2007 | Issue 3 | Rpcv Newsletter

The RPCVw Board Members: 2007-2008 •

Sign you name and contact information so that we can follow up with you on how to collaborate on the project. • If the project requires Board approval, we can invite members to come and present their ideas at one of our monthly board meetings. To Access go to: https://web.memberclicks.com/mc/quickForm/viewForm. do?orgId=rpcvwd&formId=34 1.) Move the Cursor to the Community Dropdown menu 2.) Move the cursor down and select the last item, "Suggestion Form" 3.) Complete the necessary information; those in bold are required fields. 4.) Click the Submit tab

At retreat planning our exciting RPCVw year

President’s Corner RPCVw swoops into the holiday season. Hello all, and happy holidays. In the midst of pumpkins, costumes, candy, turkeys, and friends and family, RPCVw is calling on you, our membership, to help make us a better organization. The RPCVw Board is very excited with the events and programs that we’ve already offered this year. We are also greatly encouraged by the positive feedback we’ve received from you all on events such as our socially conscious investing, Iftar dinner/lecture, and new members’ bike ride to Mt. Vernon; however, in order to continue to meet the expectations of you, our members, I would like to request your input. Rather than functioning as a Board that decides which programs are best for our membership, we are looking to you for ideas. In this light, please visit www.rpcvw.org (link to bulletin board), and tell us what you would like to see from RPCVw throughout the year. We’re looking for ideas on events, programs, workshops, partnerships, and the like. If you have a pet idea that you’d like to actualize, let us try and help you do so! When you access the bulletin board, • enter your idea for a project/event. • include any reasoning you feel pertinent to our understanding of the idea.

As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer organization, our mission is to help each of you live your third goal by bringing the learnings from you volunteer service back home to the DC-metro area. So, whether it is organizing a cooking class, an intramural sports team, a workshop on green development, or any other pet project that you have in mind, contact us and help us to help you live your 3rd goal. Regards, Jim Gore, President, RPCVw

NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL PEACE CORPS ASSOCIATION Looking Ahead to New NPCA Developments On behalf of the NPCA, I am pleased to report on exciting developments in the Peace Corps community. Our multi-year NPCA restructuring has made us a more efficient and economical organization poised to have a major impact on Peace Corps-related issues: •

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Mentoring recent RPCVs: Our mentoring program with Peace Corps offers returning volunteers career and readjustment advice from established RPCVs, through dynamic NPCA affiliates in Miami, Chicago and Portland, Oregon. We plan to build on this pilot program over the next year. Save the date: We are planning with Peace Corps for 50th anniversary celebrations in as many as 139 countries and across the nation, including a capstone event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., June 23-26, 2011. To succeed, we need your support. Please consider a special contribution to NPCA. You can contribute on-line at www.peacecorpsconnect.org or by mail at: NPCA, 1900 L Street, NW, Suite 404, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Start Thinking about the 50th Thinking ahead, let alone 4-plus years into the future, is not something that comes easily to many people or institutions. However for some time the National Peace Corps Association has been doing just that, looking forward to the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps. Visit the Peace Corps 50 landing page (http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/peacecorp s50) on the NPCA website to get some very early information about plans for 2011. You can also learn about Peace Corps at 50: An Anniversary Story Project (http://www.rpcv.org/pages/sitepage.cfm?id= 1775&ref=&fin=2).

It's a Brave New World: NPCA and New Media To connect with untapped segments of the Peace Corps community, NPCA is experimenting with new media and emerging social networking tools on the Internet. Look for us on YouTube.com, Flickr.com, Facebook.com and Widgetbox.com under the name PeaceCorpsConnect (some sites may require registration). We are particularly excited about the advocacy and community-building potential of Change.org, which recently linked to Facebook and its millions of members. We have JUST started out and would love your help in building our member numbers. Visit our page at: http://www.change.org/peacecorpsconnect. And if you have ideas of how NPCA can use the Internet in innovative ways to further our shared mission – to connect, inform, and engage the Peace Corps community – e-mail our Director of New Media, Erica Burman, at [email protected].

Take a Vacation and Make a Difference You joined the Peace Corps to serve and to learn first-hand about our world and its people. Now we invite you to do that again! Through a new collaboration with Global Volunteers, NPCA members can connect and engage in service projects around the globe - and at home - on short term "volunteer vacations".

Whether you are 25 or 75, single or with a spouse and family, make a difference again by working with at-risk children and their families. With your trip, you get to take a tax deduction. In addition, Global Volunteers makes a contribution to NPCA. And, you come home from your travels relaxed and refreshed, knowing that you've made a difference again. What more could you ask for? Plan your next trip now with Global Volunteers. (http://npca.globalvolunteers.org/welcome.as p).

Go Safely with Global Rescue Global Rescue knows that former Peace Corps volunteers continue to travel extensively and frequently visit remote locations. And while most RPCVs fancy themselves experienced travel hands, it never hurts to be reminded of some common sense travel tips. Visit the NPCA website (http://www.rpcv.org/pages/sitepage.cfm?id =1697) for a travel checklist from Global Rescue’s Director of Flight Operations, plus information on Global Rescue’s partnership with the National Peace Corps Association. Global Rescue (http://www.globalrescue.com/plans.cfm) is a membership organization that provides best-inclass emergency medical, aero medical evacuation and security services to individuals, families, corporations and educational institutions domestically and abroad.

School for International Training Announces New $10,000 NPCA Scholarships The School for International Training (SIT), led by President Carol Bellamy (Peace Corps Volunteer Guatemala 63-65, Peace Corps Director 93-95, Former Executive Director, UNICEF, and member, NPCA Advisory Council), announced increased National Peace Corps Association academic scholarships of $10,000 to pursue master's degrees in international programs at the school's Brattleboro, Vt., campus. The mission of SIT is to prepare students to be intercultural effective leaders, professionals, and citizens.

The NPCA Scholarship was established in 2000 to recognize the long-standing ties between SIT and the Peace Corps. Members of NPCA who have one year or more of significant intercultural experience are eligible to apply. Several awards of $10,000 will be made each year. NPCA members can request information regarding this exclusive scholarship opportunity at 800-3361616 or 802-257-7751, or online at http://www.sit.edu.

SAVING PEACE CORPS’ HISTORY (before it’s too late)

As we approach the 50th Anniversary of The Peace Corps, the RPCV Archival Project has begun a renewed effort to seek out those who were the pioneers of the Peace Corps, volunteers from the 1960s. Year by year we are losing that cohort and their unique stories of volunteer service. The Project hopes to add 3000 1960s interviews to the National Archives at the John F. Kennedy Library in the RPCV Collection before the anniversary year; that would be about 10% of those who served during that period. The RPCV Archival Project is an informal network of RPCVs who work to preserve Peace Corps’ legacy by conducting oral history interviews of those who have served as PCVs. In the five years of its existence, more than 40 RPCV interviewers have completed approximately 300 interviews [SEE <jfklibrary.org> Search: The RPCV Collection]. The Project’s basic resource is and will continue to be the unpaid voluntary efforts of those RPCVs who’ve participated, operating in cooperation with NPCA Affiliate groups. We need people to volunteer to participate by becoming interviewers; a commitment of three hours a month during 2007 could add 12 more RPCV stories to the Collection. The Project provides training and orientation through an operational guide; once started, participants work directly with the RPCV Archivist at the Kennedy Library. Interested? Questions? Comments? Contact Bob Klein (Ghana 1961-1963) Project Organizer [email protected]

Socially Responsible Investment 101 On Monday, October 1st, approximately 15 interested RPCVs and friends gathered at the Latin American Youth Center in Columbia Heights to hear a presentation given by Justin Conway, the Sales and Information Officer at Calvert Foundation, a nonprofit provider of innovative financial products and services that channel affordable capital to underserved communities and markets. Before joining Calvert Foundation, Justin managed the Community Investing Program of Co-op America and the Social Investment Forum, where he was instrumental in helping grow the overall demand for community and socially responsible investing. These experiences made him more than qualified to educate the group on various ways to invest their money, be it 401k, 403b or other funds, in a way that contributed to the greater (or more immediate, depending on your preference) community. According to Conway, the most important factor to deciding where you invest is educating yourself about where you may invest, as well as the types of sociallyresponsible issues in which you prefer to invest (because there are a MULTITUDE of them). This situation is yet another example of how personal research can reward those involved. The three components of SociallyResponsible Investment (SRI) are Screening, Shareholder Advocacy and Community Investing. Screening can be exclusionary (screening OUT companies that finance certain issues), inclusionary (screening IN companies that finance certain issues), Comparative (companies compared for best-in-class) and Blended (a combination of above approaches). Shareholder advocacy can mean involving yourself in a company that doesn’t necessarily meet your screening requirements, but for which you use your position as a voting member of that company’s Board to advocate for policies that would meet your screening requirements, ranging from recommendations to reporting transparency to office recycling policies to CO2 emissions to sexual orientation non-discrimination policies, etc. Community investing is more of a local means of channeling much-needed funds to areas in need of economic opportunity.

Based on the significant member interest, we may ask Justin to return for a second session for all those people who missed out. In the meantime, he recommends the following websites for when you’re making these important choices in your financial matters: www.socialinvest.org; www.socialfunds.com; and www.communityinvest.com. Thanks again to Justin for sharing his knowledge with the RPCVw community!

Call for Ideas As the 2007-2008 Programs Director, I have a number of my own ideas about educational and cultural programs I can organize for RPCVw, but they won’t get me through the year. I need you, and I’m here to provide programs you’re interested in. Please, feel free to write me any ideas you have for future programs you’d like to see us hold this year, and I’ll do what I can to make them happen. Email me : [email protected]. I’m waiting for your ideas! --Lesley Pories, Programs Director, RPCVw

area of expertise. He also helped explain to the crowd, who came from their own diverse experiences of Islam through their respective countries of service (or, in some cases, Friends of Morocco President Tim Resch welcomes RPCVw and Friends of Morocco to the event and homes)—Morocco, Niger, Uzbekistan, introduces our guest speaker, Dr. Azzam Abdelkarim." Kurdistan, Honduras and others—how the religion, like many others, is subject to Iftar: Breaking the Ramadan Fast national/regional variations as to observance. Members of the RPCVw community and Friends of The main course that followed was a veritable Morocco (FOM) came together on Sunday, October feast: chicken and lamb (or salmon, depending 7, to observe the breaking of the Ramadan fast at on your dietary needs) cooked in the tangine the cozy Casablanca Restaurant in Old Town, style indicative of Morocco and other Alexandria. The second year of this RPCVw/FOM surrounding areas, accompanied later by event, we hope to make it an annual activity you vegetable couscous. Fresh fruit and tea can look forward to in the years to come: an ideal completed the meal, but not until long after the mix of fun and cultural education, this is the kind group was treated to a live belly-dance of event we hope to increasingly host as an performance. organization dedicated to continuing the crosscultural experience here in DC. In all, the night was a huge success. Members of the RPCVw and FOM community got to The fast was broken with an assortment of interact and exchange relevant stories, all “nibbles,” including dates, deviled eggs, fried while educating themselves, enjoying a rather sweetened dough and a few styles of pancakes tasty meal and getting an almost-private bellycoated in honey. A soup followed these tasty dance performance. tidbits and held the hungry souls over while guest speaker, Dr. Azzam Abdelkarim, enlightened the group as to the meaning of Ramadan and its place within the five pillars of Islam. Dr. Abdelkarim was invited to attend through the Moroccan consulate, who was also present at the event, and spoke informatively and passionately about his

“It was amazing,” reflected attendee Amy Hertz (Niger 2001-2003). “My community observed Ramadan, but they didn’t always explain everything to me. It was great to learn a bit more about the whole thing and to feel that connection to my host community again, even from so far away.”

Letter from the Field: A Reminder of the Peace Corps Experience Hey Guys, I'm doin' OK out here and I credit the peak of the rainy season for maintaining my sanity............ I'm suffering greatly from the absence of activity. Work has been nearly impossible to find. Half of the city has disappeared into the fields to harvest the August crops--to earn their annual income. And I've been left to wait. I wait for their return. I wait for the new school year to begin. I wait to abandon my daily lists of superficial errands that include chores like sweeping the ceilings and searching for eggs. Unfortunately, with the waiting...comes the thinking. I've come to realize that thinking is THE MOST successful and efficient method of achieving the ultimate level of self-loathing. I manage to replay everything I've ever done wrong, all the things I never did, and all the things I wasn't capable of doing in my entire 31 years of being. And as if compiling such a comprehensive mental list of my shortcomings isn't enough--I start thinking about home. I think about everything I've left behind for a second time, of all that I'm missing, and of those who will no longer be waiting for me when I return. But just as I start contemplating how to hang myself from a curtain rod with Peace Corps' generic unwaxed dental floss, it starts to rain..................... For the most part, I find that the raindrops in the Western world seem to fall as if they are casualties of a strictly enforced maximum capacity moisture law in the sky. But here it's as if as if each individual drop is carrying out its own personal vendetta against the Earth. It starts from above, rises from below, and chases sideways. It falls with such a power that it seems that nothing could exist beyond these elements themselves and the sound of their fury on a 2K stretch of aluminum roofs. Sometimes it lasts for hours and sometimes for just a few minutes, but its effects are always the same. It paralyzes and cleanses. It eliminates all thought... and the process of.

In the end, there is no existential crisis. No universal truths. No what-ifs or could-bes. No conscience. No guilt or grief. I only know one thing after the rains. I know I'll find carrots that day. And the rest never really mattered.

The RPCVw bike ride crew

LIVESTRONG On October 21, about 20 RPCVw members took to the streets and biked the 30 mile Mount Vernon trail. We started at Arlington National Cemetary and followed the trail through Alexandria, continuing on to the Mount Vernon site, the home of George Washington. Some stayed to tour the site, while others headed back to Alexandria and stopped for dinner and drinks by the water. We could not have had a more beautiful day, nor a smoother ride. A great trip was had by all!!!! Stay tuned for more outdoors-y events in the months ahead.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

SAVE THE DATE The annual Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Washington's holiday party will take place on December 7th at 6:30 at the Josephine Butler House. Please mark your calendars and tell your friends! The evening will include a festive holiday dinner and a silent auction.

RPCVw's Meet N' Greet New Members Thanksgiving Dinner! New to the area? Interested in meeting other returned Peace Corps volunteers? Join us for our first annual Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday, November 13th in Mount Pleasant, DC at 7:30pm. Learn more about the organization, meet board members, eat turkey, and share stories of past Thanksgivings spent around candlelit tables in far corners of the world. RSVP to Elizabeth at [email protected]. We hope you can join us!

The Friends of the Baltics’ Celebration The Friends of the Baltics would like to invite you to a special celebration and benefit at the Embassy of Estonia on Wednesday, November 7th, 6pm8.30pm. His Excellency Ambassador Vaino Reinart will give welcome remarks for this special event. We would like to extend a special 2 for 1 membership rate to all RPCVs, so if you purchase in advance, for just $20, you and a friend can join us and help a very worthy cause! Enjoy a Baltic-friendly evening with live traditional music, an array of delicious hors d'oeuvres, Estonia's famous Saku beer and other libations. There will also be a silent auction offering an array of Baltic treats and treasures. Everyone is welcome to join us for this festive occasion to benefit a most worthwhile project. This year's celebration and benefit will raise funds to provide access to recreational equipment and activities for Estonian youth with mental disabilities. And because the Embassy of Estonia is generously providing all food and beverage for our event, 100 percent of ticket proceeds will benefit this worthy cause. We greatly appreciate the Embassy of Estonia in helping us to make the maximum contribution possible. We also appreciate our members and friends who will come out and celebrate with us. WHAT: The Friends of the Baltics' Celebration & Benefit

Please let RPCV/W know if you have any items or services to donate to the auction. Can you donate an hour of web design service? Did you recently receive a gift that wasn't quite "you" and you need a place to pass it on? Let us know! Stay tuned for more information as the date approaches!

This is one not to be missed!! WHEN: Wednesday, November 7th, 6pm8.30pm WHERE: The Embassy of Estonia, located at 2131 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington DC 20008. www.estemb.org . (Dupont Circle Metro). RSVP, TICKETS & RESERVATIONS: Tickets for this event are $20 for members and $25 for non-members if purchased in advance by November 3, 2007. All other tickets will be $30 at the door--cash or check only. Space is limited for this event, so we encourage you to reserve today by calling Lisa Martin (Estonia 96-98), President of Friends of the Baltics, at 571.212.3358 or via email at [email protected]. There is a special 2 for 1 ticket price for RPCVs--just mention you heard it through RPCV/W. To pay online, please visit www.balticfriends.org. Click on "join FoB" and/or "support FoB" and follow the Pay Pal instructions. Add the total of your ticket order plus any membership fee and/or donation amount. In the message box, include how many tickets and for whom they were purchased. We encourage you to consider joining FOB and/or renewing your annual membership of $15 while you are there. Alternatively, you may pay by check if postmarked by November 1st. Please make checks payable to Friends of the Baltics, include names of attendees on the memo line and mail to: Lisa Martin, 510 21st Street, NW #802, Washington, DC 20006. Payments must be received in advance to ensure your space. Kids under 12 years of age FREE!