WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009 - (Page 44)
NIGERIA, SIERRA LEONE Jerry Saunders, Mike abkin (Nigeria, 66-68) and david o’neill (Sierra Leone, 89-91) were three out of 170 peace supporters who recently attended the National Peace Academy Stakeholder Summit meeting in Cleveland, Ohio. The meeting brought together representatives of civil society, business, academia and government to design the National Peace Academy. Saunders is the chair of peace and conflict studies at the University of California-Berkley. Abkin is the special projects coordinator for the Peace Alliance and a member of the steering committee of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace. O’Neill is currently affiliated with the United Nations Foundation. PhILIPPINES Ted Brush recently completed a 3,100-mile, cross-country bicycle journey across the United States with three friends he made while serving in the Peace Corps and a fourth cyclist they met en route. The group set off from St. Augustine, Fla., on February 27 after dipping their bicycle tires in the Atlantic Ocean. When the reached the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, they did the same. Brush and his friends rode at least five hours each day, averaging 50 miles a day, though they did take time to stop and enjoy some sights along the way. Each of the cyclists is at least 65 years old. TURKEY Pat Corcoran Yeoman, a retired educator and college professor, has become an advocate, social work, banker, health aid and educator to a number of Meskhetian Turks, the population of people who have escaped persecution in the Republic of Georgia, Uzbekistan and, most recently, Russia. These people arrive in Rochester, NY, left on their own to survive. In the past 18 months she has convinced many private schools in the city to open their doors to these refugee children. Additionally, for 25 hours a week Yeoman turns her home into a home school for up to 20 students ages 5 to 16. Summer 2009 Featured NPCA Member ThE 10,000Th MEMBER An RPCV helps NPCA mark an online milestone I n January NCPA launched its new website, including a new online community area called Connected Peace Corps. It’s a place where returned Peace Corps volunteers, serving volunteers, prospective volunteers—and simply those who strongly support the Peace Corps—can find each other, get connected, get informed and make things happen! By April we were so close to our first goal of 10,000 member profiles! To put us over the top we made an offer: be the 10,000th person to create a profile and receive “star treatment” in WorldView. Your photo and your Peace Corps story in your own (300) words. The result? A flood of new people joined our site. Meet our winner, Jonathan Citron. Jonathan Citron ONE IN 10,000? WOW! I’m to graduate Boston University’s School of Public Communication with a BA degree spring of ‘71 and my advisor hands me a job offer: Peace Corps Morocco is looking for a filmmaker to work at the Ministry of Agriculture. Long story, short; I accept, take the interview, clear all bureaucratic hurdles, and am on a plane bound for Casa early fall the same year. My wife calls me one in a million. I’m flattered. A taxi delivers me to Rabat and Peace Corps headquarters. A day later I’m off to Tanger and intensive language training begins in French, what I need to learn for the job. It’s a small group of us who reside for two months in the Medina. The sights, smells, tastes, sounds are all novel, totally overwhelming, and so, so good. To Rabat where I hook up with a roommate, find a place to live, furnish the digs, meet my counterparts and co-workers, and a half hour walk–one-way–to the office, four times a day. The schedule: shoot film one week and edit footage the next. The finished product goes to ‘Radio-Diffusion Marocaine’ for Friday broadcast directly after the evening’s ‘Call to Prayer.’ I’m busy and loving it! The ministry’s carpool takes me and the crew all over and the only parts of Morocco I do not see are the lands west of the Atlas Mountains and the South. I eat, sleep, and breathe this country; this unbelievable diversity of people and geographic marvels; ocean, sea, lakes, mountains, valleys, plains, desert. I’m made to feel welcome wherever I got two years solid of wall to wall experiences and how can I ever forget! (300 words? Puhlease!) Say, near, 6.779 billion people on this planet and counting. And now you know: I am truly blessed! Say hello to Jonathan at www.community.peacecorpsconnect.org
http://community.peacecorpsconnect.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009
WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009
Contents
More Peace Corps Campaign: Better and Bolder!
Africa Rural Connect
Readers Write
You Too Can Be Bill Gates
Taking Peace Corps Back into the Field
Come for the Information, Stay for the Dancing
A “Green” Community Rising
Microfinance Pioneer Receives 2009 Shriver Award
The Colombia Project
A Voice for the Unheard
Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Microfinance Podcasts
Selected Microfinance Resources
Bicycle! Bamenda! Orange!
Luck and Fame
A Step in the Right Direction
Bringing What She Loves
Letter from Botswana: First Tongues of the Kalahari
Letter from Tanzania: Homo Sapien in Africa
In the Beginning (There Was John)
The Peace Corps Community Making a Difference
Community News
Advertiser Index
WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009
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