Peace Corps Director Visits the Peace Corps Community Archive

Left to right; RPCV Pat Wand, University Archivist Susan McElrath, and Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Raadelet.

Left to right; RPCV (Colombia, 1963-1965) and Emerita University Librarian Patricia Wand, University Archivist Susan McElrath, and Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Raadelet.

On January 13, Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet spoke at American University’s School of International Service. Her conversation focused on the merits of Peace Corps service. Before her talk, Hessler-Radelet visited the Peace Corps Community Archive.

Hessler-Radelet is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer herself. She served in Western Samoa from 1981-1983. During her visit, Hessler-Radelet viewed highlights and representative items of our collection. Our display included materials from the 1960s-2000s.  This included letters, photographs, newspapers, training materials, and reports. Items from South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East showed the geographical variety of our collection.

University Archivist Susan McElrath shows Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet items from the Peace Corps Community Archive.

University Archivist Susan McElrath shows Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet items from the Peace Corps Community Archive.

Besides her own Peace Corps service, Hessler-Radelet’s aunt, Ginny Kirkwood, served with individuals represented in our collection. Kirkwood served with Ed and Karen De Antoni in Turkey (1964-1966). She took pictures of their materials on display for her aunt.

Click here to listen to Hessler-Radelet’s conversation with James Goldeier, Dean of American University’s School of International Service.

Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet recognizes Karen and Ed De Antoni, two PCVs who served with her aunt in Turkey during the 1960s.

Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet recognizes Karen and Ed De Antoni, two PCVs who served with her aunt in Turkey during the 1960s.

The Peace Corps, Disaster, and the Written Word

"Toucan Times: July, August, September 2002"

“Toucan Times: July, August, September 2002”

One of the official goals of the Peace Corps is to “help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.” Peace Corps volunteers achieve this goal through immersion within their respective communities. Peace Corps volunteers also form and maintain relationships and bonds with each other. Unofficial newspapers created by Peace Corps volunteers help foster community bonds between volunteers. These newsletters contain editorials, poetry, recipes, book reviews, and announcements relevant to volunteers.

One such magazine, the Toucan Times, documented PCVs serving in Belize. In 2001 and 2002, the Toucan Times devoted much space to how PCVs dealt with the effects of Hurricane Iris. Hurricane Iris hit Belize in early October of 2001. The disaster caused approximately 250 million dollars worth of damage and left thousands homeless. Several Peace Corps volunteers, including Alanna Randall, relocated to new homes. Alanna Randall, an environmental education and community development volunteer and one of the editors of the Toucan Times, expressed her emotional turmoil via a newspaper article. She wrote how, “many of the familiar landmarks were missing or moved, I almost didn’t even recognize where I lived…Stepping carefully around scattered pieces of plywood, I spotted my fan lying near a gravesite. Feeling numb and disbelieving, I sifted through the rubble. Random items were unearthed until I felt satisfied that all that could be was recovered.”

"In the rubble of my house"

“In the Rubble of my House”, Toucan Times, April/May/June 2002. 

In a message home, Randall wrote, “I’m officially a refugee of Hurricane
Iris. My peace corps family is sheltering me and searching for funds to get me started again…I’m doing fine. Anyway,”there’s nothing left to
do, but smile, smile, smile.”

The Peace Corps assisted with Alanna’s move to Cristo Rey Village and later San Ignacio. This story highlights the resilience of Peace Corps volunteers in the face of unpredictable hardships. Alanna’s hardships also show how Peace Corps newsletters like the Toucan Times provide volunteers with creative space to express and share their Peace Corps experiences.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Steven Orr served in the Peace Corps in Panama from 1964 to 1966. While in the city of Santiago de Veraguas, Orr worked with Emilio Jose Batista Castillo, the director of the Instituto Vocacional de Veraguas, a small vocational school.

With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Orr, additional PCVs, and Emilio transformed the small institute (consisting originally of essentially an empty shed) into a three building campus. Orr worked with Emilio to create the school’s curriculum. The school later became the Central Provinces Branch of the University of Panama and grew to include close to 20 buildings and classrooms. Emilio would later work in deep-water port management, working internationally in places such as Odessa, London, San Francisco, and Tokyo.

The photo below, taken in 1965 in Santiago, shows local Panamanian youths, students of the vocational school, and Peace Corps volunteers. This photograph showcases how collective efforts of various groups can make lasting changes throughout the world.

PeaceCorpsPanama1965

Panamanian Youths, students, and PCVs in Santiago de Veraguas, 1965. (extreme left, back row: Steven D. Orr; fifth from left, back row: Pauline Malone (PCV) ; ninth from left, back row: Louise Foy (PCV) ; eleventh from left, back row: Merrill Mazza (PCV) ; extreme right: Peace Corps Regional Director Emory Tomor.

 

 

Charlotte Daigle-Berney in Uganda

Charlotte Daigle-Berney

Country of Service: Uganda
Place of Service: Masaka, Mbale
Service Type: Education
Dates in Service: 1966-1968
Keywords: Masaka, Mbale, Sebei College

Accession Date: December 22, 2014
Access: No restrictions
Collection Size: 0.25 linear feet

Document Types

  • Correspondence
  • Photographs
  • Publications
  • Collection of African superstitions
  • Training materials
  • CD of photographs from RPCVs submitted to the New Mexico Peace Corps Association commemorating the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary

Finding Aid

  1. Correspondence, 1967-1968, 2010 
    1. Postcards 
    2. Christmas Card 
  2. Collected African Superstitions from Students at Sebei College, Uganda, 1968 
  3. Newspaper Clippings and Brochures, 1965-1967 
  4. Photographs, 1967-1968 
  5. RPCV New Mexico Peace Corps Association, CD of images from Peace Corps 50th Anniversary 
  6. Publications, 1967-1968, 2001 
  7. Peace Corps Social Work and Educational Materials, 1966-1967 

“The Comrade Corps”

During a speech at San Francisco’s Cow Palace on November 2, 1960, soon to be President Kennedy spoke of the need for Americans to take action to ensure friendly relations abroad. He told the audience, “Out of Moscow and Peiping and Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany are hundreds of men and women, scientists, physicists, teachers, engineers, doctors, nurses, studying in those institutes, prepared to spend their lives abroad in the service of world communism… being prepared to live their lives in Africa as missionaries for world communism.” Kennedy therefore proposed, that the U.S. create “a peace corps of talented young men and women, willing and able to serve their country in this fashion for 3 years as an alternative or as a supplement to peacetime selective service.” Even before the election, Kennedy had already a foundation for what would become the Peace Corps.

While serving in Africa, several Peace Corps volunteers worked alongside what one American termed “the Comrade Corps.” This organization consisted of teachers and volunteers the Soviet Union sent to developing countries, the same men and women Kennedy spoke of in his speech at the Cow Palace.

In 1965, Ray Silverstein, a Peace Corps volunteer, wrote to the Tilley Lamp, a Nigerian Peace Corps Volunteer newsletter, chronicling his encounter with these Russian volunteers. He told readers, “One has to seek them out. Once this is done, many of them will open up, eager to socialize and talk English with someone “who can correct” them…One girl that I met acknowledged the West’s superiority in twist music and rock n’roll, and mentioned that the Charleston is the rage in Russia now.”

Elizabeth Cobb Hoffman discusses Russian volunteers and PCV relations in Ghana in her 1998 work All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s, “The volunteers’ attempts to be friendly towards the Russian youth would…prove the intention of the United States to wage the Cold War peacefully…The Peace Corps teachers, who shared accommodations with volunteers from other countries, reported that the Russians returned their sociability (Hoffman, 162).”

Despite Cold War tensions, Russian and American youth workers shared cultural experiences and perspectives with each other during their respective service across the world.

The Kennedy Legacy Abroad

Last week, the Peace Corps Community Archive blog featured a post on Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps. This week, we are focusing on Shriver’s brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, who established the Peace Corps in 1961. While campaigning the previous year, Kennedy gave an impromptu speech to a number of students at the University of Michigan. He asked the assembled students, “I think in many ways it is the most important campaign since 1933, mostly because of the problems which press upon the United States, and the opportunities which will be presented to us in the 1960s. The opportunity must be seized, through the judgment of the President, and the vigor of the executive, and the cooperation of the Congress.” Inspired by the spirit of volunteerism Kennedy encountered among young voters during the 1960 campaign, he issued an executive order in 1961 establishing the Peace Corps as “responsible for the training and service abroad of men and women of the United States in new programs of assistance to nations and areas of the world, and in conjunction with or in support of existing economic assistance programs of the United States and of the United Nations and other international organizations.” 

Child, Jack. Tribute to John F. Kennedy, 14 April 1964. Jack Child Stamp Collection. American University Library. Archives and Special Collections.

Tribute to John F. Kennedy, 14 April 1964. Jack Child Stamp Collection. American University Library. Archives and Special Collections.

Many Peace Corps volunteers serving in the 1960s were likewise inspired by the legacy of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. Peace Corps volunteer Terry Kennedy (Colombia 1964-66, no relation), wrote to his parents less than one year after JFK’s assassination about the reverence the Colombians had for President Kennedy. Terry wrote home,  “How do you like the Kennedy Stamps? The Americans that the people down here admire are JFK and Lincoln and Washington.” This and other letters from Terry Kennedy during his time in the Peace Corps are available to research in the Peace Corps Community Archive at American University.

Colombia issued these stamps in memory of John F. Kennedy. These stamps demonstrate the respect other countries had for the recently assassinated President. Colombia was not the only South American country to honor President Kennedy. Argentina also created their own version of a Kennedy Stamp, one of which (pictured, right) is found in the Jack Child Collection at the American University Archive and Special Collections.

 

Sargent Shriver: First Director of the Peace Corps

Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. was born on November 9, 1915 and served as the first Director of the Peace Corps during the 1960s. In 1961, Shriver participated in an eight nation tour with the goal of creating more Peace Corps programs throughout Africa and Asia. His leadership expanded the influence of the Peace Corps and set the foundation for the legacy of service the organization provides to the world.

At the Peace Corps’s 25th Anniversary commemoration, Shriver told the audience, “Care for those who are sick. Serve your families. Serve your neighbors. Serve your cities. Serve the poor. Join others who serve. Serve, serve, serve! That’s the challenge. For in the end, it will be servants who save us all.”[1]

More than 50 years after the creation of the Peace Corps, we remember Sargent Shriver and the lasting vision and mission he created for the Peace Corps.

[1] “Service”, Sargent Shriver Peace Institute, http://www.sargentshriver.org/sarges-legacy/politics-of-service (retrieved November 6, 2014).

Photograph, Sargent Shriver, Ma Khin Khin Hla, and U Soe Tin in Burma

Photograph, Sargent Shriver, Ma Khin Khin Hla, and U Soe Tin in Burma, United States Information Service. R. Sargent Shriver Personal Papers. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

 

 

Science and Math Education in the Peace Corps

“The teaching of mathematics and science is one of the most needed contributions Peace Corps Volunteers can make to the developing nations. The future of these nations hinges directly on their ability to speed technological and industrial development.”

– “Math and Science Teachers in the Peace Corps” pamphlet, circa 1967

HudsonTrainingBook2

“Science and Mathematics Teachers For Nigerian Secondary Schools” Training Manual, Duane Hudson, American University Peace Corps Community Archive.

Since the mid-1960s, the Peace Corps has sent volunteers across the globe to assist in developing educational initiatives in other countries. Two collections in our archive highlight the work done in the field of science education. Stephen Bossi served in India from 1966-1968 and Duane Hudson served in Nigeria from 1963 to 1965.

In preparation for their teaching experiences abroad, Peace Corps Trainees go through a rigorous training process. Peace Corps volunteer Duane Hudson’s training materials contain a daily schedule that has future Peace Corps volunteers take classes all day interrupted only by small breaks for meals and coffee. When teaching math during their service, Peace Corps volunteers must take into consideration cultural and societal differences in how different countries teach and conceptualize math. In 1960s Nigeria, for example, students used a “raised dot,” instead of a decimal point in the center between the two digits. Also, instead of the a “billion,” Nigerians referred to the number as a “thousand million.”

HudsonTrainingSchedule

“Mathematics Teaching in Nigeria Secondary Schools and Teacher Training Colleges: Terms and Symbols,” Duane Hudson, American University Peace Corps Community Archive. Compare example of raised dot vs. decimal point in middle of list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although there are differences between cultures, there are also many universal aspects of how math and science are taught. Steve Bossi served in India and his handbook recommends teachers facilitate science fairs, staple among many American classrooms. Peace Corps volunteers were instructed how to make rudimentary microscopes for their students to use, an item many American school children are familiar with today. Such cross-cultural education through Peace Corps service is especially useful today in an increasingly global community.

BossiTrainingInstructions2

“Science Teachers’ Handbook: Improvised Apparatus,” Stephen Bossi, American University Peace Corps Community Archive.

BossiTrainingInstructions3

“Science Teachers’ Handbook: Compound Microscope,” Stephen Bossi, Peace Corps Community Archive.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Northeastern New York

RPCV Northeastern New York
Date of Materials: 1986-2004

Accession Date: October 9, 2014
Access: No restrictions
Collection Size: 0.5 linear feet

Document Types

  • Correspondence
  • Membership lists
  • Minutes
  • Newsletters
  • Newsletters from other RPCV groups