World View Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 4)

Lafayette Park How to reverse PeaceCorps A note to the next President ATLAS REFINED Scott Beale has created a reverse Peace Corps, a logical extension of John Kennedy’s once-revolutionary concept of international public service and development. And Beale wasn’t a Peace Corps volunteer in the first place. He got the idea when he was working in India on anti-human trafficking for the U.S. State Department. He was so impressed with the work being performed by young leaders in India’s non-profit sector that he wondered what would happen if some of them came to the United States for a year to work with non-governmental organizations like his former employers, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, and learn some of their best practices. It would benefit the hosting organizations because these are among the best and the brightest social entrepreneurs in their own countries. e promise of the cross-fertilization was so tempting that Beale created Atlas Service Corps, or Atlas Corps for short. Atlas Corps started small: last year Atlas Corps selected 7 fellows out of 400 candidates from two countries, Colombia and India. eir average age is 27, they come from five different religious backgrounds, and they typically have between 4 and 6 years of experience. Maria Angelica Duenas founded a small rights-based education organization in Bogota. She works for TechnoServe, a 40-year-old organization in Washington, D.C. that sends business advisors and consultants to assist social entrepreneurs in 19 developing countries. Syed Mohd Yunus has four years experience in working against human trafficking and child labor, most recently with Bachpan Bachao Andolan in New Delhi. Yunus works at Global Giving, an internetbased medium where individuals can donate to any of more than 450 pre- screened charities around the world. Others from these two countries are working for Free the Slaves, Ayuda, Bert Corona Leadership Institute, Youth Venture and Mobilize. Beale, a dynamic personality who easily fits within the age demographic of these first Atlas Corps volunteers, manages the organization from his hometown in Delaware, an office in Bogota where his wife, Courtney, is a U.S. foreign service officer, and Washington, D.C., where his program officer works. When we met a year ago, he was clearly enthused by the concept. “People I got to know in India and Colombia are some of the most talented people I’ve met. ey had a unique perspective, but they lacked a few of the skills to run their organizations.” His own operating plan involves a list of advisors who read, screen and chose the candidates and modest funding from Humanity United Foundation, the Dupont Corporation, the Colombian government and a list of individual donors. More detail is at www. atlascorps.org. In the process of creating Atlas Corps, Beale had the good fortune to engage Harris Wofford in this effort. Wofford is a former college president, U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, chief executive officer of AmeriCorps and in his own youth was a close staff advisor to Sargent Shriver in the creation of the Peace Corps. Wofford remains a prominent disciple of public service in America and spoke up for Atlas Corps at a recent Washington event a few months ago. Beale’s mission, however, is to reverse the flow of empowerment from north to south that is the basis of the Peace Corps model. Atlas Corps is similar to the Peace Corps, he says, but works in the opposite direction by taking citizen sector leaders of developing nations to volunteer in the US for a year. Beale argues that Atlas Corps could achieve even greater results than the Peace Corps because the volunteers will already have 4 to 8 years of relevant experience and will be rising leaders in their field. Further, the program costs about $40,000 per fellow, half of which is paid by the U.S. nonprofit host organization that benefit from the year of service from the fellow. Beale is trying to change the vocabulary of the non-governmental community to call those engaged in this field of endeavor “citizen-sector” organizations. “To say what it is rather than what it is not,” he says. at may be a most ambitious goal. David Arnold FOR A NEW PRESIDENT Senator Richard Lugar believes that the solution to the problems of our nation’s energy security, the economy and the environment can only come from the White House. In a speech on the nation’s energy challenges delivered recently at the Brookings Institution, the Republican senator from Indiana said, “To succeed, the President must be more than thoughtful and attentive to energy concerns. e President must be relentless,” Lugar said. He urged that whoever becomes our next President must get beyond the idea that by simply appearing attentive to concerns over high gasoline and home heating prices, their political bases will be covered and no serious effort has to be made on a controversial energy policy. Lugar added that energy issues must be addressed by the presidential candidates. “Energy security and the economic and environmental issues closely associated with it should be 4 Spring 2008 http://www.atlascorps.org http://www.atlascorps.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of World View Magazine - Spring 2008

World View Magazine - Spring 2008
Contents
From the President
Lafayette Park
Your Turn
Gallery
Note to Readers
Introduction to the Issue
Engaging Masons
Commentary
Letter from Guatemala
Links of a Chain
Gallery
Science for Good
Letter from Jima
Another Country
Letter from Accra
Community News

World View Magazine - Spring 2008

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