGeographics. It was bells on muletrains in windswept Himalayanpasses, a tiny country perched onthe roof of the world.

To most Americans, Nepal wasstill a remote "mountain kingdom"when the first group of Peace CorpsVolunteers, their misconceptionssomewhat muted by a training ses-sion at George Washington Univer-sity, landed at Kathmandu airportin 1962.

For the occasion, the Nepaliswho had kept their country closedto Westerners for a century priorto 1951 sent officials of the na-tional tourism agency to greet thefirst Volunteers. Apparently, Nepalviewed the advent of the 70 Ameri-cans as little more than a welcomeboom in the local tourist trade.

But after six years, good inten-tions and first impressions havecrystalized into practical knowledgeof what the Peace Corps can do tohelp Nepal. More than 540 Volun-teers haven't revolutionized thecountry. They were never meant to.But the accomplishments of threegenerations of Volunteers are clear:

TIBET

t. Everest

Volunteers in Nepal are indicat by the dots on th

From "Nepal" by Pradyumna P. Karan 0 1960, University of Kentucky Press.

. . _

ned-on Land

1200 students are involved ina radically new program, just twoyears old, in which science educa-tion has become laboratory andexperiment oriented. The goal iselimination of the rote method ofscience teaching.

A teaching program in mathe-matics, just moving from the exper-imental stage to widespread usage,is making math relevant to the livesof Nepali youngsters.

Rice production has been in-creased dramatically where Volun-teers and their Nepali counterpartshave introduced new varieties ofMexican and Philippine rice. In oneextreme case, rice production forone village rose 1200 per cent. Inother villages, yields have increasedsteadily as a result of this project.

Wheat, a potential cash crop forexport to hungry India, has been in-troduced where none was previouslygrown. In one village a Volunteerplanted one demonstration acre, and

villagers were so impressed by thecrop that they planted 400 acres thefollowing year.

Villages previously connectedonly by footpaths to the outside arenow linked year-round by roadsbuilt with the aid of Volunteers.The number of miles covered issmall, but each foot of road wascut out of the hillside by the handsof the local people.

Scores of water systems, bridgesand irrigation systems have beenconstructed. Liberal arts graduates,given an intensive course in PeaceCorps training, act as advisors andengineers in these projects.

In some instances, Volunteershave dramatically altered the livesof individual people such as oneVolunteer's introduction of iodineinto the drinking water of a village,which arrested goiters throughoutthe settlement.

Nepal has fostered a kind ofPeace Corps in microcosm, whereliving conditions, relationships withNepali hosts, a competent PeaceCorps staff and hard-working Volun-teers have all combined to producea success that if modest by West-ern standardsis tremendously sig-

nificant to Nepal.Sinee food production is Nepal's

major national concern, it is alsothe Peace Corps'. More than 50 percent of the 179 Volunteers servingin this country have jobs as agri-culture extension agents. The restare assigned to teaching and to ruralconstruction projects.

The top priority agriculture pro-gram attacks a problem that Nepalshares with her neighbor, India, andwith most other developing nationstoday.

Ninety per cent of the Nepalisdepend on farming for their living,but, for most, that living is a baresubsistence. The country now ex-ports some food, but if it is to con-tinue to feed its 10.5 million people,broaden its economic base and keeppace with a growing population,Nepal must find ways to bring morefood out of reluctant land.

Volunteers in Nepal do agricul-ture extension work in villages,most of them in an area called theTerai. Much of the increased foodproduction must take place in thisregion, which contains two-thirdsof the nation's arable land for itsmajor products.

Since most Peace Corps jobs in Nepal require constant trekking and liberal exposure to out-of-doors, most

Volunteers assigned there are male. But women still have an important role, especially in education. Elizabeth Front

lives in the town of Sanishare, where she teaches at /oca/ school and tutors this group of children after class.

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One glimpse of the Terai shattersevery last myth of Nepal as a coun-try dominated by snow and ice-capped mountains. It is a flat, lowplain, about 20 miles wide, stretch-ing across the southern end of thecountry.

From September until mid-June,the land and everything on it bakes,and little can be grown. From Aprilon, the temperature hits 114 degreesday after day. Then the monsooncomes. Through the summer months,the rains make rivers out of road-ways and, at the same time, providemoisture for the year's crops.

Mike Gill, from Wayne, Pennsyl-vania, an agriculture extension Vol-unteer in the Terai, explains lifethere:

"Life is pretty simple; there aren'ttoo many exciting things going on inmy village. I've got a mango groveto shower in, nice groves to walkthrough. I didn't expect it to be ashellishly hot as it is, but aside fromthat, and the tasteless food, I like it.

The man at the bottom of the well is VolunteerRichard Rathbun. His regular job is agricultureextension in the village of Laxminia, but he

can provide solutions to almost any kind ofproblem, such as pumping mud out ofthe community well to improve the taste of thewater. At one point the pump clogged, andRathbun had to climb down to find the trouble.

P-411

One of Peace Corps' most promising projectsin Nepal is a science teaching program that

will eventually substitute the experiment anddiscovery method of instruction for rotelearning in science classes. Peace CorpsVolunteers were instrumental in teachingmethod to Nepali teachers and developingteaching materials. Douglas Hall supervisesexperiment in water displacement at DurbarSchool in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital.

"Everybody here is a farmer, soeverybody's interested in increasinghis yields. If it is proved to a farmerthat a new method will improve hiscrops, then he'll go ahead and tryit if it's within his means. Andwhen he is successful, his good for-tune is appreciated by everybody,not just a few," Gill said.

Nepal's shortage of roads is per-haps an even greater problem thana shortage of food. With a landarea about the size of Illinois, thecountry has only 600 miles of all-weather roads. Except for one roadconnecting Kathmandu with Indiato the south and another connectingthe capital with Lhasa in Tibet,

14

-

At a schoo/ built by AID near Kathmandu, Volunteer LloydStevens teaches blind students to read Brai//e. Blind himself,Stevens has helped the school expand its capacity

to help handicapped pupils who otherwise would have no

educational opportunity. After completing his two years

of Volunteer service, Iloyd re-enrolled in Peace Corps,is now in his fourth year of service.

there simply are few practical year-round roads outside the KathmanduValley. For many years to come, themost adequate way between mostpoints in Nepal will be by foot orby plane.

There are mostly grass landingstrips, so the DC-3s of Royal NepalAirlines Corporation can reach intothe hills when weather permits.But for most local people and Vol-unteers alike, trekking across themountains is still the only form oftransportation. But few regard theconstant trekking as punishment:the beauty of the land is repaymentfor sweat-soaked shirts.

Volunteers are assigned to a gov-ernment public works program thateventually will help open up thecountry for other forms of trans-portation. One of these Volunteers,Herb Koplowitz of Elmont, NewYork, is a prototypal Peace Corps"generalist," or liberal arts graduateturned specialist by Peace Corpstraining.

A rePthematics and philosophymajor at Cornell University, Koplo-witz has now become a construc-tion expert for the Peace Corps inNepal. His job is to survey, design,make estimates for and, if need be,help in such projects as bridges,irrigation ditches and water tanks.

Koplowitz works in one of themost beautiful spots in Nepal. On aclear day when it's not monsoonseason he opens his shutters to aspectacular view of Mt. Annapur-na's two snow-capped peaks, rising25,801 and 26,504 feet. Slightly totheir left is Dhaulagiri, forevertopped with ice and snow at 26,975

feet.He is posted in the small provin-

cial capital of Beni, which is fourdays' trek from Pokhara, which isin turn a half-hour plane ride from

15

Kathmandu. Most of his projectsare located in small villages sur-rounding Beni. When the rains donot force construction to shut down,Koplowitz spends much of his timeon the trail visiting sites. Like otherVolunteers, he always travels light:He takes only what fits into hisback pack.

The construction projects are re-quested by village people. The dis-trict's rural public works agency,headquartered in Beni, gives fundsfor construction and an overseer forthe project, usually Volunteer Kop-lowitz. In his first eight months inNepal, Herb designed four bridges,estimated repairs on four morebridges and built five water tanks.And he talked with a lot of people.

"They're learning, perhaps, notabout America, but about one Amer-

ican, and I'm learning about Nepal,"he said.

"If you are like most Peace CorpsVolunteers who say that materialgoods don't really matter, well, inNepal you're without them, withoutelectricity, without running water.And if there were running water Icouldn't drink it without boiling it.

"And I just don't miss it," saidKoplowitz. "This is a much simplerlife; it's a better life."

Like all other Volunteers in Nepal,Koplowitz lives on an allowance of$45 per month. He is posted as farnorth as any Peace Corps Volun-teer: The Tibetan border is 50 ruggedmiles due north. What would be anhour's drive on a good, straight roadtakes many days of hard trekkingto cover.

As the land rises in the Hima-layas, the population grows sparse.Only a few traders carrying saltand other goods to Tibet break thestillness of the mountain passeswith their clanging mule bells.There are no permanent residentsamong the towering peaks unlessone counts Yeti, the fabled abomi-nable snowman.

Volunteer teachers in Nepal arespared much of the constant trek-king that is part of the job of Vol-unteers in agriculture and ruralpublic works. But they share theircounterparts' fascination with theland and its people, and their vir-tually unlimited opportunities to putindividual ingenuity to work onproblems.

For example, while helping toease a critical teacher shortage, theVolunteers have also helped Nepalisinitiate dramatic changes in theteaching and learning process.

Nepali science specialist BhairabPrasad Upadhyaya and VolunteerChris Jeffers developed a method ofscience-teaching that was entirelynew in Nepal learning scientifictheory by experiment and discovery.In the past, scientific principles andprocesses had always been taughtby rote.

The new method, dubbed ScienceTeaching Enrichment Programme,is now becoming known throughoutNepal as STEP. UNICEF News re-cently described it this way:

"STEP's first year was a signalsuccess. The Nepalese teachers whowere to teach the first STEP classestook a special two-month trainingcourse. . . . They learned how to run

group-participation rather than lec-ture classes. They were shown howto fabricate simple lab equipmentfrom materials available in the localbazaar.

"Then, armed with a complete setof lesson guides, they returned totheir schools to launch the newclasses. . . . From the very first daywhen the children were given card-board boxes containing differentobjects and challenged to guesswhat was inside each box from theway the object rolled around andsounded the new method of sci-ence teaching caught on with thepupils.

"By the end of the yea r they weregrowing biological cultures in jellyglasses, investigating the propertiesof light, heat and sound and tracingthe neural paths in a goat's brain.

George Zeiclenstein, Peace CorpsDirector in Nepal for three years:"Relationships with the Volunteershave been rewarding. Relationshipswith the Nepalis have beennothing short of beautiful."

Science was something they partici-pated in, not just something theylearned about."

As growing numbers of Nepaliteachers take the two-month STEPtraining course run by Volunteers,the number of children reached bySTEP increases. In 1965, 440 young-sters were in STEP science classes.In 1967, there were 1200.

This is astounding progress, giventhe communications problems thatare part of Nepali life. Even themost simple equipment must becarried on a man's back to schoolsin the hills. Education officials mustallow two months for new lessonmaterials to reach remote schools.

16

,

In spite of these problems, STEPhas expanded from five to elevenschools, and there are plans to addnine more schools soon. In littlemore than two years, the projecthas developed from a tentative ex-periment to a regular part of thescience curriculum. It eventuallywill be used in every school in thecountry.

Another promising Peace Corpsinnovation is a "new" type ofmathematics teaching, which wasintroduced by Volunteers Mel Gold-man and John Rice. Basically, itinvolves applying the STEP philos-ophy of science education to math.

"In Nepal there is often very littlerelation between what a student istaught and what he will need inlife," Goldman said. "The young-sters often can't perform basic prob-lems in addition and subtraction.We gave a test, and the averagenumber correct was 6 out of 20only 30 per cent."

Forming a committee with Nepalieducation officials and an AID ad-visor, Rice and Goldman set to workon a new teaching manual.

Education is the job of 5 0 Volunteersin the Nepal program. Lois Phillips teachesEnglish and algebra in elementary schoolin Ilam, Nepal.

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Tod Ragsdale has dual sob: town planning andhealth work. Here he operates public healthsession, gatharing a crowd in the town bazaarfor lecture and demonstration. Behind Toc/

is Mitra 1..11 Upadshyaza, learning the routineso he can take over when Tod completesVolunteer service.

Teachers traveled into Kathman-du from hill schools to take a train-ing course in the new methods. Inthe meantime, Nepalis, AID staffand Volunteers worked full-time toprepare lesson plans.

Gajendra Man Shrestha has beenMel Goldman's Nepali counterpartworker throughout development ofthe mathematics program. An ex-cellent example of the partnershipmaintained between Volunteers andtheir hosts throughout the countrylies in the working relationshipbetween these two men.

Shrestha helped plan the mathproject from the beginning, and hejoined Goldman in the classroom asthe two young teachers put theirtheories to the first test.

Just as Shrestha is Mel Goldman'scounterpart, most other Volunteersin Nepal work closely with Nepalis

David O'Connor teaches both English and agriculture at a school in the town of Karfolk.helps Nepali teachers with English during class breaks.

who share the same work, livingconditions, job problems and satis-faction for tasks done well.

In the agriculture program, forexample, two "junior technical as-sistants" work side by side: one isa Peace Corps Volunteer, the other aNepali whose agriculture extensionwork is his lifetime career. In thepublic works program, Volunteersand Nepali district overseers takeequal responsibility for shaping de-signs of wells, bridges and watersystems, on the drawing boards aswell as in the field.

George Zeidenstein, Peace Corpsdirector in Nepal from 1965 until1968, played a vital role in develop-ing the Volunteer program there.He believes the integration of Vol-unteers into Nepal's developmentplans is the result of a conscious ef-fort by Peace Corps staff membersto encourage Nepalis to take a lion'sshare of the responsibility for plan-ning and overseeing Volunteer ac-tivities.

Accordingly, Volunteer assign-ments are closely coordinated withthe priorities established by Nepal'sFive-Year Plan for 1965-70. Volun-teers are supervised on the job byNepalis, and they work alongsideNepali counterparts. They are as-signed to villages only after carefulsite checks by Nepali officials and

Peace Corps staff, and after firmassurance from Nepali villagers thatthe Volunteers will be welcome.

Bruce Morgan, the man who suc-ceeded George Zeidenstein as coun-try director in Nepal, agrees thatpartnership is the key to a goodPeace Corps program in Nepal.

"We see more people, particu-larly the senior officials in the min-istries, who have a very real appre-ciation of what the Volunteer canand can't do, what his unique valueis and what it isn't," said Morgan."Zeidenstein encouraged this fromthe time he first came here. Hewanted the government of Nepal toplay a greater part in what we weredoing. He didn't want us to simplygo over to the ministry with papersand have the government rubber-stamp them.

"And this effort paid off. They'retaking an active role in decisions,wanting to know how this Volunteeris doing and why he isn't doingbetter. The Nepalis care a lot. Theycare because they have seen Volun-teers in education for five years, inrural construction for five years andin agriculture for two years. Theyknow what the Volunteers can do."

Now 39, George Zeidenstein cameto the Peace Corps from the WallStreet law firm of Spear and Hill,where he was a partner. He is a

18

small, intense man who brought ad-ministrative skill to his job as wellas a sensitivity that deepened dur-ing the experience of working andliving in Nepal.

As he was preparing to return tothe United States to direct a multi-million dollar urban renewal projectin New York City, Zeidensteintalked about the personal meaningof his three years with the PeaceCorps: "For ine this has probablybeen the most important growingperiod of my life.

"Relationships with the Volun-teers have been extremely reward-ing. Relationships with the Nepalishave been nothing short of beauti-ful. Probably my second best friendin all the world is a Nepali. He's aguy I'll never forget and, one wayor another, I'm going to see himagain from time to time."

Zeidenstein contends that thebare-bones existence Volunteersshare with Nepalis in rural villagespresents no problems.

"Our experiences show that Vol-unteers just don't give a damnwhere they live or what they eat,"he said. "Sure, if you invite themin and give them a good meal at theAmbassador's they will eat every-thing in sight," he said, referring tothe hospitality toward Volunteersby American Ambassador Carol

Laise."But they'll go for months and

months on just dal bhat (rice withlentil sauce), and if their jobs aregood and their relationships in thecommunity are good, they're per-fectly happy."

But being a successful Volunteertakes more than happiness. "We'rewary about building too much struc-ture into the Volunteer's job. Thegreat talent of the Peace Corps Vol-unteer is only visible when he getsa little room to swing," Zeidensteinsaid. "You've got to give him a realjob, but you've also got to give himfreedom to improvise on that job."

One Volunteer who moves freelyin and around his assigned task isRich Rathbun, an agricultural ex-tension worker in the small Teraivillage of Laxminia.

Rathbun, a graduate architectfrom Stanford University, arrivedat his post during the height of themonsoon rains. His first view ofthe village was from atop an ele-phant belonging to a neighboringvillage headman.

To his inexperienced eye, Lax-minia first looked like any of hun-dreds of other Terai villages. Squarehuts of mud and straw roofs clus-ter closely together, two villagewells, a small shop that sells cig-arettes, kerosene and flour and amill to grind rice and wheat. Be-yond the village lie the fields wherewater buffalo pull simple woodenplows and splash in the river whenthe day's work is done.

Rathbun's special good fortune isto have community leaders as closefriends. They are his Nepali co-worker in agriculture and the prad-han punch, or village headman.

"The headman is very progres-sive. I mean, he'll really stick hisneck out," said Rathbun. "We willbe sitting around and he'll actuallysuggest to other farmers that theygrow the same thing he is tryingand so, through him, I guess I aminfluencing eight or nine farmers."

Thanks to Rathbun and his Ne-pali counterpart, several farmersnow use new improved rice seeds,and others are using fertilizer andirrigation systems for the first time.Two or three have planted a thirdcrop through the use of irrigation.

"We grew 40 tons of wheat lastyear, and this is only the secondyear in Laxminia's history that any

sort of wheat has been grown. Andnext year, I would make a rashguess that the yield is going to betripled," he said.

Rathbun has also made otherchanges one of them almost byaccident.

"As you know, we use a coupleof drops of iodine to purify thewater," he said. "Well, I usuallyeat with the pradium punch at hishouse. I always took my iodinealong, and I told them that it madethe water pure and that our doctorsaid it could arrest goiters.

"Now, the tribe here, the Tharu,is very prone to goiter. My prad-han panch took all this in. When Iwent on a vacation, I happened toleave my iodine bottle at his house.While I was gone he gave someiodine to people with goiters, andin just a couple of weeks the goitershad disappeared.

"When I got back people came tome and sad, 'Give us some iodine,please.' I went into town and got abottle and sold it for the same priceto the shop keeper, and now hesells it all the time. It's really work-ing," Rathbun said.

He is constantly involved in proj-ects outside his job in agricultureextension. His room serves as a

daily meeting place for a number ofvillagers. Morning tea at Rathbun'sis developing into such a traditionthat he is worried about makingroom for everybody who wants tocome in.

Recently conversation turned tothe muddy quality of water fromthe village well. Rathbun pointedout that there was a water pump inthe village. Why not pump the welldry, clean it out and spread newsand on the bottom?

Rathbun himself climbed downinto the well and discovered thatthe pump couldn't handle all themud that had accumulated. Butsome of the muck was pumped out,sand was pumped in and now thewater is much cleaner.

To make certain that Volunteersoperate from a solid base, the staffin Nepal employs two specialists:Kansan James Grider, a former vo-cational agriculture teacher who isa one-man technical bureau, andEileen Scott, a linguist who wasborn in Great Britain and is nowa U.S. citizen.

"We're supporting the Volunteersnot only in a direct way, but morestrongly in an indirect way," Gridersaid. "When I am visiting, I keepin touch with the Volunteer, but I

Key member of the Peace Corps staff in Nepal is agricultural expert

James Crider. His job is to advise Volunteers working in agriculture extension,

as well as to build smooth working relationships with Nepali extension agents.

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also visit the Nepali agriculturalofficer. I ask, 'How can I help you?How can we improve our trainingso that the Volunteers can do theirjobs better?' "

Before Volunteers come to Nepal,they are given intensive training inthe national language, Nepali. SomeVolunteers will speak only Nepaliin their assignments overseas. Butothers, posted in villages in the hillsor the Terai, will never use Nepaliunless they are visiting in a town.These Volunteers must learn anadditional language when they ar-rive in the country.

Eileen Scott says: "The languagesin rural areas include Maithili, Bhp).puri and Hindi. And there are dif-ferent dialects within these groups.The closer you get to Bengal, forinstance, the more Maithili goes intoBengali. But they are all related.They're often mixtures."

The constant training overseaspays off. Volunteers who use theNepali language consistently scorewell on the Foreign Service Institute(FSI) tests given before and aftertheir tours of duty. On a rating scale

of 0 to 5 with 5 denoting fullfluency Nepali Volunteers regu-larly score from 3 to 9.5. (There areno FSI tests for most local languagesspoken by Volunteers in Nepal.)

Mark Fritzler, ti Volunteer sta-tioned in the hills, explained theimportance of these efforts to com-municate: "The villagers can visual-ize America a little better now be-cause I'm here. They can understandus as human beings. We aren'ttourists; I live here. They ask mewhat my family life is like, whatkind of work I do, the kind of dayI have in the States. And I describemy farm life, for example. They canpicture it. They have a concept ofan American as a human being.They've discovered that, after all,our human needs are not so differ-ent from theirs."

Perhaps the most notable exampleof the Peace Corps' ability to com-municate is the trust it has wonfrom Nepal's government. In a coun-try whose history has been shapedby suspicion of the outside world

and, until less than 20 years ago,

self-imposed isolation from theworld it is remarkable that theNepalis, in their efforts to improvelife in rural areas, have sent dozensof Volunteers to live in close, day-to-day.contact with the rural people.Every Nepali invitation to the PeaceCorps has represented an extraor-dinary act of confidence on the partof people who must have ponderedlong and hard whether they werenot, in fact, inviting Westerners tomeddle in their domestic affairs.

There is still another factor atwork in the Peace Corps' partner-ship with Nepal. As one Volunteerput it, "This is a turned-on country."What he meant is that spiritual ex-altation the ultimate reward Vol-unteers want from the Peace Corps

is, in this happy land, part of theclimate.

One Peace Corps staff membermade the same point in anotherway, as he described how goodpeople, good programming and goodluck have all dovetailed neatly inNepal. "There is," said RegionalRepresentative Jerry Sternin, "a lotof love in this operation."

As ok (wet. On road (onstructk)n project, Peter I3reitenbach of San Diego 1m5 to keepbooks: ch(ming % here the money goes. With a BA. in pcychology, Breitenbach i anothercram* of "generalist" made construction ".spocialist" by Peace Corps training.

20

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Peace Corps' newest training camp at Escondido, California:dust, sagebrush and a cram course in reality.

Sketches by W. L. Prescott

IV. TRADITION

Training Gets CoolNo part of the Peace Corps has

undergone more radical change inthe past seven years than its train-ing program. The following is an ex-planation of how and why.

Tile young man stood in the brightHawaiian sun, squinting against

the mid-morning light. "Training islike teaching a non-swimmer," hesaid, pondering his brief exposureto Peace Corps training. "You cantell him all,about how to swim, butuntil he gets in the water he won'tknow whether he can do it."

Such uncertainty always has been

a haunting presence in Peace Corpstraining, but it is mitigated todayby one fact: The Peace Corps, asteacher, knows what the water'slike. In Marshall McLuhan's terms,Peace Corps training has laft the"hot" medium of formal classroomlearning for the "cool" medium ofliving experience.

It has taken trainees out of theclassroom and put them in thestreets and into the schools andhomes and farms and fields of thevery people they will serve as Vol-unteers. It knows now the value oflanguage, and has vastly improved

21

the methods of teaching it. It knowswhat life for a Volunteer really islike, and no longer caters to mythand conjecture.

In early Peace Corps days, train-ing basically was a cram course instored-up knowledge on historyand politics, sociology and anthro-pology, language, American historyand values, and a little psychology."We put the trainee in a classroomof precisely the kind most had justescaped from," says a veteran train-ing officer.

The Peace Corps used collegesand universities as training sites

.z

The Escondido camp's cantina features beer and bull sessions in the shade.

because it figured that was wherethe expertise should be. Unfortu-nately, nobody knew what a Volun-teer's life would be like, so theyhad little idea how to prepare himfor it. Besides, the experts often hadaccumulated their information yearsbefore, so much of it was out ofdate or irrelevant to the Volunteer'sassignment.

Trainees being prepared for Ve-nezuela were advised to bring atwo-year supply of Dial soap andstainless steel razor blades, com-modities they discovered later wereavailable almost everywhere in theirhost country. An anthropologistwho had spent a year in Peru lec-tured some trainees on the AndeanIndians. But the trainees were going

to Venezuela, whose Indian popula-tion not only is vastly different, butalmost negligible.

That many Volunteers werepoorly prepared quickly became ap-parent overseas. Notes one hostcountry official: "The Peace CorpsVolunteers learned about a country,but not how to live in a country."

Part of the problem was uncer-tainty as to just what education isall about. "The philosophy of thePeace Corps then was to separatethe men from the boys," says aneducator closely associated with theagency. "It was a testing experi-ence, not a learning experience."

"Outward Bound" was the epi-tome of the emphasis on ruggedtraining, vividly recalled by one

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Volunteer as "trainees trying toswim in the pool with their handsor feet tied, small groups draggingin during the late afternoon afterhiking through the mountains without-of-date maps to guide them,soaked and shaking from the coldafter four hours of unrelentingtropical rain. . . ."

"Now," says an agency official,"we know that the trainee caresgreatly about surviving with peopleas well as in places."

This approach reflects growingPeace Corps maturity as well asrecognition in the American class-room of the primacy of direct initia-tion into the ways of a mercurialworld. Training takes its cues fromthe lives of Volunteers; educationis beginning to emphasize experi-ential learning.

In Peace Corps training, tradi-tional classroom work has beensharply limited. Seminars are pre-ferred instead. Citizens of the coun-try to which the trainees are as-signed participate actively in thetraining program, usually as lan-guage teachers. Returned Volun-teers are used, too.

The change in philosophy alsodictated a change of scene, and thePeace Corps began to move off-campus. It was not a total divorce,however. Instead of scattering train-ing programs among many schools,the Peace Corps initiated long-rangerelationships with a few, which haveproved beneficial to both parties.

Montana State University at Boze-

Dress is casual like weekends on a far-out campus.

Pavilions for language classes are blue mushroomssprouting under the oaks.

man, for example, has trained Vol-unteers for Ecuador since the PeaceCorps began. This stimulated Mon-tana State, says a Peace Corps offi-cial, to gain "expertise in Ecua-dorian affairs and strengthen itsgraduate programs with returningVolunteers."

The Peace Corps move away fromcampuses was also an outgrowth ofan increasing desire within Ameri-can society, especially its youth,for social action as an integral partof the educative process. At thesame time, the Peace Corps realizedthat Volunteers are better preparedfor cross-cultural confrontationoverseas when they are first givena taste of it at home, in such un-familiar locales as city slums, mi-grant labor camps, rural povertyareas or Indian reservations.

The Peace Corps also establishedits own training centers. Two campswere set up in Puerto Rico in theearly years, rustic sites isolated ina rain forest halfway up a stun-ningly beautiful mountainside. Nowthere are four more centers: two inthe Virgin Islands, one at Escondido,Calif., and one in Micronesia.

The goal of the centers is two-

23

Instructor and trainee 'wing' it head to headin an outdoor session.

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Ghana hi the summer of 1987trained e_ltirely in that country,

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mixing language and cross-culturalstudies with practice teaching forfive weeks, living with local fami-lies and spending free time in vari-ous activities designed to develop agreater knowledge of Ghanaiansociety.

This program illustrates the po-tential benefits of in-country train-ing. The trainee is placed in a situ-ation where he must face peopleand customs he will live with. Helearns how to get along with peoplewho will be his associates and su-periors. He eats local food, attendsmeetings, plays with the childrenand spends his evening in a routinethat will become a way of life.

"They are taking a harder look atthemselves than they have everdone in their lives," noted onePeace Corps official. "They have tocome to grips and face reality. Theyare stripped of any artificial props

"71/ ,..4011121112%.

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Assignment: Go to Mexicali for four days, find a place to live, learnabout your neighborhood. One trainee started a mini-school.

fold: to give the Peace Corps greatercontrol over training and to providetrainees with direct confrontationwith strange new worlds. In PuertoRico, for example, groups in train-ing frequently are sent around theisland on field trips, at first forweekends and then on longer ex-cursions. From the Virgin Islandscamps, they fan out across theCaribbean always to live andwork with people in their owncommunities.

This is a far cry from early at-tempts at "field trips." A VenezuelaYMCA group training at a Massa-chusetts college went to the localY's pool one day to learn how toregulate the quantity of chlorine."In Venezuela," one Volunteer saidlater, "I felt fortunate to have abasketball. A pool was beyond mywildest dream."

The Micronesia training site illus-trates the logical extension of thequest for realism: training overseas.By 1968, 35 per cent of all traineeswere receiving part or all of theirtraining in their host countries.

The advantages of on-the-spottraining are myriad. For example,in many Latin American countriestrainees for rural community de-velopment projects have surveyed,analyzed and selected the sites theywould work in.

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24

Turned loose at Tijuana and told to get toMexicali and back by yourself. Some didit economy class across Baja California.

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or scheduling. They have to standalone. They have to make decisions.They have to have some confidence.It is an experience geared to therole of the Volunteer what he isin reality."

The effect of in-country trainingon the individual was described byone of the Ghanaian trainees in adiscussion of language: "You areable to put it into context and learnthe pattern of the languages; youlearn language and customs to-gether; you learn how the languageinfluences other behavior."

From an almost cursory approachto language in the beginning, thePeace Corps now provides about300 hours of instruction duringtraining, occasionally as much as

<

J111e.

-AL

11111111111110

Cardboard shacks of squatters are introductionto poverty for most trainees.

Across the co/onias, self-consciousgringos questioned, listened, learned

some facts of barrio life.

400 hours. It teaches more than150 languages. Teachers usually arecitizens of the host country.

Some colleges and universitieshave adapted the Peace Corps ap-proach to their own language teach-ing. At Dartmouth, for example,the school is introducing intensiveFrench and Spanish courses with14 hours of class work a week,enabling students to complete theirlanguage requirements in no morethan two trimesters. This is anadaptation of the high-intensitymethod the Peace Corps has foundmost effective, in which traineesare given a month of solid languagelearning, eight hours a day for sixdays a week.

The success of this approach isdemonstrated by a study made forHarvard University by the Educa-tional Testing Service of Princeton,N.J. The study compared the levelof oral proficiency reached by train-ees in several high-intensity pro-grams with that of a group of col-lege language majors. Of 2,784seniors tested, 2,604 had an averagelistening and speaking ability inFrench and Spanish comparable tothe language skills the trainees hadacquired in just four weeks.

Another early training probleminvolved the talents trainees broughtwith them: Few had any skills thePeace Corps could use. Most train-ees, it developed, were not techni-cians but recent college graduateswho had majored in liberal arts.Like the maligned philosophy ma-jor, what else could they do besidessell shoes?

Quite a bit, the Peace Corps soonfound out. They did not know howto shear sheep or test for tubercu-losis when they began training, butthey quickly learned. Besides, theywere generally intelligent, imagina-

After each field trip, furious scribbling in log books.

tive, conscientious and flexible,qualities less easily taught than theABCs of poultry farming.

With the right teachers and theright circumstances the Peace Corpsbelieves, there are few skills thatcan not be taught to these "general-ists." It has gotten skill trainingfor the liberal arts graduate downto a science. For example, enoughsurveying and drafting to enable thelayman to work effectively overseascan be learned in 150-200 hours. Ittakes from 100 to 150 hours to learn

Footlockers with far addresses,each for a trainee ready to ship out.

basic carpentry, sheet-metal con-struction, roofing and cement andconcrete work. These and dozensof other skill-training componentsare neatly programmed into trainingsessions.

Finally, all parts of training haveone ultimate objective: to start theprocess of learning. For the PeaceCorps, even language and skill in-struction are not so much coursesof study with defined ends as theyare guides to how much still needsto be learned.

,

TOTAL 13,823

V. PEACE CORPS STATISTICAL SUMMARY

NANESA2,457

WHERE THEY ARE is shown inpie chart above, which includesboth Volunteers overseas andtrainees for all four regionalareas. Latin America and Africahave always had the largestconcentrations of Peace CorpsVolunteers.

JOBS PERFORMED by Volun-teers in the field are charted atright. The division of assign-ments remained fairly constantover the past two years, withmost Volunteers engaged ineducation.

In its seventh year, the Peace Corpsm continued to expand its sphere of op-erations. By June 30, 1968, there were11,115 Volunteers at work in 57 nationsand another 2,708 in training. This wasan increase of seven countries over 1967.The charts and maps on this and the fol-lowing pages statistically portray theagency the people, jobs and operat-ing costs.

100%

1,0441962 14.3

1.9

1

8.4

1963 7.6 25.6 54.6 8.2 4,379

4.0

1964 6.6 6,063

4.6

1965 7,9 8,624

4.2

1966 8.210,530

2.7

1967 10.2. 11,912

3.9

1968 10.3 11,115

4.3

AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY EDUCATION HEALTH OTHER

DEVELOPMENT

27

WASH998

OREG.601

The average Peace Corps Volunteer in 196824.2-years-old (with 113 over 50) and had

per cent attended college; 84.4 per cent had amarried Volunteers continued to increase: 22Volunteers were married.

104170179

MONT.166

WYO,

N. DAK.122

S. DAK.123

MINN.1,010

was male (65.1 per cent),a college education (96.8

degree). The percentage ofper cent, or 3,048, of all

4iyawWISC.912

CALIF.4,979

NEV.so

UTAH143

ARIZ.276

62NEBR.239

COLO.621

N. MEL146

KANS.386

OKLA.231

IOWA590

MO489

ARK.131

ILL.1,765

MISS.

ALASKA 39

CANAL ZONE 1

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 208

GUAM 1

HAWAII 140PUERTO RICO 62

VIRGIN ISLANDS 3

TEX.850

LA.135

62

4001

MICH.1,301

IND.623

otno1,406 w.

VA.106

N. H.192

VT.136

30°

VA.,s0

A

Air"206

1213"7". S. C99

ALA.160

GA.240

KA.564

MASS.1,394

R. I.121

CONN.

N. j. 78°1,169

DEL.81

MD.530

POINT OF ORIGIN for Volunteers remained concentrated in the Westwhere 13 states with only 15% of the country's population have con-tributed 25% of all trainees, Volunteers and returned Volunteers since1961. California leads the list with 4,979. Washington is first in percapita ranking, followed by Vermont, Colorado and Oregon. Half ofthe top ten university contributors are in the West: University of Cali-fornia at Berkeley, University of Washington, UCLA, Stanford andColorado. (San Francisco State and San Jose State are 11 and 12.)Other top ten Peace Corps schools are the universities of Wisconsin,Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Harvard.

28

ANDS

30

20

10

0

1962

THE RETURNED VOLUNTEER(Cumulative)

25,059

7,104

3,612

THOUSANDS

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

110

01962

824

1963 1964 1965

SUPPLY AND DEMANDBY PROGRAM YEAR

1966

1963

APPLICATIONS

1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

VOLUNTEERS ANDTRAINEES

UNDERCLASSMEN

MORE THAN 250,000 Americans have applied to the PeaceCorps since 1961. How many have become Volunteers is

charted at left. Fewer than one in five is selected for training;three-fourths of those who enter training go overseas. The Peace

Corps now distinguishes between applications from college sen-iors and graduate students (those most likely to be acceptedduring the current year) and underclassmen, who would beavailable only in the future. Of 31,111 applicants in 1968, 21,437

were college seniors. Another 59,192 underclassmen expressedinterest in joining, a record number. In 1967, 21,332 applicantswere immediately available, and only 36,000 underclassmenexpressed interest. 29

1967

PERCENT

40

30

20

10

1968

IN THE SUMMER OF 1968, the25,000th Volunteer returned to thiscountry, a figure more than doublethe number ovetleas at the time.One-third of those who return goback to school, mainly for an ad-vanced degree. Of those who go towork, about a third teach, primarilyin the hard-to-staff ghetto schools.Many others go into some form ofpublic service work, including agen-cies with the Federal, state andlocal governments.

REENLISTMENTS

0TOTAL AFRICA EAPt LATIN NANESA*

AMERICA

EXTENSION OF SERVICE is becoming a common indicatorof the dedication of Volunteers to their work. Since 1961,a total of 3,004 Volunteers have extended their tours orre-enrolled for a full two years. This is about one of everysix who had served through June 30, 1968. Nearly 30%of those who have served in East Asia/Pacific have stayedon, usually to complete a school year or finish a project,the highest total of any region.

*North Africa, Near East and South AsiafEast Asia, Pacific

00-0, ow,ree. AO

UNITED STATES

CUBA12t1c5zAITI DOMINICAN

BRITISHHONDURAS JAMAICA

HONDURAS

REPUBLIC

ATEMALAL SALVADOR

NICARAGUACOSTA RICA

PANAMA

PUERTORICO

0-ST. LUCIAWINDWARD/LEEWARD IS.

VENEZUELA,.GUYANA

SURINAMFR. GUIANA

COLOMBIAt

ECUADORIN

/-1

PERU i ""%...

BOLIVIA 'I.\-.0I

CHILE ; %N.PARAGUAY

e/1URUGUAY

BRAZIL

(I

1/ ARGENTINA

WHAT THE VOLUNTEERSWERE DOING: 1968

Others4.8%

PublicHealth

5.4%

Agricutture11.6%

By number of Volunteers, this isthe largest of the Peace Corps

regions. More than 10,000 Volun-teers have served or are serving inCentral and South America inseven years. The programs func-tion in 20 nations and the majoremphasis is on community devel-Opment: to create a sense of iden-tity and purpose among the peoplethe Peace Corps serves and to pro-mote self help as a desirable andpractical method for the improve-ment of men and communities.

SEVEN YEAR SUMMARY: Volunteers in country at end of fiscal year

1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

Brazil 43 168 210 548 639 601 580

Chile 63 99 106 294 397 392 254

Colombia 103 229 561 544 506 522 576

El Salvador 25 21 49 55 51 105 119

Jamaica 38 32 62 77 70 101 117

Eastern Caribbean Islands 15 14 17 5 45 89 124

Venezuela 23 83 117 265 292 352 262

Bolivia 35 112 126 220 266 303 219

British Honduras 33 18 49 33 42 45

Costa Rica 26 65 61 107 154 98

Dominican Republic 144 171 85 101 140 161

Ecuador 156 236 309 211 255 247

Guatemala 27 105 83 69 140 151

Honduras 27 46 103 107 174 167

Panama 28 76 133 196 171 174

Peru 285 293 379 301 349 283

Uruguay 18 4 48 65 31

Guyana 44 51

Paraguay 35 56

Nicaragua

Totals 345 1,484 2,276 3,214 3,439 4,034 3,715

30

1

SENEGALGAMBIA

PORT. GUINEA

....0 --------.....oft ...I

... / /II '"' %.I

MAURITANIA i . 'N....A, MALII eft" NIGER I I

am. S....0 e ... -r -- i .....,1

0, % t-, %

/ CHAD / SUDAN 1

/ UPPERLI .0",....%.,-- b.

J VOLTA)- 1% or t

GUINEA.)"- ...r. II / NIGERIA ... , s I i%

1 / 0 . .J-0 t 1 1

lI % 1 I / ,r... AFRICAN

si_ -CENTRAL iN ./e ETHIOPIA '''..,

f REPUBLICCAMEROONil°". `....1 ./)".,,,....../''''

Ve

FRENCHSOMALILAND

SIERRA LEONE 1

LIBERIAIVORY GHANA DAHOMEY

COAST TOGOEQUATORIAL GUINEA

One-third of the nations in which theCorps serves are in sub-Saharan

Africa. The newest African nation, Swazi-land, welcomes its first Volunteers earlyin 1969. Throughout the continent, Vol-unteers are partiCipating in the crucialprocesses of nation-building in newlyindependent countries.

SEVEN YEAR SUMMARY: Volunteers in country at end of fiscal year

1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

Ghana 51 129 136 110

Nigeria 109 258 508 634

Sierra Leone 37 120 159 150

Tanzania I 35Tanganyika

26 125 3265

Cameroon 39 88 103

Ethiopia 278 402 565

Gabon 41 70 35

Ivory Coast 49 51 56

Liberia 132 272 335

Niger 16 12 43

Malawi 1

Nyasaland42 97 230

5

111 208 242

719 719 248

233 236 273

366 290 143

118 77 61

566 432 389

49 71

83 71 80

399 317 299

48 129 156

231 153 123

Senegal 34 62 51 55 ,75 119

Somali Rep. 35 58 80 96 73

Togo 44 59 56 49 109 102

Guinea 52 95 81

Kenya 129 197 229 253

Uganda 35 56 118 123

Botswana56 50

Chad30 38

Mauritania11

Gambia16

Upper Volta44

Lesotho66

Dahomey26

Swaziland

Totals 232 1,243 2,093 3,010 3,421 3,427 2,924

31

SOMALIA/ 1 UGANDARWANDA

I f'" REPUBLIC E"'10GABON/.KENYA

1 CONGO OF THECONGO

TANZANIA

/".11

r

....

IIBURUNDI...

ANGOLA ON!

ZAMBIA

9

MALAWI

MALAGASYREPUBLIC

- %..... I I%.0

-'1,............)0":0,""...r \RHODESIA ISOUTH 1 //WEST 14 s..... i

AFRICA1BOTSWANA 7.-1MOZAMBIQUEI1 ..., re t1\e' 'I

...../REPUBLIC OF LeSOUTH AFRICA

L. SWAZILAND

LESOTHO

WHAT THE VOLUNTEERSWERE DOING: 1968

0

Other3.6%

Agriculture /4.6%

CoDeve n -

16 ' .

PublicHealth

9.8%

lialliSZAM UO sIMMiums visas&ately needed in the United Statestoday.

Whatever the reasons, returnedVolunteers are in great demand. Forexample, between 100 and 200 em-ployers contact the Peace Corps'Career Information Service eachmonth hoping to fill more than 500job openings in both the public andprivate sectors.

About half of the former Volun-teers, according to Peace Corpsstatistics, change their career plansafter two years overseas, a partialexplanation for the large percentage(about 38%) who return to continuetheir education.

Of those employed, over one-third are teachers, an impressivefigure considering that less than

0 -One obvious reason for the in-

creased demand for former PeaceCorps Volunteers is the shortage ofqualified teachers, particularly thosewilling to teach in ghetto schools.Another is the recognition by schoolofficials that the Peace Corps expe-rience provides Volunteer teacherswith "an approach, a way of goingabout things" that 'Is a vital firststep to teaching.

"We regard them as the singlebest source of top-flight educatorsavailable to us anywhere," RobertBlackburn, director of Philadelphia'sOffice of Integration and IntergroupEducation, told a House of Repre-sentatives committee.

Another third of returned Volun-teers currently employed work for

About 200 former Peace Corps Volunteers now work with the Agency for InternationalDevelopment, often in jobs that parallel their Peace Corps experwnces. Harold Lie*(standing in background) is AlO coordinator for mobile methcat teams in Thailand,a project designed to bring services of doctors and nurses to rural villages for the firsttime. Here he watches Or. Suchart Chanbanchob check elderly k Wager complainingof lung congestion. Lierly was a Volunteer in Thailand, and -speaks fluent Thai%

Alani.11.

A

a-

00

nity action projects, Head Start,VISTA and other anti-poverty pro-grams.

The Office of Economic Oppor-tunity has hired hundreds of formerVolunteers, and its San Franciscooffice alone has more than 25 for-mer Volunteers on its staff.

John Arango, 30, former Volun-teer in Colombia, is special assistantto the director of the 0E0's SanFrvncisco office. "Many Volunteersseek out administrative positions,"Arango says, "because they feelthey have valid, relevant ideas aboutthe world today and they want thepower to implement them."

For returned Volunteers intent oncareers in international concerns,the State Department has specialappeal.

Eighteen former Volunteers wereappointed Foreign Service Officersin 1968, bringing to 100 the num-ber in career positions in the StateDepartment and the United StatesInformation Agency. About 200 re-turned Volunteers work with theAgency for International Develop-ment.

The Peace Corps alone employsmore than 450 former Volunteers.Ten have served as country direc-tors, and returned Volunteers nowcomprise more than one-third of thetotal Peace Corps administrativepersonnel at home and overseas.

Most other Volunteers who arecurrently employed enter businessor the professions. More than 12per cent work with international ornon-profit organizations such asCARE and the United Nations.

The financial world, particularlythose firms with international ties,also has attracted returned Volun-teers. About 15 former Volunteersare employed by the First NationalCity Bank of New York, and 10work for Bankers Trust Company,

A handful has decided the bestlutlets for their ideas are organiza-tions of their own. Roger Landrum,

a former Volunteer in Nigeria,helped to found Teachers Incorpo-rated, a New York-based non-profitorganization designed to "realist-ically prepare" teachers for assign-ment in ghetto schools.

Landrum, who directed severalPeace Corps training projects afterhis two years as a Volunteer, sayshe "came back to the United States

shape their destiny are being rec-ognized as human qualities desper-ately needed in the United Statestoday.

Whatever the reasons, returnedVolunteers are in great demand. Forexample, between 100 and 200 em-ployers contact the Peace Corps'Career Information Service eachmonth hoping to fill more than 500job openings in both the public andprivate sectors.

About half of the former Volun-teers, according to Peace Corpsstatistics, change their career plansafter two years overseas, a partialexplanation for the large percentage(about 38%) who return to continuetheir education.

Of those employed, over one-third are teachers, an impressivefigure considering that less than

one-sixth intended to teach prior tojoining the Peace Corps.

One obvious reason for the in-creased demand for former PeaceCorps Volunteers is the shortage ofqualified teachers, particularly thosewilling to teach in ghetto schools.Another is the recognition by schoolofficials that the Peace Corps expe-rience provides Volunteer teacherswith "an approach, a way of goingabout things" that is a vital firststep to teaching.

"We regard them as the singlebest source of top-flight educatorsavailable to us anywhere," RobertBlackburn, director of Philadelphia'sOffice of Integration and IntergroupEducation, told a House of Repre-sentatives committee.

Another third of returned Volun-teers currently employed work for

About 200 former Peace Corps Volunteers now work with the Agency for InternationalDevelopment, often in jobs that parallel their Peace Corps experiences. Harold Lie*(standing in background) is AlO coordinator for mobile medical- teams in Thailand,a project designed to bring services of doctors and nurses to rural villages for the firsttime. Here he watches Or. Suchart Chanbanchob check elderly k Wager complainingof lung congestion. tierly MIS a Volunteer in Thailandind -speaks fluent Thai%

At, A

federal, state and local governmentsheavily concentrated in commu-

nity action projects, Head Start,VISTA and other anti-poverty pro-grams.

The Office of Economic Oppor-tunity has hired hundreds of formerVolunteers, and its San Franciscooffice alone has more than 25 for-mer Volunteers on its staff.

John Arango, 30, former Volun-teer in Colombia, is special assistantto the director of the 0E0's SanFrvncisco office. "Many Volunteersseek out administrative positions,"Arango says, "because they feelthey have valid, relevant ideas aboutthe world today and they want thepower to implement them."

For returned Volunteers intent oncareers in international concerns,the State Department has specialappeal.

Eighteen former Volunteers wereappointed Foreign Service Officersin 1968, bringing to 100 the num-ber in career positions in the StateDepartment and the United StatesInformation Agency. About 200 re-turned Volunteers work with theAgency for International Develop-ment.

The Peace Corps alone employsmore than 450 former Volunteers.Ten have served as country direc-tors, and returned Volunteers nowcomprise more than one-third of thetotal Peace Corps administrativepersonnel at home and overseas.

Most other Volunteers who arecurrently employed enter businessor the professions. More than 12per cent work with international ornon-profit organizations such asCARE and the United Nations.

The financial world, particularlythose firms with international ties,also has attracted returned Volun-teers. About 15 former Volunteersare employed by the First NationalCity Bank of New York, and 10work for Bankers Trust Company,

A handful has decided the bestlutlets for their ideas are organiza-tions of their own. Roger Landrum,

a former Volunteer in Nigeria,helped to found Teachers Incorpo-rated, a New York-based non-profitorganization designed to "realist-ically prepare" teachers for assign-ment in ghetto schools.

Landrum, who directed severalPeace Corps training projects afterhis two years as a Volunteer, sayshe "came back to the United States

f4.

_dor 11111111L_

5 1

Chicago Head Start teacher Lee Gallery is one of about 5,000 former Volunteers who have based careers

around education. A language major in college, she changed career plans after Volunteer service in Ethiopia.

"I found out in the Peace Corps that I enjoy teaching and I plan to stick with it," she says.

"You are special citizens. You arethe persons who, in a free, demo-CratiC society, decided to serve thatsocietywho, by a conscious act ofyour free will, have left the ranks ofthe bystanders end spectators to be-come participants.

"And when you come back fromabroad, if you don't think yourselfspecial you will simply disappearinto the bog of affluent livingyouwon't make a differenceand your'contributions, as well as your op-portunities, will be lost."

Bill Moyers, former PeaceCorps Deputy Director, nowPublisher of Newsday,hi a speech to former Volunteers

with no knowledge or explicit inter-est in American public education.Instead, I was attempting in a verydogmatic way to make Peace Corpstraining more relevant.

"We arrived at the idea of train-ing Volunteers in ghettos becausethis was an environment more un-familiar to them, suid we felt thiswas where we could challenge theirideas most effectively," Landrumexplains.

"We found out not only that thisis an effective way to train PeaceCorps Volunteers, but also that ourapproach was applicable to theproblems of teaching in the ghetto."

Probably the largest and bestknown "spin-off" organization is

-44.44444444444444444414.44..m.,",

45

vT5T.'

TransCentury Corp., a Washington-based technical assistance organiza-tion founded by Warren Wiggins,former Peace Corps deputy director.

The firm, which has emptoyedabout 200 former Volunteers, hascontracted with government agen-cies and private foundations to sup-ply middle-level manpower for anti-poverty as well as research andevaluation work in low-incomeareas.

"These are the kind of Americanswho would rather solve a problemthan 'research' it; do a job ratherthan talk it," Wiggins says. "Theseexperienced young people are alargely untapped source of dedica-tion, vigor and needed skills."

A

_rosint INONOIL_

5

Aimi.../111111

Chicago Head Start teacher Lee Gallery is one of about 5,000 former Volunteers who have based careers

around education. A language major in college, she changed career plans after Volunteer service in Ethiopia.

"I found out in the Peace Corps that I enjoy teaching and I plan to stick with it," she says.

"You are special citizens. You arethe persons who, in a free, demo-craft society, deckled to serve thatsocietywho, by a conscious act ofyour free will, have left the ranks ofthe bystanders end spectators to be-come participants.

"And when you come back fromabroad, if you don't think yourselfspecial you will simply disappearinto the bog of affluent livingyouwon't make a differenceand your'contributions, as well as your op-portunities, will be lost."

Bill Moyers, former PeaceCorps Deputy Director, nowPublisher of Newsday,in a speech to former Volunteers

with no knowledge or explicit inter-est in American public education.Instead, I was attempting in a verydogmatic way to make Peace Corpstraining more relevant.

"We arrived at the idea of train-ing Volunteers in ghettos becausethis was an environment more un-familiar to them, smd we felt thiswas where we could challenge theirideas most effectively," Landrumexplains.

"We found out not only that thisis an effective way to train PeaceCorps Volunteers, but also that ourapproach was applicable to theproblems of teaching in the ghetto."

Probably the largest and bestknown "spin-off" organization is

-..nye.to.fx.rompremervitv001`.4wwder.,

45

TransCentury Corp., a Washington-based technical assistance organiza-tion founded by Warren Wiggins,former Peace Corps deputy director.

The firm, which has emptcyedabout 200 former Volunteers, hascontracted with government agen-cies and private foundations to sup-ply middle-level manpower for anti-poverty as well as research andevaluation work in low-incomeareas.

"These are the kind of Americanswho would rather solve a problemthan 'research' it; do a job ratherthan talk it," Wiggins says. "Theseexperienced young people are alargely untapped source of dedica-tion, vigor and needed skills."

Arcnitectsfor Tomorrow

Tohn Corrough and Ron Gammill,Volunteer roommates in Tunisia,

joined the Peace Corps with a lotgoing for them. Both were recentcollege graduates, but, in contrastto most Volunteers with liberal artsbackgrounds, they brought into thePeace Corps highly technical archi-tectural skills.

"Those of us who joined thePeace Corps after long professionaleducations left for Tunisia withsome rather inflated notions of justexactly what we could do," recallsCorrough, 28, now a senior plannerfor Los Angeles-based Victor Gruenand Associates.

"I suppose we felt we were goingto be the experts. We were goingto help the benighted people be-cause of our great skills. Well, wegot there and found that our greatskills didn't stand us in great steadat all, but it was our problem-solv-ing ability, if we had it or if wecould develop it, that really enabledus to be useful," Corrough says.

Gammill, 28, now an associate inthe Berkeley, Calif., architecturalfirm of Hirshen & Van der Ryn,agrees with his former roommate

but with different emphasis."The work we did there was in

a certain political context. In school,architects don't work with anygiven political problems; what'sworse, they hardly realize suchproblems exist.

"They work on problems that arehighly theoretical, with imaginaryclients, almost limitless budgets, avery ill-defined problematical con-text in terms of the specific require-ments of housing or whatever theproblem is.

"Trying to function in a differentculture is hard enough in itself,"Gammill says, "but when you mixthat with trying to upset a wholerange of ideas about your chosenprofession, the end result can bedisenchantment.

"Most people went to Tunisianot being strong realists and cameout either having met the problemsand found ways to work effectively,or they came back being very dis-couraged," he said.

Gammill and Corrough returnedfrom Tunisia convinced by theirexperiences in the validity of "ad-vocacy planning." "This concept

Architect Ron Cammill returned from Volunteer service in Tunisiato work for the Berkeley, California, firm of Hirshen andVan dor Ryn, which was organized by two University of Californiaprofessors to deal specifically with low-income housing.

V.P

4(404kALfLAL0L4diMh1..-

t

xi# ".""s"-It"

ratner tnan oe aetermtnea, as Itgenerally is, by either political oreconomic issues," Gammill says.

Corrough, who has a master's de-gree in architecture and urban de-sign, says advocacy planning is a"multi-discipline approach to someof the mundane but very interestingproblems of the inner city."

Both returned Volunteers contendthat many architects today seemoverly concerned with conspicuousdesign that will bring personal no-toriety. Some architects, they say,have downgraded functional con-siderations of the buildings theydesign and seem unconcerned thatpeople are forced to adjust tostrange, sometimes incompatiblesurroundings.

"This is particularly true for hous-ing designed for the poor," saysGammill, whose firm was organizedin 1964 by two University of Cali-fornia professors to deal specificallywith low-income housing.

Gammill, therefore, spends muchtime interviewing ghetto inhabitantsand evaluating existing housing todetermine shortcomings in terms ofthe user.

Corrough's main role is that ofproject coordinator. One of his typ-ical projects involves developing arevitalization plan for a small Mid-west city with a decaying centralbusiness district and decaying fringehousing areas.

"It's mostly a job of coordinatinga number of people in my office,"Corrough says. "By blending to-gether the perspectives of the archi-tect, planner, social scientist, engi-neer and other experts we are ableto create a plan tailor-made to theneeds of the community and thepeople who inhabit that area."

Neither former Volunteer fits thesiereotype of the architect whospends hour upon hour dreaming upnew building designs. Says Gam-mill: "There are now architects whohave enough social commitment tobelieve the user is important andought to be considered.

"This sense of social commitmentis derived from a lot of sources,"he says. "The Peace Corps is one.I found out in Tunisia that being anarchitect in the context of sitting ata desk and drawing pretty pictureshas little to do with the problemswe face today."

46

John Corrough. right. With a colleague at the firm of Victor Gruen and Associates in Los Angeles. Nowsenior planner for Gruen. Corrough served in Tunisia w;th Gan 7mill. Sot!) designed a wide ariety of buildingsfor the Tunisian government. and found their everience iolevant to urban planning problems in the U.S.

CalculatedRisk Pays Off

Dave Dawley, a former PeaceCorps Volunteer in Honduras,

walks down the Chicago street dailyas if he hasn't a worry in the world.

Dressed in Nehru jacket andstriped pants, Dawley nears threetough-looking blacks leaning againsta plate-glass store front.

They eye him suspiciously, thenturn their attention elsewhere. Daw-ley keeps walking; he's heading for16th and Lawndale, the "strong-hold" of the Conservative ViceLords, an 8,000-member predomi-nantly black organization with areputation as the toughest streetgang on Chicago's West Side.

Dawley passes the store front.One of the blacks calls out: "Hey,Davie, what's happening, man?"

"Nothing much," Dawley replies,and walks on.

Actually, plenty is happening, but

Conservative vice &Oros, inc., iormullya Chicago street gang that has noworganized to improve economic outlookfor slum neighborhood onChicago's West Side.

the former Volunteer has learnedthe idiom of the ghetto, and theshort exchange is one way to say"good morning."

Despite hit mannerisms, his dress,his use of idiom, Dawley, 26, aproduct of a white, middle-classcommunity who graduated fromDartmouth, looks blatantly incon-gruous in Lawndale, the black ghettowhich the Conservative Vice Lordscall their "city."

But Dawley is a ConservativeVice Lord, one of the very few whofinished high school and definitelythe only one with a college educa-tion. He joined the street gang earlyin 1968 shortly after "it went re-spectable" and incorporated itselfunder Illinois law.

"Gang is a word we're not usinganymore," Dawley says, "and thegroup prefers to be called either a

48

club, an organization or a corpora-tion. We want to be recognized assomething different from the oldstreet fighters the guys who wentstomping or mugging through thestreets up through the early sixties."

Dawley's first contact with theVice Lords was in the summer of1967 when he went to Chicago forTransCentury Corp. The former Vol-unteer's assignment was to inter-view ghetto residents involved ingovernment-sponsored programs.

"I had to make contacts in orderto do my job. I soon found out thatthe Vice Lords run the streets andtherefore I hired two of them asinterviewers," he says.

Dawley's work moved smoothlyand he got to know the Vice Lords

"basically an organization madeup of the tough guys of society, theones that society labels hard-core,the unreached, the dropouts, thedelinquents, the criminals, the ad-dicts."

He learned that the leadershipwas moving the organization in newdirections; it had decided the oldways weren't getting anybody any-place, according to Dawley.

"The leaders are all over thirty,"he says. "Two of them had youngerbrothers who were killed in gangfights. Another of the leaders wasdriving down the street and a carpulled up alongside. There was ashotgun blast, and the guy sittingnext to him was killed."

Dawley says the Vice Lord lead-ers "have a great love for theirfellows out here on the street. Theydon't want them to go through thiskind of thing.

"They turned the organization.This is the beautiful part. Therewasn't a chance in the world of awhite person coming in here andorganizing these guys. I wouldn'thave given it a thought, just from anintellectual point of view.

"When I was doing research, Isaw there was a useful role for meto play. And I saw that I could helpthem with the things they wantedto do. So I came back," Dawleyrecalls.

rowed money and lived- in Lawn-dale for several months without anincome, working to pry loose foun-dation "seed grants" for economicdevelopment projects of the ViceLords.

The calculated risk paid off. TheConservative Vice Lords, Inc., isnow Lawndale's fastest growingeconomic development corporation.

He serves as liaison between theVice Lords and foundations. Hesays his work is an extension of thework he did as a community devel-opment Peace Corps Volunteer inHonduras.

"There wasn't much going onwhen I was in college," Dawleysays, "even though I had the samebasic values that I have today.There just wasn't a way for me toget personally involved in anything.But the experience in Hondurasmade me more sensitive to the dis-crepancies between aspirations andrealities of life for people I didn'teven know existed."

Dawley's now hard at work to

ties and aspirations in Lawndale."The Vice Lords want to stay

here. They don't want to be moved.They don't want jobs over the otherside of town; they'll create theirown jobs here. They want to re-build their own community.

"This is black economic power.Everything we run will be black-owned and black-managed. We willcreate employment for black peopleand that employment will be here inthe ghetto," Dawley explains.

The results have been encourag-ing, Dawley says. "We have openeda restaurant called Teen Town. It'smaking money, which goes backinto the corporation.

"We have a heritage shop, whichmanufactures and sells Afro-Ameri-can clothing, jewelry and art. Werun a pool hall; we just received a$50,000 grant for a beautificationproject that will provide jobs for110 people."

Dawley says the Vice Lordshaven't even begun to tap theirpotential. "We're talking about get-

construction, manpower training,human awareness programs withwhite suburbanites."

And he offers this challenge: "Letfoundations and other sources con-tinue giving us the seed funds untilwe stop producing people."

But the former Peace Corps Vol-unteer isn't blind to the high risksinvolved.

"I recently read a report that saysthe line between destructive andconstructive activism is thinnerthan the line between activism andpassivity.

"In the same person, you havemuch of the violence that could dis-rupt into a riot, the same guy who'sinvolved in building a business to-day could be involved in a riottomorrow, depending on the spark,the incident that ignites it."

Nevertheless, Dawley seems obliv-ious to fear in the ghetto. After all,the former Volunteer is a Vice Lord

one of the recognized leadersworking to build, not destroy, Chi-cago's West Side.

Dawley served as a Volunteer in Honduras, now is liaison man between the Vice Lords and variousfoundations that offer grants for community and economic development projects. He sayshis job in U.S. is an extension of community development work he did in Honduras.

/111011.11.1111WP-'

-'11;111,

1.

'Small Nir 1 'in App I ..i

Bill Bridges talks with resident of the mining communityaround Hardburly, Ky., where Bridges lives and works. Assmall coal industries in the region gradually shut down, men

such as this will find themselves unprepared for other work

(or that other work is nonexistent), and may be forced to mme

out of the area.

About 85 miles from Lexington,Kentucky, just south of the

Mountain Parkway, a small creekconverges with the north fork ofthe Kentucky River.

A man and a horse tried to fordthe shallow body of water, so thestory goes, and neither was seennor heard of again.

About 100 people now live withinsight of the scene of the strangedisappearance. They call their un.:incorporated town "Quicksand".

Be it fact or fancy which gave thetown its name, from an economicstandpoint, thousands of people arecaught in Quicksand and the sur-

50

The coal tipple (scaffolding behind Bridges) is a common sigi it in the mining communities of Eastern Kentucky.Basically, Bridges' job is to help these communities gain a sense of their own potential through self-help projects

rounding coal-mining camps of east-ern Kentucky.

The story of Appalachian povertyis well known. But awareness alonedoesn't solve problems.

Bill Bridges, the only son of a Ken-tucky farmer, is both aware of andinvolved in solving the problems ofhis native state. The 55-year-oldformer Volunteer (one of more than500 persons over the age of 50 whohave served in the Peace Corps) isa community development specialistin the University of Kentucky's Co-operative Extension Service. Forhim, "Quicksand is the center ofthe world."

Bridges spends most of his timegetting to know the people in min-ing camps and other small commu-nities of eastern Kentucky.

He speaks with a distinct Ken-tucky drawl and he talks the coalminer's language, pointing out waysthey can better their conditions andgently guiding them to initiate anddevelop self-help projects.

The "small miracles" achieved inHardburly, not far from Quicksand,are a source of pride for Bridgesbecause he spurred the communitydevelopment program there.

Estil Riley, president of the Hard-burly Improvement Association in-

51

spired by Bridges, received a Ken-tucky Award of Merit for thecleanup campaign and other im-provements for which he and themembers of his association wereresponsible.

Riley can't read or write, accord-ing to Bridges, "and I point this outin tribute to Estil because it didn'tkeep him from becoming a leaderand doing a fine job.

"Hardburly is just one community.Any community can do the samething," according to Bridges. "Sofrequently we get to feel that peoplein depressed areas just have theirhands out all the time. But if they're

,

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SEVEN YEAR SUMMARY: Volunteers in count, y, at end of fiscal year

1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

India 26 115 153 401 754 1,133 750

Pakktan East 1 29West f 28 172 191 141 35

Morocco 56 102 133 117 83 94

Tunisia 94 48 135 192 252 230

Afghanistan 35 62 136 181 207 171

Ceylon 36 42

Cyprus 13

Iran 41 36 149 272 267 167

Nepal 65 96 120 150 121 179Turkey 39 114 338 481 225 158

Libya 18 13

Totals 83 676 802 1,553 2,182 2,406 1,804

I I.L1iI ../I tI eI,.. ' :40I

$/%., LIBYA CYPRUS 1

0/ lbw t

LEBANON11 0 ISRAELAt

t t SYRIA &.11 ".5%

o 1111119'............? %

% I EGYPT I.o 10. 04f 4\ 1 (U.A.R.) .1)a \ IRAQ IWHAT THE VOLUNTEERS * A I /% .WERE DOING: MS i* \N

JORDAN \* t ". 141 i

4% 1 % 41 i wr .%__Community % IRAN --,

Development `.

TUNISIA

TURKEY UNIONOF

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Agriculture25.9%

PublicHealth13.0%

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INDIA

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32

EASTPAKISTAN

INDIAN

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41) CEYLON

crom the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal,Volunteers serving in the nine nations

of the NANESA region are engaged in adiverse series of programs ranging fromtuberculosis control to tubewell construc-tion. Many are teachers. The largest con-centration of Volunteers is in India, wherethey are engaged in food production andnutrition education programs.

VII. RETURNED VOLUNTEERS

In Their Words

Volunteers return home (22,539 onJune 30, 1968; an estimated

200,000 by 1980) undeniably influ-enced by exposure to and interactionwith persons of different culturalvalues and perspectives.

But while the Peace Corps experi-ence means intense involvement inanother culture, it also means time forreflection . . . reflection upon thatsociety which provided the opportu-nity to go overseas.

At a conference of former IndiaVolunteers, held in Annapolis, Mary-land, early in 1968, the participantssummed up the significance of theiroverseas experience.

"The Peace Corps," said one formerVolunteer, "allowed me to put Americaat arm's length and review it critically.I realized in India that I have a stakein America and I'm determined to helpshape this country into what I thinkit should be."

Another participant added: "WhatI urged the Indians to do, namely workfor constructive change within theirsystem, I had never tried in my own

system and I pledged then and therethat I was coming home to try formyself."

Whatever form the Peace Corps ex-perience takes, Volunteers come home

Rudy Salinas, 29, former Volunteer in Co-lombia "To most Mexican-Americans theArmy represents status, a prestigious way outof East Los Angeles, and the Chicano (a Spanishword for Mexican-American) who goes thisroute comes back with a soldier's view of theworld. This often means being hung up withbitter feelings and prejudices about peoplewho are different from you. But when a Chi-cano comes back after two years in the PeaceCorps, and he deals with people here in EastLos AngelesMexicans, Negroes, Japanese,

Anglos then he feels, like I do, that we're allin the same bag." Salinas is now a counselorto teenagers, most of them dropouts from EastLos Angeles high schools.

fuller, more aware individuals. Forsome, close contact with other Volun-teers is the most significant PeaceCorps experience, as some of the fol-lowing comments illustrate.

Sharon Lim, 25, former Volunteer in Thailand "Twoyears in Southeast Asia proved to me that being Americanand being Oriental are compatible. I'm fourth geaerationChinese-American on my father's side and third generationChinese-American on my mother's side. I felt insulated.While I have always been very much aware of my Orientalheritage, I didn't feel an affinity with it until I went toThailand as a Peace Corps teacher. I found commonalitiesthere that I can associate with and identify with both intel-lectually and emotionally. I no longer feel a need to assumean Oriental ethic with one group of people and an Ameri-can ethic with another group of people. I came homeconfident of what I amthe product of two living, sus-taining heritages."Miss Lim is now an intern in the Antioch-Putney Graduate School, teaching in a Washington, D.C.,inner-city elementary school.

ao.--"""11117111111.

e 1 .

mme5

Willie Hall, 28, former Volunteer in Ethiopia "Forthe black person in the South the Peace Corps is a way out;it's a way for him to leave the South, to go abroad, to comein contact with whites_on an equal level, probably for thefirst time, and to get a better view of what's going on inother places. When I went through Peace Corps trainingthat's when I had my culture shock, not in Ethiopia . . .

culture shock because here for the first time I was dealingwith whites on a truly equal basis. It was my first contactwith whites on these terms, and I really didn't know how toact. I spent many anxious moments that first night intraining because my roommate was white and I had neverslept in a room with a white before and I didn't knowwhether to go to sleep or sit up all night out of fear." Hall,a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is on the VISTA staff

in San Francisco.

4

Annmary Dalton, 24, former Volunteer inLiberia"After two years of looking at the

United States from afar, hearing and readingabout increased racial tensions, it is difficultfor a Volunteer to ignore involving herself insolving the problems when she returns home.The experience of being in the Peace Corpswon't allow it. To go back to your old ways ne-gates everything you've done for two years ofyour life." Miss Dalton teaches at a publicschoo/ in Harlem.

i43107:47,1,1:4-Z,Y,W4KT

,1

4.E " ; s I LI; I I

Jim Seidel, 25, former Volunteer in Malawi--"The whole basis of what I want to do (fighttropical disease) is modeled after the work Idid in the Peace Corps. I joined the PeaceCorps after graduating from college with abachelors degree in zoology, but I didn't knowwhere I was headed because I didn't have avery deep concern then about scientific re-search." Seidel, now a medical student atUCLA, plans to return to the tropics when hecompletes his doctoral requirements in medi-cal microbiology and immunology next year.

CLOSE-UPS

Architectsfor Tomorrow

John Corrough and Ron Gammill,Volunteer roommates in Tunisia,

joined the Peace Corps with a lotgoing for them. Both were recentcollege graduates, but, in contrastto most Volunteers with liberal artsbackgrounds, they brought into thePeace Corps highly technical archi-tectural skills.

"Those of us who joined thePeace Corps after long professionaleducations left for Tunisia withsome rather inflated notions of justexactly what we could do," recallsCorrough, 28, now a senior plannerfor Los Angeles-based Victor Gruenand Associates.

"I suppose we felt we were goingto be the experts. We were goingto help the benighted people be-cause of our great skills. Well, wegot there and found that our greatskills didn't stand us in great steadat all, but it was our problem-solv-ing ability, if we had it or if wecould develop it, that really enabledus to be useful," Corrough says.

Gammill, 28, now an associate inthe Berkeley, Calif., architecturalfirm of Hirshen & Van der Ryn,agrees with his former roommate

but with different emphasis."The work we did there was in

a certain political context. In school,architects don't work with anygiven political problems; what'sworse, they hardly realize suchproblems exist.

"They work on problems that arehighly theoretical, with imaginaryclients, almost limitless budgets, avery ill-defined problematical con-text in terms of the specific require-ments of housing or whatever theproblem is.

"Trying to function in a differentculture is hard enough in itself,"Gammill says, "but when you mixthat with trying to upset a wholerange of ideas about your chosenprofession, the end result can bedisenchantment.

"Most people went to Tunisianot being strong realists and cameout either having met the problemsand found ways to work effectively,or they came back being very dis-couraged," he said.

Gammill and Corrough returnedfrom Tunisia convinced by theirexperiences in the validity of "ad-vocacy planning." "This concept

Architect Ron Cammill r-turned from Volunteer ser ice in Tunisiato work for the Berkeley, California, firm of Hirshen andVan der Ryn, which 41, as organized by two University of Californiaprofessors to deal specifically with low-income housing.

H

ogrer vAL L ALA; d

to.

sioarii*ik

assumes that housing has to fit theneeds of the people who use itrather than be determined, as itgenerally is, by either political oreconomic issues," Gammill says.

Corrough, who has a master's de-gree in architecture and urban de-sign, says advocacy planning is a"multi-discipline approach to someof the mundane but very interestingproblems of the inner city."

Both returned Volunteers contendthat many architects today seemoverly concerned with conspicuousdesign that will bring personal no-toriety. Some architects, they say,have downgraded functional con-siderations of the buildings theydesign and seem unconcerned thatpeople are forced to adjust tostrange, sometimes incompatiblesurroundings.

"This is particularly true for hous-ing designed for the poor," saysGammill, whose firm was organizedin 1964 by two University of Cali-fornia professors to deal specificallywith low-income housing.

Gammill, therefore, spends muchtime interviewing ghetto inhabitantsand evaluating existing housing todetermine shortcomings in terms ofthe user.

Corrough's main role is that ofproject coordinator. One of his typ-ical projects involves developing arevitalization plan for a small Mid-west city with a decaying centralbusiness district and decaying fringehousing areas.

"It's mostly a job of coordinatinga number of people in my office,"Corrough says. "By blending to-gether the perspectives of the archi-tect, planner, social scientist, engi-neer and other experts we are ableto create a plan tailor-made to theneeds of the community and thepeople who inhabit that area."

Neither former Volunteer fits thestereotype of the architect whospends hour upon hour dreaming upnew building designs. Says Gam-mill: "There are now architects whohave enough social commitment tobelieve the user is important andought to be considered.

"This sense of social commitmentis derived from a lot of sources,"he says. "The Peace Corps is one.I found out in Tunisia that being anarchitect in the context of sitting ata desk and drawing pretty pictureshas little to do with the problemswe face today."

46

.01

John Corrough, right. with a colleague at the firm of Victor Gruen and Associates in Los Angeles. Now asenior planner for Gruen. Corrough served in Tunisia y-ith Gomm; ll Rot') designed a wide variety of buildingsfor the Tunisian government. and found their experiencc ;,:ilevant [0 urban planning problems in the U.S.

24firIOW

4I

4

4111%-1

fieSO

CalculatedRisk Pays Off

Dave Dawley, a former PeaceCorps Volunteer in Honduras,

walks down the Chicago street dailyas if he hasn't a worry in the world.

Dressed in Nehru jacket andstriped pants, Dawley nears threetough-looking blacks leaning againsta plate-glass store front.

They eye him suspiciously, thenturn their attention elsewhere. Daw-ley keeps walking; he's heading for16th and Lawndale, the "strong-hold" of the Conservative ViceLords, an 8,000-member predomi-nantly black organization with areputation as the toughest streetgang on Chicago's West Side.

Dawley passes the store front.One of the blacks calls out: "Hey,Davie, what's happening, man?"

"Nothing much," Dawley replies,and walks on.

Actually, plenty is happening, hut

Dave Dawley, left, is a key advisor to theConservative Vice Lords, Inc., formerlya Chicago street gang that has noworganized to improve economic outlookfor slum neighborhood onChicago's West Side,

the former Volunteer has learnedthe idiom of the ghetto, and theshort exchange is one way to say"good morning."

Despite his mannerisms, his dress,his use of idiom, Dawley, 26, aproduct of a white, middle-classcommunity who graduated fromDartmouth, looks blatantly incon-gruous in Lawndale, the black ghettowhich the Conservative Vice Lordscall their "city."

But Dawley is a ConservativeVice Lord, one of the very few whofinished high school and definitelythe only one with a college educa-tion. He joined the street gang earlyin 1968 shortly after "it went re-spectable" and incorporated itselfunder Illinois law.

"Gang is a word we're not usinganymore," Dawley says, "and thegroup prefers to be called either a

48

club, an organization or a corpora-tion. We want to be recognized assomething different from the oldstreet fighters the guys who wentstomping or mugging through thestreets up through the early sixties."

Dawley's first contact with theVice Lords was in the summer of1967 when he went to Chicago forTransCentury Corp. The former Vol-unteer's assignment was to inter-view ghetto residents involved ingovernment-sponsored programs.

"I had to make contacts in orderto do my job. I soon found out thatthe Vice Lords run the streets andtherefore I hired two of them asinterviewers," he says.

Dawley's work moved smoothlyand he got to know the Vice Lords

"basically an organization madeup of the tough guys of society, theones that society labels hard-core,the unreached, the dropouts, thedelinquents, the criminals, the ad-dicts."

He learned that the leadershipwas moving the organization in newdirections; it had decided the oldways weren't getting anybody any-place, according to Dawley.

"The leaders are all over thirty,"he says. "Two of them had youngerbrothers who were killed in gangfights. Another of the leaders wasdriving down the street and a carpulled up alongside. There was ashotgun blast, and the guy sittingnext to him was killed."

Dawley says the Vice Lord lead-ers "have a great love for theirfellows out here on the street. Theydon't want them to go through thiskind of thing.

"They turned the organization.This is the beautiful part. Therewasn't a chance in the world of awhite person coming in here andorganizing these guys. I wouldn'thave given it a thought, just from anintellectual point of view.

"When I was doing research, Isaw there was a useful role for meto play. And I saw that I could helpthem with the things they wantedto do. So I came back," Dawleyrecalls.

He returned to Chicago on bor-rowed money and lived in Lawn-dale for several months without anincome, working to pry loose foun-dation "seed grants" for economicdevelopment projects of the ViceLords.

The calculated risk paid off. TheConservative Vice Lords, Inc., isnow Lawndale's fastest growingeconomic development corporation.

He serves as liaison between theVice Lords and foundations. Hesays his work is an extension of thework he did as a community devel-opment Peace Corps Volunteer inHonduras.

"There wasn't much going onwhen I was in college," Dawleysays, "even though I had the samebasic values that I have today.There just wasn't a way for me toget personally involved in anything.But the experience in Hondurasmade me more sensitive to the dis-crepancies between aspirations andrealities of life for people I didn'teven know existed."

Dawley's now hard at work to

reorder the balance between reali-ties and aspirations in Lawndale.

"The Vice Lords want to stayhere. They don't want to be moved.They 3on't want jobs over the otherside of town; they'll create theirown jobs here. They want to re-build their own community.

"This is black economic power.Everything we run will be black-owned and black-managed. We willcreate employment for black peopleand that employment will be here inthe ghetto," Dawley explains.

The results have been encourag-ing, Dawley says. "We have openeda restaurant called Teen Town. It'smaking money, which goes backinto the corporation.

"We have a heritage shop, whichmanufactures and sells Afro-Ameri-can clothing, jewelry and art. Werun a pool hall; we just received a$50,000 g 'ant for a beautificationproject that will provide jobs for110 people."

Dawley says the Vice Lordshaven't even begun to tap theirpotential. "We're talking about get-

ting into some very big businessconstruction, manpower training,human awareness programs withwhite suburbanites."

And he offers this challenge: "Letfoundations and other sources con-tinue giving us the seed funds untilwe stop producing people."

But the former Peace Corps Vol-unteer isn't blind to the high risksinvolved.

"I recently read a report that saysthe line between destructive andconstructive activism is thinnerthan the line between activism andpassivity.

"In the same person, you havemuch of the violence that could dis-rupt into a riot, the same guy who'sinvolved in building a business to-day could be involved in a riottomorrow, depending on the spark,the incident that ignites it."

Nevertheless, Dawley seems obliv-ious to fear in the ghetto. After all,the former Volunteer is a Vice Lord

one of the recognized leadersworking to build, not destroy, Chi-cago's West Side.

Dawley served as a Volunteer in Honduras, now is liaison man between the Vice Lords and variousfoundations that offer grants for community and economic development projects. He sayshis job in U.S. is an extension of community development work he did in Honduras.

.,1111111111

1.

'Small Miracles'in Appalachia

Bill Bridges talks with a resident of the mining Communityaround Hardbudy, Ky., where Bridges lives and work. Acsmall coal industries in the region gradually shut down, mon

such as thiS will find themselves unprepared (or other worktor that other work is nonexistent), and may be forced to move

out of the area

1,4,4

About 85 miles from Lexington,Kentucky, just south of the

Mountain Parkway, a small creekconverges with the north fork ofthe Kentucky River.

A man and a horse tried to fordthe shallow body of water, so thestory goes, and neither was seennor heard of again.

About 100 people now live withinsight of the scene of the strangedisappearance. They call their un-incorporated town "Quicksand".

Be it fact or fancy which gave thetown its name, from an economicstandpoint, thousands of people arecaught in Quicksand and the sur-

50

Nfr

The coal tipple (scaffolding behind Bridges) is a commot, .10t in the mining communities of Eastern Kentucky.Basically, Bridges' job is to help these communities gain d sense of their own potential through self-help projects.

rounding coal-mining camps of east-ern Kentucky.

The story of Appalachian povertyis well known. But awareness alonedoesn't solve problems.

Bill Bridges, the only son of a Ken-tucky farmer, is both aware of andinvolved in solving the problems ofhis native state. The 55-year-oldformer Volunteer (one of more than500 persons over the age of 50 whohave served in the Peace Corps) isa community development specialistin the University of Kentucky's Co-operative Extension Service. Forhim, "Quicksand is the center ofthe world."

Bridges spends most of his timegetting to know the people in min-ing camps and other small commu-nities of eastern Kentucky.

He speaks with a distinct Ken-tucky drawl and he talks the coalminer's language, pointing out waysthey can better their conditions andgently guiding them to initiate anddevelop self-help projects.

The "small miracles" achieved inHardburly, not far from Quicksand,are a source of pride for Bridgesbecause he spurred the communitydevelopment program there.

Estil Riley, president of the Hard-burly Improvement Association in-

51

spired by Bridges, received a Ken-tucky Award of Merit for thecleanup campaign and other im-provements for which he and themembers of his association wereresponsible.

Riley can't read or write, accord-ing to Bridges, "and I point this outin tribute to Estil because it didn'tkeep him from becoming a leaderand doing a fine job.

"Hardburly is just one community.Any community can do the samething," according to Bridges. "Sofrequently we get to feel that peoplein depressed areas just have theirhands out all the time. But if they're

1_

it MIUMIL

al

"Community development, as far as I'mconcerned, is chiefly a door-knockingprocess," says Bridges. In one old lumbercamp, Bridges helped the people bandtogether to dig a quarter-mile-longtrench to bring piped water to theirhomes. Here Bridges talks with CallowayFeltner, who led the community water drive.

stimulated in the right way they cando a lot of things for themselves.They just don't realize the poten-tial ttiat they have as individuals, oras groups."

Former Volunteer Bridges feels E thome in Appalachia, a more familiarsetting to him than the Pakistanitown where he served for twoyears. Nevertheless, he credits hisexperience in the Peace Corps withdeveloping within him "consider-able confidence in working withlow-income groups.

"Living in Pakistan was a realasset to me, not only in securingmy present position, but in beingable to do a fairly good job here,"Bridges continued.

"As a whole I think you comeback a much broader person, with.greater sensitivity to the needs ofothers and certainly greater appre-ciation for this great country ofours."

52

AM.

1.~

,1st,

....111/X _JENE

This tiny schoolhouse in GlomaurHollow, once a bustling mining camp, isnow headquarters of a /oca/ youth dub.Bridge.c, laughing at a joke, is at right.To the left is the club's adult leader, andthe man standing is a specialist inhorticulture who is encouragingthe children to p,rticipate in communitybeautification projects. There wereformerly 400 school-age children inClomaur Hollow; now there are only 40.

MN. Richey's general store and post office is acommunity gathering place in Hardburly.l3ridges never goes through the town withoutstopping to talk to the postmistress, who is also

a leading member of the HardburlyImprovement Association.

Bridges also feels that Volunteersgain "a little more humility" be-cause of their experiences. He seesthis in contrast to "the way so manyAmericans subconsciously, if notconsciously, consider that we are sofar above the people in other coun-tries."

Abroad, in developing rountries,Bridges continued, "they pmlize,especially in the field of technicaland industrial knowhow, that wecan teach them a lot. They know it.They want to learn.

"But, believe me, they can teach

illeittieeerbrius a lot, but not m ny ot us /mowit. Maybe we just nghdesire to learn."

J UN 2 1969

on Adult Euuca

PEACECORPS

" . . . I am trying to ac-complish, from my posi-tion as President of theRepublic, over the wholecountry, a very similarjob to the one performedby the Peace Corps Vol-

unteers--to awaken thecivic spirit, to orient thecommunity in the realiza-tion of its own effort, toovercome the problemsof ignorance, sicknessand backwardness, to in-troduce new aspirationsand new ideals to thepopular masses, all withthe desire to start forminga more equal society,more identified with thesame purposes of excel-ling . . . "

President of Colombia. Carlos Lleras Restrepo, in speech ata conference with Volunteers.

SEVENTHANNUALREPORT