Spring 2017: Refugee Crisis - Vol. 30 Issue 1

Spring 2017 Vol. 30, No. 1 ∙ $4.99 worldviewmagazine.org

Published by The National Peace Corps Association

REFUGEE CRISIS How we can help in the United States and other countries

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Past International MBA candidates have received up to 70% of their tuition costs

in recognition of their competitiveness and service. All qualified admitted MBA candidates are considered for the following financial awards:

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$2,000 to $3,0002 – awarded automatically to all RPCV with submission of your Description of Service

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SIT and the Peace Corps ... partners since 1964

Spring 2017 Volume 30, Number 1

WorldView Publisher: Glenn Blumhorst Communications Director: Megan Patrick Editor: David Arnold Contributing Editor: John Coyne

WorldView Advertising Scott Oser advertising@peacecorpsconnect.org

WorldView (ISSN 1047-5338) is published four times per year (Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter) by the National Peace Corps Association (located at 1900 L Street, NW, Suite 610, Washington, DC 20036-5002) to provide news and comment about communities and issues of the world of serving and returned Peace Corps Volunteers. WorldView © 1978 National Peace Corps Association.

A magazine for the greater Peace Corps community SAVE THE CHILDREN/PEDRO ARMESTRE

Contributors: Tony Agnello, Pedro Armestre, Yannis Behrakis, Glenn Blumhorst, Krissy Close, Peter Deekle, Alyssa Eisenstein, Elizabeth Ferris, Lane Goodman, Asifa Kanji, Nhial Malia, Elissa Malinowski, Christie Materni, Katie Morris, Maikel Nabil, Giorgis Moutafis, Lucy Nicholson, Megan Patrick, Jonathan Pearson, Bob Schleuhuber, Alan Ruiz Terol, Kitty Thuermer, Patricia Wand & Achilleas Zavalli

Save the Children’s Mariluz Garcia plays with a Syrian boy near the Idomeni train station in Greece.

Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C. & additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER Please send address changes to

WorldView magazine

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1900 L Street NW, Suite 610

Washington, DC 20036-5002 ADVERTISING Questions regarding advertising should be sent to advertising@peacecorpsconnect.org.

SUBSCRIPTIONS Magazine subscriptions may be purchased from the National Peace Corps Association by check or credit card. Prices for individuals are $25 and institutions $35 (add $10 for overseas delivery). Order forms are also available on the NPCA website at www.peacecorpsconnect.org or www.worldviewmagazine.org.

EDITORIAL POLICY Articles published in the magazine are not intended to reflect the views of the Peace Corps, or those of the National Peace Corps Association, a nonprofit educational membership organization for those whose lives are influenced by Peace Corps. The NPCA is independent of the federal agency, the Peace Corps.

Further details at http://www.worldviewmagazine.org EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS Letters to the editor are welcomed. Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or other illustrations will be considered. The editors prefer written proposals before receiving original material. Send queries or manuscripts to the editor at news@ peacecorpsconnect.org or by mail to the NPCA address.

All inquiries can be addressed to the appropriate person at NPCA by fax at 202-293-7554 or by mail to NPCA, or through the NPCA website at www. peacecorpsconnect.org or www.worldviewmagazine.org.

REFUGEES:

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29

By Elizabeth Ferris

31

The Global Crisis A century of offering asylum shows signs of weakening

17

I Won’t Burn Out As air strikes kill women and children

Tough Jobs Careers working with refugees here and overseas Why I Became A Refugee The unintended consequence of opposing Egypt’s military

By Katie Morris

By Maikel Nabil Sanad

19

33

By Nhial Malia

By Alyssa Eisenstein

22

35

Trading With Refugees Life from petty trading in an Ethiopian camp to Peace Corps High School Allies New York RPCVs partner with students to resettle Afghans, Liberians, Syrians and other refugees

By Tony Agnello

23

The Nogales Crossing A humanitarian effort to make our Mexican border safe

Women Who Suffer They must become Colombia’s priority after the world’s longest civil war School For Refugees How Colombia’s young refugees cope with discrimination in Ecuador

By Aned Ladino

37

Mentoring Refugees How to welcome new neighbors in Portland and Cincinnati

By Alan Ruiz Terol

By Fr. Sean Carroll, S.J.

25

A Refugee Assignment Peace Corps doesn’t serve in the camps. Why Not?

By David Arnold

27

Tired and Poor You can help refugees through our RPCV network

By Alan Ruiz Terol

ON THE COVER

During a rainstorm, migrants and refugees standing on the Greek border plead with Macedonian police in riot gear to let them enter the country.

REUTERS/YANNIS BEHRAKIS

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 3

THE PUBLISHER

Spring 2017 Volume 30, Number 1

The publisher of WorldView magazine is the National Peace Corps Association, a national network of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, former staff and friends. The NPCA is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational and service organization which is independent of the federal agency, the Peace Corps.

ADVISORY COUNCIL

A magazine for the greater Peace Corps community

D E PA R T M E N T S

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38

41

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

AROUND THE NPCA

COMMUNITY NEWS

6 Commitment &

9 The Denver Connect

41 Group News Highlights

Determination What two RPCVs from southern Sudan can show us

By Glenn Blumhorst

RPCVs continue a tradition of national gatherings in Colorado

By Megan Patrick

A look at what NPCA affiliates are up to

By Jonathan Pearson

SHORTS

ADVOCACY

of Our Community

By Peter V. Deekle

7 The Eradicators, by

11 Oregon Blitz

45 In Memoriam

Patricia A. Wand; Baby’s Breath, by Krissy Close

The road from Tanzania to Capitol Hill

By Asifa Kanji

A Guinea village photographed by Lane Goodman

ADVERTISER INDEX

43

GALLERY

5 Portraits of the Neighbors

43 Recent Achievements

PROFILE

38 ‘We Deserve Better’ Two Shriver winners help a Togo community fight for its rights

By Kitty Thuermer

Carol Bellamy, Chair, Education for All—Fast Track Initiative Ron Boring, Former Vice President, Vodafone Japan Nicholas Craw, President, Automobile Competition Committee for the U.S. Sam Farr, Former Member, U.S. House of Representatives, California John Garamendi, Congressman, U.S. House of Representatives, California Mark Gearan, President, Hobart & William Smith Colleges Bruce McNamer, President & CEO at The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region Tony Hall, Former Member of U.S. House of Representatives, Ohio; Former U.S. Ambassador to Food and Agriculture Organization Sandra Jaffee, Former Executive Vice President, Citigroup William E. “Wilber” James, Managing General Partner, RockPort Capital Partners John Y. Keffer, Chairman, Atlantic Fund Administration Virginia Kirkwood, Owner/Director, Shawnee Holdings, Inc. Richard M. Krieg, President and CEO, The Horizon Foundation Kenneth Lehman, Chairman Emeritus, Winning Workplaces C. Payne Lucas, Senior Advisor, AllAfrica Foundation Dennis Lucey, Vice President, TKC Global Gordon Radley, Former President, Lucasfilms John E. Riggan, Chairman Emeritus, TCC Group Mark Schneider, Senior Vice President, Special Adviser on Latin America, International Crisis Group Donna Shalala, President, Clinton Global Foundation Paul Slawson, Former CEO, InterPacific Co. F. Chapman Taylor, Senior Vice President and Research Director, Capital International Research Inc. Joan Timoney, Director for Advocacy and External Relations, Women’s Refugee Commission Ronald Tschetter, President, D.A. Davidson & Co. Aaron Williams, Executive Vice President, RTI International Development Group Harris Wofford, Former U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Joby Taylor, Chair Randolph (Randy) Adams, Vice Chair Jayne Booker, Secretary Patrick Fine, Treasurer Glenn Blumhorst, ex officio Maricarmen SmithMartinez, Affiliate Group Network Coordinator Tony Barclay J. Henry (Hank) Ambrose

Sandra Bunch Juliana Essen Janet Greig Corey Arnez Griffin Angela Harris Marjorie Harrison Katie Long Mary Owen Sue Senecah Linda Stingl Tai Sunnanon

STAFF Glenn Blumhorst, President Anne Baker, Vice President Jonathan Pearson, Advocacy Director Kate Schwanhausser, Membership & Events Coordinator Megan Patrick, Director of Strategic Communications J.M. Ascienzo, Government Relations Officer Amanda Silva, Development & Partnerships Coordinator David Fields, Analyst & Special Project Coordinator

CONSULTANTS David Arnold, Editor Lollie Commodore, Finance Elizabeth (Ella) Dowell, Technology Migration

NPCA FELLOWS Michelle Laws, Alan Ruiz Terol, Sandi Giver

INTERNS Courtney Abrahams, Yasmin Amin, Alexia Avant, Samantha Mareno, Danielle Montecalvo, Martin Riehl & Charlotte Rohrer

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VOLUNTEERS Peter Deekle, Harriet Lipowitz, Susan Neyer, Angene Wilson

GALLERY

VILLAGERS Portraits of four residents of Sanguiana, Guinea were among dozens of photographs by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers exhibited at the 70 South Gallery in Morristown, New Jersey last summer. These photographs were taken by Lane Goodman, a public health Volunteer from 2011 to 2014. Goodman also started a youth group, spearheaded construction of a health center and conducted door-to-door campaigns about malaria prevention.

Clockwise from upper right: Morikoba is chairman of the committee that managed the health center; Fatima watches costumed hunters dance and read people’s fortunes; A farmer returns home from his fields; Bai, 17, a Puehl who bakes 300 baguettes each day. “The taste of that bread, steaming fresh from the oven, was my first welcome to the village, and the last thing I took from village on the ride home,” Goodman says. He now works in communications for the international development non-profit, Results for Development, in Washington, D.C.

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LETTER FROM THE NPCA PRESIDENT

COMMITMENT & DETERMINATION What two RPCVs from southern Sudan can show us

By Glenn Blumhorst

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year ago in these pages we told you the story of Peter Ter, who became a Peace Corps Volunteer.

In this issue we tell you about Nhial Malia, and what he did to survive nine years in a refugee camp. Both Volunteers were born in what was then southern Sudan during a brutal decadeslong conflict. Both fled and grew up in refugee camps, came to the United States, went to college, and joined the Peace Corps to serve their new American homeland and give back to the world.

They have never met but they share some important values.

This issue of WorldView is about Nhial and millions of other refugees around the world. But let me remind you about Nhial’s commitment and determination with some of Peter’s own words in the Winter, 2015 issue.

“I did not immigrate to the United States for economic reasons or to achieve ‘the American dream,’ but came to the U.S. to have the freedom and dignity that the majority of people in this country have.”

Both Volunteers are exemplary. Peter, for example, earned a degree in political science from the University of Florida, and after graduation, considered joining the U.S. Marines. A mentor recommended a different path, however—the Peace Corps.

Peter spent nearly five years serving as a Volunteer in Azerbaijan, China, and the country of Georgia.

“America restored my dignity and gave me a valuable education. I want to do everything I can to say thank you,” Peter wrote. “As Kennedy says, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ Service is my answer, wherever that takes me.”

Since the creation of the Peace Corps in 1961, the annual number of refugee arrivals in the U.S. peaked in 1980 at about 210,000 individuals from Vietnam and Cambodia. In the 1990s, an influx of Europeans came to the U.S. due to political turmoil in the former Soviet Union and the genocide in Kosovo. But after the 2001 passage of the Patriot Act, the annual number of refugees allowed into the U.S. dropped to fewer than 30,000 in 2002 and 2003.

According to the UN refugee agency’s Global Forced Displacement Hits Record High 65.3 million people are currently displaced from their homes. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18, separated from their parents or travelling alone. Measured against the world’s population of 7.4 billion people, one in every 113 people is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee—“putting them at a level of risk for which UNHCR knows no precedent,” the report says.

It is now our turn to serve the refugees of the world. Those of us who have served in the Peace Corps have a special responsibility. Once again, I will reaffirm that we must speak up on behalf of the refugees who are prevented from entering our country and remind the world, in a spirit of humility and respect, what it means to be an American.

As RPCVs, we know that for every individual who might be perceived as a risk, there are tens of thousands more women and men like Peter Ter and Nhial Malia. As RPCVs, we also understand that most of our relatives immigrated to the United States, and fully appreciate

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the vast cultural contributions these newcomers made to this nation.

Since 1961, 161 countries have hosted Peace Corps Volunteers. These nations include those with a Muslim majority, as well as many below our southern border.

As foreigners, we were accepted without prejudice into homes, schools, offices, and houses of worship by our hosts.

As I write, judges and members of Congress continue to battle over the Trump administration’s efforts by executive order to postpone or restrict by country the flow of immigrants to the United States.

Now is the time to rededicate ourselves to the mission and goals of the Peace Corps, to commit ourselves to constructive dialogue. Our national security depends not on building walls, but bridges. Peace is a product of friendship and understanding, and the Peace Corps community demonstrates our lifelong commitment to those ideals by following through when it’s needed most.

This issue of WorldView appeals for leadership in the greater Peace Corps community to address the refugee crisis head on—not just in words, but in actions. It is now our opportunity to recognize and support the urgent call to respond. Thank you for your leadership, integrity, and compassion.

With great respect, Glenn Blumhorst

The author is president and CEO of the NPCA and served in Guatemala from 1988 to 1991.

Write to president@peacecorpsconnect.org

SHORTS

PCVs led smallpox containment wars Baby’s first breath THE ERADICATORS The World Health Organization was looking for partners to eradicate smallpox in1966.

A chance conversation in Washington, D.C. led to Peace Corps joining the effort by expanding its vaccination programs in several key countries. In the next 14 years, Peace Corps Volunteers made a significant difference globally.

Smallpox, a highly contagious disease transmitted person-to-person, had afflicted humans for millennia, scarring and killing millions every year.

In 1966 an estimated 10-million people had smallpox and two million died from the disease. That’s when its eradication became a high priority for the World Health Organization (WHO), and Peace Corps became a partner. By 1971, the last endemic cases of smallpox were reported.

The story of that effort involving hundreds of Peace Corps Volunteers was told last December when Peace Corps’ Office of Strategic Information, Research

and Planning released a report about the role of Volunteers which, as it turns out, was nothing short of dramatic.

During the 1960s in Afghanistan only males worked in health care and tradition dictated that men could not touch women and children outside their families.

Following a pilot project with Peace Corps Volunteer nurses in 1966, Peace Corps recruited and trained volunteers for women-only groups. These American women traveled with Afghan male health workers into the far reaches of the deserts and mountains to vaccinate rural and nomadic women and children. Local men, seeing the activity, often stepped up with arms ready for vaccination. The program reached far more people than expected.

The Volunteers helped devise a way for Afghans themselves to continue the program after 1970 by instructing women and girls to extend only one arm through the tent door so no identification took place.

Peace Corps Volunteers served in smallpox eradication programs in other countries such as Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Swaziland, and Togo. Many were later hired by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to lead smallpox eradication programs in targeted countries. The chief of the WHO eradication program, Dr. Donald Ainslie “D.A.” Henderson, employed many of those vaccinators after their Peace Corps service. He recognized they brought their language fluency, cultural sensitivity, determination and a sense of adventure along with their technical skills and innovative approaches to crafting locally appropriate solutions to eradication.

Serving and returned Peace Corps Volunteers contributed to improvements in the vaccination process itself, both technically and culturally. They applied the latest medical technology; e.g., the Pep-O-Jet injection machine. Their evaluation of its effectiveness and cost led to the adoption of an improved, simpler vaccination process with the bifurcated needle.

Margery Bickler Gadd administered smallpox vaccines at the doorstep of a home in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan in 1969. Female Volunteers visited women and children isolated by the national custom of purda.

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PROVE IT WORKS What has been the impact of 500,000 years of volunteer service rendered collectively by 225,000 Peace Corps Volunteers over the last 55 years?

The Peace Corps’ report on the volunteer contributions to the eradication of smallpox demonstrates the potential of analyzing data about Peace Corps programs.

Cross-cultural, grassroots service to society is a hallmark of Peace Corps Volunteers, during and after their assignments. It’s time for Peace Corps, NPCA, universities, scholars and the international development profession to research the unique contributions of Peace Corps Volunteers both internationally and domestically.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers became partners in moving from the initial approach of mass vaccination in Africa to a targeted ‘surveillance and containment’ technique based on data gathering of reported cases. Using photographs of actual smallpox cases and cartoon-like visual aids, they boosted public awareness about the disease and offered financial rewards for identifying cases. They isolated the houses where the disease existed and let no one enter or exit without receiving a vaccination.

Surveillance and containment proved to be less expensive and more effective than mass vaccination and ultimately became the successful approach to smallpox eradication.

Global eradication of smallpox occurred because the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control made it a priority. They worked in a critical mass of countries to increase their efforts and Peace Corps participated by taking smallpox eradication deep into communities and the final mile into the bush. Those Peace Corps Volunteers emerged as highly prepared, key personnel hired by the agencies as project leaders.

The full report is available online.

Search “Peace Corps Global Smallpox” on the Internet.

Patricia A. Wand, Colombia, 1963-1965; Eastern Caribbean staff, 1969

BABY’S BREATH While my ship was docked in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo in 2013, I heard about a program called Helping Babies Breathe. It’s a program designed to teach the most effective way to help a newborn struggling to breathe within the first minute of life. This program is specifically designed for low-resource environments like the health center where I worked in Agoua, Benin as a Peace Corps Volunteer for 28 months starting in 2009.

I have never forgotten that clinic experience that included the need for clinic staff to wash and reuse their disposable gloves and their sparse, rusty, well-used instruments. I remember deliveries when the baby was strong and screaming and others that were silent. There didn’t seem to be a difference in the way the staff responded. The staff seemed to accept whatever happened as though they had no control over the outcome. I knew there was

Write For WorldView!

If you’re a Volunteer, we’d welcome your submission.

Visit http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/npca/News/ worldview-magazine/ for submission guidelines.

something off about what I was seeing, but I didn’t know enough to do or say anything about it. But I never forgot.

I now manage training of local healthcare providers for the international NGO, Mercy Ships. On board the world’s largest civilian floating hospital ship, we provide free surgery and capacity building projects. I knew from my Benin experience that Peace Corps Volunteers have unique access to rural health center workers and lots of time to build trust with clinic staff.

What if we could partner with Peace Corps and train rural village health workers with the basic Helping Babies Breathe equipment and techniques—like vigorously rubbing a limp baby instead of twisting its feet or whacking its back— and using the resuscitation bag-mask to encourage breathing?

Well, we piloted our first training in Madagascar last year with 10 PCVs and their counterparts and just a short time later we received our first success story.

The Volunteer was out of town when his counterpart placed his stethoscope to the still body of a newborn in the clinic.

The body was turning blue and family members who stood by immediately accepted that it was dead. When the health worker applied his stethoscope, he could hear the heart beating. He couldn’t find the training mask we had left at the clinic, so he sprinted 80 meters to the Peace Corps Volunteer’s house and grabbed a spare training mask and ran back to the clinic with the mask, cleared the airway, ventilated, and saved the baby’s life.

Three months later, I visited all the sites in Madagascar and heard many more stories and saw the excitement of the health center workers who were able to successfully resuscitate newborns and assure new mothers they would be okay. And when we arrived just a few months ago to Benin we offered the same training, back where it all began with Peace Corps.

Krissy Close, Benin, 2009-2011

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY MEGAN PATRICK.

AROUND THE NPCA

Sarah Chayes (Morocco, 1984-1986) and Sebastian Junger reflected on their decades of reporting on the world’s war, peace and community.

THE DENVER CONNECT

RPCVs continue a tradition of national gatherings in Colorado

By Megan Patrick

T

he National Peace Corps Association and its local affiliate, RPCVs of Washington, hosted more than 600 members of the greater Peace Corps community for the 2016 Peace Corps Connect conference in the nation’s capital last summer.

They heard about crucial issues of the day and about qualities of leadership from Nobel Peace Laureate and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and other world leaders, senior government officials, academic experts, and bestselling authors. With the theme Peace Corps Beyond, the conference at George Washington University was packed for three days.

Our next opportunity to build the momentum of the greater Peace Corps community is the 2017 Peace Corps Connect conference August

4-6, in Denver, Colorado, where we take the challenge of Partnering for Progress: Taking Collaborations to New Heights. The events in Denver will explore five initiatives in which Peace Corps Volunteers and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have profound impact: global health, the environment, economic development, equality and justice, as well as education and youth development. Mark you calendars and check at PeaceCorpsConnect.org for updates on Peace Corps Connect— Colorado.

If last summer’s events in Washington are any indication, you won’t want to miss the Colorado gathering. At the Washington Connect gathering President Sirleaf presented the first Deborah Harding Women of Achievement Award to Sara Goodkind, who pioneered the

Girls Leading Our World program in Romania in 1995. The NPCA’s 2016 Harris Wofford Global Citizen Award honored Ibrahima “Bara” Sankare of Mali. The Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service went to Kevin Fiori and Jenny Schechter (see page 38). Friends of Liberia, Friends of Guinea and Friends of Sierra Leone received the Loret Miller Ruppe Award for Outstanding Community Service for their work with NPCA and the Ebola Relief Fund.

Other plenary events included an insightful address on the promotion of peace in Nigeria through education, empowerment, community development and humanitarian relief work in the region by Dr. Margee Ensign, president of American University of Nigeria in Yola in northeast Nigeria.

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Distinguished authors Sebastian Junger and Sarah Chayes (Morocco, 1984-1986) reflected on their decades of experiences with reporting on war, peace and community. Junger is the author of War, a trenchant look at U.S. combat forces in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, and the much-praised book, Tribe. Chayes is a former NPR journalist, governance

You already have a professional support network of 225,000 individuals.

Sen. Harris Wofford presented the Global Citizen award named in his honor to Mali’s Ibrahima Sankare, founder of Delta Survie.

Become a free member of National Peace Corps Association online: www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org/signup Nobel Peace Laureate and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf presented the Deborah Harding Women of Achievement Award.

scholar at the Carnegie Institute for Peace and author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.

Washington Connect also hosted panel discussions and addresses on Beyond the Stigma of Iran, Leadership Opportunities for Women as Volunteers

10 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

and Beyond, and the Climate Crisis and Its Solutions. One of the most popular and powerful presentations was RPCVs Supporting Refugees Domestically and Abroad. Led by returned Volunteers and former Peace Corps staff, the session outlined efforts already performed by individual RPCVs and NPCA affiliate groups to respond to the crisis, as well as how the Peace Corps community can be further enlisted in this effort. Attendees learned about the process of refugee flight, the various actors and agencies involved in the resettlement process, and how RPCV groups and individuals can support refugee services abroad and domestically.

Washington Connect examined the role of service programs to meet five key UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as our members’ involvement in each. While attendees represented diverse segments of our global community, they shared common questions. What innovation is required to achieve sustained and inclusive economic growth and combat inequality within and among countries? What are effective ways to promote equality and empowerment of marginalized populations worldwide, such as girls and women, and LGBTQ, indigenous and minority communities?

How do we influence domestic and foreign policy to promote healthy, peaceful and inclusive societies?

Participants targeted issues that included human rights abuses of Eritreans, education for Nigerian girls under the threat of Boko Haram, the promotion of disability rights abroad, experiential peacebuilding, and solutions to the climate crisis. Inspired by keynote speakers and engaged through interactive panel discussions that addressed global crises, the Peace Corps community rallied to take continued leadership in global interpersonal collaboration.

Megan Patrick is NPCA communications director. She served in Afanyagan, Togo, from 2001 to 2003.

whispered, “Remember, you are here to advocate just for Peace Corps, and not to give your congressman a sermon.” That became my attitude adjustment mantra.

ADVOCACY

OREGON BLITZ

The road from Tanzania to Capitol Hill

By Asifa Kanji

A

dvocating on the Hill. Whoever Mike Zamore, as he greeted us. “Did would have thought this would be you know that 6,000 Oregonians have the highlight of my Peace Corps served as Peace Corps Volunteers since its Connect experience. I had this inception? 150 are actively serving right preconceived idea that politicians were now. In fact, Oregon is in the top eight out of bounds, their time very precious, States in supplying Volunteers.” hardly to be wasted on a nobody such as OMG, the meeting was actually in myself. the hallway, just like West Wing! The I had visions of the forbidding conference room was packed with a huge gatekeeper, politely edging me out with a Ukrainian delegation and several other “I’ll let the Senator know your concerns. groups of threes and fours, all ready to Thank you so much for coming.” I guess bend the Senator’s ear. Yes, we got our I had been watching too much Madame chance to shake Senator Merkley’s hand Secretary and West Wing where staffers and have a group photo taken, but our made 37-second pitches to their bosses appointment was with his staff, and the before the elevator opened. Pithy, witty hallway was the only available space. and concise.

Sargent Pat got straight to the point.

At NPCA’s Washington Connect “We have two asks,” she told the aides. last summer my husband David and I “Increased funding for Peace Corps, and signed up for Advocacy Day on Capitol better health care for the Volunteers.”

Hill. We had served in Kayes, Mali from Twenty minutes later we were on our way 2011 to 2012, and went on back-to-back to the next appointment. I was in awe, Peace Corps Response assignments to watching democracy at work.

Ghana and South Africa.

The night before at Asifa Kanji joined a Advocacy Day was an our Georgetown bed opportunity for us to and breakfast, I had respected advocacy promote the greatest studied the fact sheets tradition of the greater institution in the U.S. the NPCA’s advocacy staff Peace Corps community government—the Peace had supplied, and read last summer at the 55th Corps. the profiles of each of our anniversary. Another With the anxiety of targets. Senators Merkley hundred RPCVs hiked a college grad going to and Wyden are ardent up Capitol Hill last month her first job interview, supporters of the Peace to support Peace Corps.

I donned my business Corps. My congressman, best. And so David and Greg Walden of District 2, Here’s how we can make a I, six other Oregonian is a Republican and we are difference. rookie advocates, and one in opposite camps when experienced advocate, Pat Wand, headed it comes to campaign financing, health to our first appointment, a meeting with insurance, and gun control.

Senator Jeff Merkley. Pat had served in The long nasty election cycle had Colombia and is a former NPCA board warped my brain into thinking Republicans member and former Oregonian. She are the public enemy, unable to reason served as our leader, the sergeant. and serving only their own interests. I “I’ll take the lead on this,” Sgt. Pat found myself creating a monster out of a said, and she didn’t waste a moment man I had never met. I was cruising for a button-holing Merkley’s chief of staff, bruising. The quiet voice from deep inside

Facing Congressman Walden At our orientation, NPCA staff told us to tell our stories, be brief, smile, plant the seed for $450 million for Peace Corps for the next two years and ask for their vote for better health care for Volunteers with H.R. 6037, the Sam Farr Peace Corps Enhancement Act. Sergeant Pat had taken the lead with Merkley and Wyden, but after that we were on our own! Suddenly it was my turn to speak to Republican Greg Walden.

“I am Asifa, and I served in Mali with my husband. If it hadn’t been for Peace Corps, I would have never become an American citizen,” I said breathlessly and without pause. “You see, I am an immigrant to this country, and for 35 years I resisted taking on citizenship. But I wanted to join the Peace Corps badly enough to raise my right hand and pledge allegiance to the Constitution.

“I have to tell you, I have never been so proud to say I was American as when I was in the Peace Corps. When Malians and Ghanaians would take my hand and hold it to their hearts to thank us for our service, I choked up. A chemical engineer that David and I met in Ghana told us that had it not been for a Peace Corps Volunteer who taught science in his village school, it would have never occurred to him to even dream of becoming an engineer.

“To so many folks we met on bus rides, at village meetings, we were angels from America helping, teaching, facilitating, building capacity of the lowest rung of humanity.” Then I paused.

“Where are you from?” Congressman Walden asked me.

“Tanzania.”

Well, my Congressman had recently been to Tanzania with none other than Rep. Sam Farr, and had visited several Peace Corps sites. He brought out his iPhone to show me pictures. “Most of my party got sick,” he said.

After that it wasn’t hard to look him in the eye and with a big smile ask him to co-sponsor H.R. 6037. David knew that Rep. Walden had worked hard to improve

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 11

medical services military for vets. He reminded the congressman that Peace Corps Volunteers serve their country too, and they, too, deserve better care for medical conditions. The congressman was on board. He would co-sponsor the bill. Wow! We handed Congressman Walden a fact sheet that NPCA had prepared, Let Americans Serve for Peace. He was noncommittal on our ask of increased funding, but at least we had planted the thought.

He was gracious; he had a sense of humor; and most of all he listened to what each of us had to say. He gave us a good 40 minutes of his time and then one of his staff escorted us through the underground passageway for a private tour of the Capitol. There was not an armed cop or a bomb-sniffing dog to be seen in the Senate and House office buildings. We had no visitor’s badges, showed no ID, and needed no escorts.

Camera-clicking smartly dressed citizens and foreigners alike roamed corridors decked out with state and federal flags.

I felt so important during my day on Capitol Hill. I had an agenda. 9:15 a.m., coffee with Senator Merkley; 11 a.m. with Senator Wyden’s staff; and 1 p.m. with Congressman Walden. All of them were supportive and, as one of the aides said, our visit had put Peace Corps on his radar.

He and his colleagues have to sift through some 6,000 bills every year, and a visit like this raises awareness.

For that one day, I was part of the 200-strong team of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers that blitzed Capitol Hill for the Peace Corps. We told our stories to 300 representatives, and asked for their support. This is democracy. This is citizen power. I had participated in making my adopted country a better place. I can be proud to be an American.

What if every RPCV affiliate chose to meet with their members of Congress?

We would have a stronger lobby than the National Rifle Association. Well, maybe not, but we would certainly have given peace a chance, the Peace Corps way. NPCA makes it easy. Go as a team, introduce yourselves and choose a story.

“If it hadn’t been for Peace Corps, I” ... and tell it from the heart.

Asifa Kanji grew up in Tanzania, attended school in England, and came to the United States in 1975. She and her husband, David Drury, served in Mali. Asifa was in health education.

David worked in small enterprise development.

They also served as response volunteers in Ghana and South Africa. They live in Ashland, Oregon.

Their memoir, 300 Cups of Tea and the Toughest Job–Riding the Peace Corps Rollercoaster in Mali, West Africa, is available on Amazon.

Application Deadline June 1st

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REFUGEES CAPITOL HILL UPDATE

WE KNOW THEIR ORIGINS punishment in Asmara. From his home in Pennsylvania, he sends money to pay the rent of families that have landed penniless in places such as Cambodia, Cuba, Yemen or a small town in Connecticut.

Since the beginning of April, 2010, Stauffer spends 12 to 14 hours a day seven days a week calling, emailing and Skyping with Eritrean colleagues, families in need, and newspaper reporters. “And to lawyers, lots of lawyers,” he says. And he dashes down to Washington, D.C. to talk to political experts at several State Department bureaus and to testify to Congressional committees on REUTERS/GIORGIS MOUTAFIS

B

y the end of 2015, the UN’s refugee agency says more than 65 million desperate people all over the world had fled their homes. That’s more that the number of Europeans who escaped the bombs and battlefields of a world war that ended 73 years ago. This time the paths of these refugees spread far beyond one small continent to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia and North America.

The crisis exploded on the shores of Italy and Greece as smugglers working in Libya and Turkey set sail with overloaded boats of Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Nigerians, Ethiopians and others seeking asylum. Many drowned as the leaking hulls took on water and rubber dinghies overturned.

Of those who fled, a surprisingly large number came from one of the smallest and least-known countries of origin, Eritrea.

For more than a decade, a retired Philadelphia businessman by the name of John Stauffer has worked to salvage the lives of Eritreans in flight, many of them having fled as minors hoping to avoid endless years of national service or imprisonment. His mission was pre-determined because he was a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching in an Eritrean school in the 1960s. His mission was launched decades later when some former students asked him to meet some Eritreans who were attempting to reform the abusive governance of the country.

Stauffer built a web site and gathered a community of friends to help the Eritrean opposition. When efforts to work with the opponents of the Eritrean government failed, he formalized his organization as a Pennsylvania nonprofit with a new name: The American Team for Displaced Eritreans. The organization’s corporate purpose: to assist refugees fleeing the cruelty that Eritrea had become. Among other things, the team gave three-year scholarships at an Addis Ababa nursing school to 34 young Eritreans who languished in Ethiopian refugee camps just south of the Eritrean border. Stauffer called a lawyer in Gabarone to save defecting members of the Ethiopian football team arraigned in a Botswana court from deportation and certain

Eritrean migrants crowded on a wooden boat crossing the Mediterranean in August, 2016, were rescued by a vessel of the Spanish Proactiva off the Libyan coast.

Capitol Hill. His organization’s web site at www.eritreanrefugees.org has become a go-to destination for information about Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers.

In this WorldView issue on refugees, we offer some facts and views about the world of refugees and how as members of the greater Peace Corps community we can help by launching careers in humanitarian agencies in overseas camps and volunteering in refugee resettlement programs in our own U.S. communities.

Like John Stauffer, we know their countries of origin and we can do something to help these refugees find new homes.

The Editors

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THE GLOBAL CRISIS

A century of offering asylum shows signs of weakening

P

resident Trump’s recent executive actions on refugees and immigrants during his first days in office—and the court battle that quickly ensued— have enormous consequences for refugees whose limbo has now been extended, for people seeking to immigrate to the United States, for global perceptions of our government around the world and for our nation’s very identity as a country of immigrants. Tens of thousands of people have already been affected and it is likely that this number will increase in the coming months. These actions reflect President Trump’s commitment to put ‘America First’ but are also indicative of the challenges facing governments in all parts of the world in light of the global refugee crisis.

Global figures of displacement have reached their highest level since World War II. Over 65 million people have been displaced by conflict, including 25 million refugees and 40 million displaced within the borders of their own countries.

Although refugees receive more attention from both the media and humanitarian agencies, it is important to point out that internally displaced persons or IDPs are often particularly vulnerable because they are closer to the conflicts and because it is harder for aid workers and journalists to gain access to them. Although there are non-binding international standards setting out the rights of those who are displaced, under international law it is national authorities who are responsible for protecting and assisting them and these officials are often the same authorities who caused their displacement.

Refugees are not the biggest problem Although the arrival of large numbers of refugees in Europe has generated enormous media attention, the challenge of responding to refugees is much more complicated than mounting an effective response to newly-arriving refugees arriving in Europe. Over 85 percent of

the world’s refugees are not clamoring to enter Europe or North America, but rather are hosted by developing countries.

Most of the world’s refugees do not live in camps, but are dispersed in urban centers and other communities where it is more difficult to identify, assist and protect them. And most of the world’s refugees have been displaced for decades. In fact, the United Nations refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, estimates that on average protracted refugee situations now last for 20 years.

spite of valiant efforts by a few countries such as Canada—can offer solutions for only a small percentage of the world’s refugees. Last year, less than one percent of the world’s refugees were resettled.

There is widespread concern that President Trump’s actions to suspend all refugee resettlement for four months, to suspend resettlement of Syrian refugees indefinitely and to reduce the number of refugees to be resettled this fiscal year by more than half will lead other countries to adopt similarly restrictive measures toward refugees.

Over 85 percent of the world’s refugees are not clamoring to enter Europe or North America, but rather are hosted by developing countries.

Essential leadership in Washington Since World War II, the United States has played a leadership role in responding to refugees. During the Cold War, U.S. refugee policy supported U.S. foreign policy objectives, welcoming refugees from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Cuba while maintaining a more restrictive policy toward refugees fleeing violence in Haiti and Central America. Refugee resettlement has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and millions of refugees have been successfully integrated into the United States and have contributed to America’s diversity and prosperity. The United States has also played a leadership role on the international stage, taking the lead for example in global efforts to prevent sexual and gender-based violence in refugee situations and to support the particular needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender refugees. Without U.S. leadership in these areas, these advances would likely not have occurred. In 2016, the Obama administration convened a U.S. Leaders Summit in which governments around the world committed to providing over $5 billion in financial support for refugees, to doubling the number of resettlement places for refugees, and to offering a million refugees access to education and livelihoods.

Refugees and their advocates are worried about the long-term consequences of the Trump administration’s policies

The real crisis in the international refugee system is finding solutions for those who have been displaced.

Traditionally, three durable solutions exist for refugees: they can return home when conflicts have been resolved (voluntary repatriation); they can remain in their host countries (local integration) or they can be resettled to another country.

All three solutions are becoming more difficult. Conflicts drag on for years, preventing refugees from returning. For example, even if the conflict in Syria were to be resolved now, it is difficult to imagine large numbers of refugees returning soon given the scale of physical destruction and the damage to the country’s social fabric.

Governments of host countries that are concerned about the economic and political impact of refugees on their countries do not want these refugees to stay. Most host governments allow refugees to stay only on a temporary basis and rule out long-term local integration. And resettlement—in

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UNHCR/ACHILLEAS ZAVALIS

By Elizabeth Ferris

A young woman from Syria carries her child along railroad tracks near a makeshift camp in Idomeni, Greece. Police in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia blocked their entry to other European Union countries.

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toward refugees and migrants. Not only has the Trump administration limited access to the United States for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, but he has also sent a clear sign that Muslim refugees are not welcome in the United States and called for prioritizing resettlement of Christian refugees.

Limiting resettlement of a particular religious group and prioritizing another runs counter to U.S. commitment to freedom of religion. Calls for “extreme vetting” seem to ignore the already stringent vetting process underway for refugees. Given the present two-year process of screening refugees and the involvement of multiple U.S. intelligence agencies in vetting refugee applications, any person seeking to do harm to the United States would certainly not choose to come to the U.S. as a refugee.

President Trump’s commitment to building a wall with Mexico flies in face of the fact that there are now more Mexicans leaving the United States than entering the country and construction of a wall would not only be expensive but would limit trade and travel that are important to the U.S. economy and essential to families in the region. President Trump’s inauguration address stressing ‘America First’ is not a positive sign for an international system desperately in need of strengthened collective responsibility-sharing for refugees.

100 years of refugees Refugees have always been an international concern. Indeed, the international refugee system has its origin in the efforts of Western governments to respond to refugees from the 1917 Russian revolution, motivated in large measure by the perception that the refugees posed a threat to European peace and security. After World War II, the need to respond to tens of millions of European refugees became even more urgent and led to the drafting of the 1951 Refugee Convention that has now been ratified by 145 governments.

While this convention sets out the obligations of states toward refugees and upholds the rights of refugees, it is the responsibility of national authorities to determine who is a refugee and to develop appropriate policies toward them. Around the same time, UNHCR was established to protect and assist refugees. Assuming

that the refugee phenomenon would be temporary, UNHCR was originally given a three-year mandate. Today, UNHCR has over 10,000 staff working in 128 countries.

Underlying this international system was a basic commitment to the principle that protecting and assisting refugees is an international responsibility—not just the responsibility of the countries where refugees arrived. Responsibility-sharing was key to the international system. In essence, there was an implicit agreement that if host countries would allow refugees to enter and remain in their countries until they could return home or find other solutions, the international community would support them. So governments hosting large numbers of refugees— whether in Africa, Asia or Latin America— knew they could count on UNHCR and the international community to support them.

A flawed global system It is important to point out that the system never worked perfectly. International assistance never met all of the costs of refugees to host countries and governments would often force refugees to return before conditions warranted. But by and large, they shared commitment to a multilateral response.

And there were some shining examples of international cooperation where the governments of the world made a commitment to joint actions to resolve long-standing refugee crises. In Southeast Asia, where thousands of boat people fled an expanding 1980s conflict, the Comprehensive Plan of Action was a remarkable global effort that supported countries hosting large numbers of Indochinese refugees and that eventually resettled over a million refugees outside of the region. In Central America, a 1989 regional conference led to agreements by governments in the region, with the support of the international community, to serve millions of people displaced by the region’s brutal wars. These responses were far from perfect, but both were concrete expressions of global and regional responsibility-sharing toward refugee situations which seemed intractable at the time.

In contrast, the dramatic increase in the number of refugees arriving in Europe in 2015 did not lead to a collective effort

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to share responsibility for the refugees.

The arrival of fewer than two million Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and other refugees in a wealthy region with a population of 550 million should not have been a crisis.

The inability of European institutions to implement an effective responsibilitysharing regime within the region led governments to compete with each other in closing their borders. Globally, in spite of pleas from Germany, Sweden and other countries, the governments of the world did not respond with large-scale resettlement programs to relieve some of the burden from countries hard hit by the arrival of refugees.

Throughout 2016, a series of global summits sought to develop collective ways of responding to the crises. The New York Declaration—adopted unanimously by the 193 member states of the United Nations—called for the development of two new Global Compacts by 2018, one on refugees and one on migration, to strengthen international response to both refugees and migrants. The jury is still out on whether those will be successful in re-invigorating multilateral responses to large movements of people, but it is a tough sell at a time when populist politicians in the United States, Europe, Australia and elsewhere are calling for closed borders and sending refugees back to places where their lives will be in danger.

The actions taken by President Trump in the first few weeks of his administration will have an impact not only on those refugees seeking to enter the United States and immigrants already living in our country, but also on the whole global refugee system. The collapse of that system—and the commitment to collective action on which it is based—will have consequences not only for the United States but also for global peace and security. For refugees and their advocates, these are indeed frightening times.

Elizabeth Ferris is a research professor at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a UNHCR senior policy adviser.

I WON’T BURN OUT As air strikes kill women and children

By Katie Morris

A

maternity hospital Save the Children supports in Northwest Syria was bombed one Friday last July.

I found out about the bombing in a series of emails from colleagues that Saturday morning, complete with links to gut-wrenching news coverage. Health facilities in war zones continue to be targeted with air strikes but rarely make the front-page news anymore. My Syrian colleagues provided gruesome visuals of the events with cell phone photos and videos sent through WhatsApp and Skype. When the dust settled, we found out two fathers were killed while waiting outside for news of their children. Inside the facility, new mothers and newborn babies were rattled while lying in delivery beds and incubators.

I was supporting our Syrian health team in Turkey a month before the attack. During a June 28 team meeting, the monthly security report totaled 27 attacks on health centers in Syria so far— averaging out to one a day that month.

These attacks on health centers are just one part of an increasingly long and brutal war. March 15, 2017 marked the beginning of the seventh year since the start of a war that has led to the internal displacement of more than six million men, women and children and forced nearly 5 million to flee as refugees. Half are children.

Attacks on health facilities are also not unique to the horror that is the war in Syria right now. Conservative reporting by the World Health Organization counted 57 attacks on health care in 17 countries during the three months between January 1 and March 31, 2016. Nor are the perpetrators of these health care attacks unique to ISIS or Islamic terrorist groups. In October of 2015, the U.S. Air Force accidentally struck a trauma center run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan that resulted in 42 civilian casualties, including medical providers, patients, and caregivers.

In Yemen, well over 100 health facilities have been hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the past 22 months, killing an unknown number of health careseeking civilians. Nearly 1,400 children have been killed and thousands injured in attacks on civilian homes, schools and hospitals since the conflict escalated in March 2015. Both the United States and the British supply weapons to Saudi Arabia and numerous NGOs, including Save the Children, have called on those governments to suspend those sales in light of the coalition’s failure to protect civilians.

eyes for barrel bombs. Are our rehearsed and too-often repeated words expressing outrage and strongly condemning these attacks really all that we can do as nongovernment organizations?

I believe the cynicism expressed by seasoned humanitarians is warranted when it makes us examine what more we can and should do better. We are in positions of power working in a multibillion dollar humanitarian-aid industry that targets the world’s most vulnerable.

Ethically speaking, we should be routinely questioning our roles as individuals and as organizations and evaluating our actions against our precious humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.

When questions regarding our role continue to go unanswered, and when donors with specific agendas blur the

Katie Morris worked in a Save the Children health project serving refugees in Rwanda in 2015.

These are the types of headlines that scroll across my phone on a daily basis and stir up anger in the pit of my stomach, forcing me to come to terms with my own role on a humanitarian health team. We invest in large campaigns encouraging mothers to bring their children to the health centers on a regular basis for vaccination and nutrition screening, interventions that have been proven to save lives in the long term.

Lately I wonder whether we are putting the lives of these mothers and children in immediate danger inside health facilities that have become bulls-

humanitarian-aid industry’s principles, and when aid workers tire of cleaning up the mess of global politics, that’s when we humanitarians burn out. I, for one, am doing all that I can in order not to have that happen.

My friends back home working on the Black Lives Matter movement believe the increasing numbers of widely circulated videos of black people being killed do not serve their intended purpose of holding our society accountable; instead, the videos are desensitizing all of us to the grave injustice of innocent lives lost. I’ve seen the same happen with the

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 17

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18 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

coverage of international crises—that one toddler washed up on a Turkish beach is compelling, a continuous flood of similar images for years is overwhelming.

A friend from college published a piece for The New Yorker titled, “Racism, Stress, and Black Death” in which he writes, “For many, refusing to watch viral videos of black death is not an act of apathy.

Turning off the news is not an act of indifference. Sometimes, these are acts of self-preservation.”

Self-preservation is so important to all those fighting grave injustice worldwide and it requires immeasurable strength to stay awake while avoiding desensitization. Right now, I’m exerting a great deal of energy trying not to let these interminable attacks on health care become just numbers in headlines scrolling across my phone.

Perhaps this is why I welcomed the wave of emotions that crashed that morning while reading the news of the maternity hospital being attacked.

The casualty numbers are low and the hospital is still semi-functional as only the front that was hit. However, I cannot think of a more defenseless civilian target than a hospital full of women with their legs spread in the middle of labor and premature newborns learning how to breathe while lying in incubators.

I will never be able to understand such horrific actions. I am, however, a part of the global community. I am a humanitarian working in the health sector with a responsibility to reduce excess mortality and morbidity in the world’s most vulnerable communities.

I’m not ready to burn out. I’m not ready to become desensitized. So what do I do? I asked a Syrian colleague working out of Antakya, Turkey that question over Skype that next morning. He said, “We get to work, it’s not so bad. If we work hard we can keep this maternity hospital functioning.” But for how long?

I hope we can all draw strength from his determination.

Katie Morris served in Nyolo village of Tanzania's southern highlands as a health extension Volunteer from 2010 to 2012. She is a heath and nutrition specialist for Save the Children.

TRADING WITH REFUGEES Life from petty trading in an Ethiopian camp to Peace Corps

By Nhial Malia

I

do not know where to start. The air-conditioned buzzings and the busiest life of Houston make it hard to recount a life I have tried so hard to remove from my past. It may be very fascinating for others’ ears, but for my ears, it is meant to be buried to the ages.

To become a refugee is to be uprooted and dismantled from the world in which I was born to be. I am proud to be a Nuer.

I owe everything to Nuer people because it was the Nuer culture and way of life which did allow me to make it to the United States.

I am a Nilotic man by default, born in Rubkona County in what is now Unity State in the Republic of South Sudan. Padai is the place I was meant to live a pastoral life. I was going to take care of cows and goats from dawn to evening. The life I was meant to live was dismantled and fallen apart when civil war came.

Flight The flashing and blast of guns such as RPG-7 would wake me up as a child. My mom used to calm me down during nights of raging fighting between SPLA and

Sudan soldiers. My family saw their mudwall hut burning down. My father died.

I was two years old when my family fled the violence among tribes, famine and drought. My mom, Mary Nyayok Hoth, was very strong-willed and determined to make a better life for us.

On that journey, all four of my siblings died of disease, particularly malaria. One died of a snake bite.

Fugnido is on a flat, grassy plain in Gog woreda, Zone 2 of Ethiopia, southwest of Gambella, and close to the border of what is now the new Rebublic of South Sudan. In the rainy season the sharp grasses grew tall and thick. I would cut my legs as I walked for two hours to get to the Gilo River to swim, and to fetch water in the dry season when water was rationed. Fugnido was not the only

… my life radically changed. I created a fake persona for myself as I grew in this environment, a temporary solution to deep social change.

It was not a good situation to be a refugee. Inside, we lost our dignity, confidence of life, and the sense to create a better future. Camp life disassembled me and constructed a new social order which was different than where I came from. The United Nations and Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugees and Returnees imposed this fake new social life and forced me to adapt to a new environment. At the same time, I had to deal with the hostile attitude of the local people such as the Anuak and the Oromo who were feeling the pressure of my presence.

refugee camp I lived in but it was the first camp where I had something of a normal life as a kid. My best memories from my childhood were there.

A new kind of normal Dear reader, I am going to try to show you what it was like from the first days of the camp. My whole life became made up. First, we needed to pass the test with Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugees and Returnees Affairs. I was dehumanized and then brought to back existence. It took months of talking

Born in Sudan and raised in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, Nhial Malia found football was an effective link to the lives of Ghanaian children.

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to prove to them that we were yelling, and screaming. It was a refugees. distribution store operated on the A majority of the residents were 15th and the 30th of every month Sudanese. The two largest groups by the UNHCR and the Ethiopian were Dinka and Nuer. When you officials where they called out your put them together with a hookah, name and gave out wheat, maize, tea and dominos, they will talk your oil, lentils, soap, and biscuits and brain out. These men would argue sometimes three or up to seven who is the best soldier, commander, large cans of tomatoes per person. colonel and leader in SPLA or Sudan We had to stand in lines to collect Army. Men screamed at each other. our food and water. Every two Fights break out. They two tribes weeks we would get a new supply had to be separated. of maize, wheat and oil for cooking.

Our security was the many This is where we were able to buy white UNHCR tents but there was luxuries such as fruit and meats. no privacy and no protection from We ate outside. the cold nights. White jerry cans Local shops were set up at the filled with water neatly lined the camps which allowed refugees to Nhial Malia lived in Kpandia, Ghana for three years and worked on perimeter of our camp food sites. buy and sell goods among each water and sanitation projects.

There were exposed metal pipes other creating our own economy. supplying our water. grass hut and protect us from the rain.

So I became a trader when I was Our school was held for four hours We had the sense of becoming a 10 years old. each morning in the shade of a tree. We human being again.

My mother made a form of gin or arrived and clustered around tamarind During my life in Fugnido, my life tequila through the process of simple trees or under a baobab tree. But there radically changed. I created a fake persona distillation. She had a pot boiler that had were no school supplies or daily lessons. for myself as I grew in this environment, a a swan neck. It would be connected to I often missed class to collect firewood to temporary solution to deep social change. a condenser. This condenser tin would sell when the family ran out of food. After Refugee life gave me a low self-low be stored inside another medium-sized school I was also responsible for collecting esteem. I was forced to learn English, barrel filled with water. She would change water or grinding wheat on a flat stone.

Amharic, others Sudanese dialects like the water every two hours. Sometimes, My mother spent hours in the hot I fetched the water from four miles sun collecting leftover grains of maize away. Or I would go to get some more or wheat from the food distribution site. firewood. It would all depend on what Other people in the camp mocked her as my mother needed. She taught me to she collected those pieces of grain to make make it at a young age so that I had a alcohol to sell. cash flow coming from my mother selling alcohol—a form of gin or tequila. I also Angels arrive sold tea in the morning before heading to When we saw Land Cruisers coming down school. the dusty road toward us; we saw the Ethiopian traders were not allowed to logo of UNHCR, WFP and UNICEF. My buy anything in the camps but I could go mother felt a sense of huge relief. I could to the Agenger Township and exchange see that a burden had been lifted from her goods. When I wanted to sell my rations heart and shoulders. God had heard my Dinka. My Nuer way of life was devalued. of wheat, oil, and lentils the police became mom’s prayer and he had sent his UNHCR I felt dehumanized and full of self-hate. hostile to me. So I bribed them with tins angels.

There was no future for me no matter of oil.

From then on, things could move what UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP did to I built a small brown dry thatch quickly. UNHCR gives you everything. help me. I became a target for religion grass shop in one of the markets - four Basic kitchen utensils, three blankets soul-saving programs from the Roman dry wood poles that were held together for all of us, and soap to wash. For food, Catholic Church to Islam. by bundles of twigs from the smallest we got maize, wheat, white, red and of trees. One side of the rectangle was brown beans, and one tin of vegetable oil Sugar trader open. The walls were woven from the from USAID from American people. She There are many markets in villages of the yellowish tall grasses of the forest and would get a jerry can that came in yellow, Fugnido Refugee Camp. One of the main some clear white burlap wheat sacks with blue and brown colors, and a plastic sheet markets took place in a wide-open space, the UNHCR and UN logos on them. On to use as a bed or create a roof over the filled with crowds of people cooking, a table of twigs I displayed the petty-

I built a small brown dry thatch grass shop in one of the markets—four dry wood poles that were held together by bundles of twigs from the smallest of trees.

20 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

commodities I had to sell: razors, sewing needles, small plastic bags of sugar and salt and placed them in groups.

There was a standard market price but I learned when to bargain and when to give credit. I built relationships with my customers. In a sense, I was my own petty bank where I was determining the credit worthiness of persons based on their history from other traders’ credits.

While I was waiting for customers, I taught myself how to repair shoes and bike tires and to expand my petty commodities business and diversify my business.

I would buy a white clear canvas sack of wheat or burlap sack of lentils at the first of the month during the distribution time when the refugees were receiving their UNHCR rations. I would buy palm

because the god, UN, had come through again to provide for food. For me, it was an opportunity, to buy real cheap the oil, burlap or white canvas of wheat. I would wait until everything had become scarce and limited in the zone market, then I would change my measurement cup and make up the prices as high as the competition allowed me.

For the white canvas wheat, I would travel to Agenger Township to mill grain

into flour bread. I turned around to resell the milled grain wheat flour at Zone market using a medium-size tomato tin.

As a young Nuer boy, I started to understand the supply and demand in Fugnido camp. I started to understand the needs, desires and wants of my customers. I built my petty business around those needs and wants. At a very early age, I started to understand how to put together my life as a refugee.

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When I wanted to sell my rations of wheat, oil, and lentils the police became hostile to me. So I bribed them with tins of oil. oil from the People of Japan, groundnut oil, cans of refined vegetable oil with vitamin A, marked not to be sold or exchanged, USAID from American People USA and American Flag.

A burlap sack of maize from distribution time could cost me 15-18 Ethiopian birr while in Agenger it would go for 30 birr. If I took the same sack to Gambella market, I would get 45 to 60 birr.

During the distribution of rations, refugees would be filled with excitement Nhial Malia was a water and sanitation Volunteer from 2010 to 1013 in Kpandai, Ghana where he helped more than 14 communities. He emigrated to the United States with his uncle in 1998 and lived with foster parents Jen and Dan Pickering in Houston. He graduated with a degree in biology and philosophy from Bethany College and plans to earn a Master’s degree in business administration and become an investor and social entrepreneur.

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WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 21

HIGH SCHOOL ALLIES

New York RPCVs partner with students to resettle Afghans, Liberians, Syrians and other refugees

By Tony Agnello

“W

orking with the refugee community in Buffalo reminds me of our Peace Corps service,” says Alexandra Smith, who served in Costa Rica from 1994 to 1996. Andy is the energetic chair of the dynamic RPCVs of Buffalo.

“Meeting new people from our host countries and speaking our regional languages, learning and acting as mentors for our student interns and knowing that as RPCVs we are continuing our humanitarian service is truly rewarding; even if it is only for a short period of time.”

We Western New Yorkers are continuing a long history of embracing immigrants from France, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Italy, Jews from Europe along with Arabs from the Middle East and African-Americans who escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad. And it’s with this deeply layered history in mind that Buffalo RPCVs have formed a Third Goal alliance with students from the Western New York region to assist with the settlement of endorsed immigrants and refugees in the Greater Buffalo area.

Thinking globally and acting locally, Buffalo RPCVs and our student allies at the Orchard Park High School have actively supported the major regional voluntary agencies called VOLAGs and refugee service organizations to work with the refugee community in greater Buffalo.

The region’s refugee service organizations include the International Institute, Jericho Road, Catholic Charities, Journey’s End Refugee Services and Jewish Family Service of Buffalo and Erie County, an affiliate of HIAS, the U.S. nonprofit that has helped to resettle more than four million refugees in the past century.

For many years, the RPCVs of Western New York have worked with the residents

at Vive’ la Casa on a regular basis. Vive’ la Casa serves as the Jericho Road Ministries’ housing center and is one of the largest refugee residential centers in the United States. Vive’s center is directed

by Anna Ireland, who served in Peace Corps in Kenya from 2000 to 2002.

A veteran of the Afghan war In our most recent partnership with the students, we provided food, household furnishings and start-up financial support for an Afghan family who arrived in Buffalo on a special immigration visa.

Jewish Family Service’s Pam Bos-Kefi, who served in Peace Corps in Tunisia from 1989 to 1990, facilitated the partnership. She says our support has been the catalyst for the successful

Buffalo and Western New York RPCVs have helped refugees at Vive’ by offering babysitting, providing toiletries and clothing, and performing cleaning, painting and simple home maintenance. resettlement of Masih, his wife and their two-year-old son and their full integration into the Buffalo and Western New York community. The special visa offers an expedited green card and eventual U.S. citizenship based on Masih’s earlier work as an interpreter for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. These special visas have also been awarded to other Iraqi and Afghan citizens who supported our nation’s Operation Enduring Freedom.

In fact, RPCVs Ted and Sharon Farrar, who served in Kenya from 1965 to 1968, have unofficially adopted another

22 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

Afghan refugee family they met while volunteering at Vive’.

Buffalo and Western New York RPCVs have helped refugees at Vive’ by offering babysitting, providing toiletries and clothing, and performing cleaning, painting and simple home maintenance.

Annually, at Thanksgiving, we gather with students from the Educational Outreach program at Orchard Park High School to serve holiday dinner for up to 150 of Vive’s residents, hear their compelling stories, and learn about their journeys and their frequent connection with many of our own Peace Corps host countries.

Buffalo RPCVs have also partnered with the Outreach Program to help to fund the building of six Afghan girls’ schools and sent tons of school supplies to 10 school districts in that country.

Locally we’ve partnered to clean, furnish and provision households for dozens of families from Liberia, Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, South Sudan and Afghanistan through Journey’s End Refugee Services’ Home Again project.

The OPEO project’s advisers, Kathleen Holtermann and Brandon Hafner, suggest that this collaboration could serve as a model for helping refugee and immigrant resettlement services across the country.

These collaborative projects also provide RPCVs with opportunities to fulfill the Third Goal Pledge “to promote a better understanding of the people and culture of their host nation on the part of their fellow Americans.”

Tony Agnello is president of the Friends of Afghanistan, a former president of the Orchard Park Teachers’ Association and is a co-founder of the Peace Corps Alliance for Intercultural Understanding, which helps RPCVs to publicly address and eliminate racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the United States. He served in Afghanistan from 1972 to 1975.

LUCY ROBINSON/REUTERS.

The view of Nogales, Arizona from the Mexican side of the border.

THE NOGALES CROSSING A humanitarian effort to make our Mexican border safe

By Fr. Sean Carroll, S.J.

I

recall the day last year when I had made my way with two visitors from Tucson, Arizona across the Mexican border to Nogales in the State of Sonora to visit a small center—a comedor—where our Kino Border Initiative provides two meals a day, clothing, pastoral support and other services to migrant deportees and people in transit to the United States.

We sat down with Vicente (not his real name) who spoke of his life as a fisherman in El Salvador. He described how local gang members in his hometown accused him of stealing, a crime he had not committed. They then abducted him and took him to a house where they beat him to within an inch of his life with a baseball bat.

After a three-month recovery from the beating, he tried to return to his work, but it became clear to him that the gang would never leave him alone. He decided to flee El Salvador and make his way north through Mexico to seek safety. He rode on top of a train heading north, but Mexican

No soup line exists in our comedor. The migrants are seated at tables and are waited on by our staff and volunteers. We take great care to serve them with a spirit of deep love and generosity. authorities kicked him off the train and refused to allow him to climb on top again.

He eventually arrived in Nogales, Sonora, and faced the border wall, made of high pillars of steel with plated metal on top.

Filled with vivid memories of his recent suffering, he decided to apply for refugee status in Mexico.

South of the border Nogales is two small cities that straddle the Mexican-U.S. border and serve as a major crossroads for trade, commerce and culture between the countries.

They are just south of the million-plus city of Tucson. We launched the Kino Border Initiative nine years ago on the Mexican side of the border to serve people like Vicente, migrants who suffer

profound abuses and injustices along the U.S.-Mexico border. I along with representatives of the California Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and Jesuit Refugee Service/USA could see the enormous need for food, clothing and pastoral support of migrants in the unknown Mexican environs of Nogales, Sonora. Through conversations with people on both sides of the border, we recognized the need for greater public awareness of the harsh realities of the migrant experience. They said there must be a cross-border response. It was clearly not going to be enough to begin an organization on just one side of the border.

We needed to establish cross-border humanitarian assistance, conduct

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 23

Most spend time in detention, frequently in inadequate conditions due to cold cells, thin blankets, inadequate food and lack of access to medical care. research and build public education and advocacy for the plight of the emigrants.

We began a collaboration with seven organizations: Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist, Jesuit Refugee Service/ USA, California Province of the Society of Jesus, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus, Archdiocese of Hermosillo, Diocese of Tucson.

Our principal humanitarian projects are the previously mentioned comedor and Nazareth House, a shelter for women and children migrants. Over the years, we have found that the need for humanitarian services is high. Many of the people we serve come from the southern states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Puebla, with an increasing number of people over the years from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Serving deportees In the southern Arizona desert, migrants suffer hunger, thirst, and dehydration.

Some become victims of assault at the hands of organized crime. Most spend time in detention, frequently in inadequate conditions due to cold cells, thin blankets, inadequate food and lack of access to medical care.

A number are processed through a court proceeding called Operation Streamline, in which they are charged with a criminal offense (immigration offenses are under the purview of U.S. civil law), which in many cases leads to deportation and the unlikelihood of ever being able to migrate to the United States legally.

When these men, women and children arrive at our comedor, they come having suffered many physical and emotional abuses, resulting in a lack of respect for their human dignity. In the last year we have provided 46,815 meals to 8,383 people.

At the same time, the numbers do not speak of the spirit with which we serve them. No soup line exists in our comedor.

The migrants are seated at tables and waited on by our staff and volunteers. We take

great care to serve them with a spirit of deep love and generosity, not only because it is part of our mission to be a humanizing presence, but also to help restore in them a sense of their human dignity.

We offer shelter to women and children migrants through Nazareth House, two apartments we rent in Nogales, Sonora, which serve as safe spaces for people like Nena and Kevin, who fled Honduras after a local gang threatened her and then burned their house down. They and many others have found a home at Nazareth House in a time of great need, and she is now with Kevin in Texas, where her request for asylum will be considered.

Marla Conrad, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Esquias, Comayagua, Honduras from 2003 to 2005, has served on our staff as a migrant advocate since 2011. She meets with and accompanies migrants like Nena and Kevin who have been victims of egregious abuses. Her gentle gaze and profound strength have brought great comfort and encouragement to many, whether it is to a woman who escaped from a human trafficker or the deported mother looking to be reunited in Mexico with her young daughter in the United States. Marla’s Peace Corps experience prepared her well, resulting in her fluency in Spanish and her eventual embrace of Mexican culture.

Cross-border advocates While we recognize the enormous need for humanitarian support, we also know that if we do not educate people about the root causes of migration and of the migrant person, we will not change the lack of awareness that leads to so many misunderstandings of migrants and their lived reality. For that reason, we hosted sixty-six immersion groups last year, which included dialogues with the migrants we serve.

Many of these groups have returned home to share their experience with others, to accompany migrants— sometimes by writing letters to migrants in detention—and to advocate their cause

24 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

with staff from their Congressional or Senate office. These experiences have transformed the hearts and minds of many participants. One of them now serves as our director of education and advocacy.

We also know that if we do not address the policies that cause migrants to suffer so deeply, we will not truly fulfill our mission to be a humanizing presence on the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2013 and 2015, we helped publish two reports that focus on issues of Border Patrol abuse committed against migrants in the process of detention and deportation.

Thirty percent of the migrants surveyed complained of mistreatment at the hands of Border Patrol, whether it was verbal abuse, physical abuse or inadequate detention conditions. Please visit ‘Documented Failures’ at Jesuit.org.

While we work with partner organizations to achieve greater Border Patrol accountability and transparency, we also strive to address obstacles to migrants seeking asylum in the United States. Recently, President Trump signed an executive order that, in part, will make it more difficult for migrants to fight their asylum cases outside of detention.

This development reinforces for us the increasing need to provide migrants the safety that they deserve in the United States.

In his September 2015 address to the U.S. Congress, Pope Francis reminded us of the importance of focusing on the migrant’s face and humanity. That call lies at the center of all we do on the U.S.Mexico border.

As we continue to serve migrants on the border, we deeply hope that their dignity and their lived experience will transform the hearts and minds of the people who visit us and of our political leaders as well.

Sean Carroll entered the Society of Jesus in 1989, and became executive director of the Kino Border Initiative in 2009. Following his priestly ordination in 2000, he served for four years as associate pastor at St. Patrick’s Church in Oakland, California and four years as associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.

A REFUGEE ASSIGNMENT Peace Corps doesn’t serve in the camps. Why Not?

By David Arnold

P

eace Corps Volunteers have been teaching and providing health and other community services to thousands whose communities have been disrupted by floods, drought, civil war, and political repression. In recent years many of those communities in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America have contributed to the migration of an estimated 65 million displaced by threatening circumstances within their own countries and those who were forced to cross national borders as refugees. In recent years those massive cross-border migrations have challenged the capacity of the world and created a global humanitarian crisis.

The Peace Corps experience has introduced hundreds of Americans to careers working for UN agencies and many non-governmental organizations serving in many of those camps. But Peace Corps has not made a practice of posting Volunteers in camps, despite the fact that most Volunteers have lived and worked at the center of cultures now removed to acres of plastic tents in a no-man’s land lacking adequate health, education and social services.

The majority of the 65 million displaced people come from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. Volunteers served in two of those countries until the programs were forced to close because of conservative Islamist insurgencies and open warfare. Volunteers also served in Colombia, which continues to host with great difficulty the world’s largest internally displaced population.

Three former directors of the Peace Corps discuss here the past and a possible future role for Volunteers among the refugees in camps.

Mark Gearan, who served as Peace Corps director during the Clinton administration from 1995 to 1999, says current events call for an examination of the possibility.

“Like most Americans, I am struck by the suffering and the heartache that we’re witnessing this year. I believe it should prompt the agency to carefully study options.

Right response “I do think the Peace Corps after 55-plus years and Peace Corps Response after 20 years has a history and a body of work that can allow the agency to think expansively and differently about the current world challenges.

“I think relief work and human rights work among refugees … would be a very interesting extension to research.”

Gearan’s administration launched the Crisis Corps, the program that first sent Returned Volunteers to meet emergency needs and later became Peace Corps Response. It took advantage of the experience of Volunteers who have lived and worked in many communities refugees have since fled.

“There is a continual need for health, education and protective services for children in camps,” says Carol Bellamy, who immediately preceded Gearan as director and went on to become executive director of the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. “Peace Corps Response actually could be a very good use … because they’ve had the experience and hopefully there is some degree of language capacity and cultural sensitivity…”

A Caribbean experiment A few early experiences suggest that there is precedent for the idea. Mark Schneider, who took office after Gearan, sent Volunteers to work in refugee conditions following political and natural disruptions.

Schneider describes successful shortterm projects following emergencies in which Volunteers “… in what was then called Crisis Corps were assigned to work with refugees in the aftermath of natural disasters, and a couple of times in the aftermath of civil conflicts.” They worked

with internally displaced persons in a camp setting. “Six months was the norm but these were Peace Corps Volunteers who had experience in the area, in the language, and could fit right in.”

Volunteers also served “in the Caribbean when there was natural disaster in hurricanes George and Mitch and those Volunteers worked directly with communities who were victims and the Volunteers actually worked in relief situations,” Schneider says.

The next group entering the country actually worked with refugees and internally displaced communities “who were then reintegrated back into their communities, rebuilding water systems and schools and roads.”

Peace Corps also sent a number of Peace Corps Response Volunteers to serve in some of the refugee camps in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Most worked with NGO partners. Peace Corps continues to work in post-conflict settings in communities in Liberia, northern Uganda, and Ukraine but rarely in refugee camps.

Within the United States, Peace Corps recently partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to place returned Volunteers as staff in non-governmental agencies and the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services to work with displaced populations.

Determining factors In most countries where the need for camps arise, they often generate volatile relations between conflicting ethnic and political communities all suffering the trauma of forced displacement. The resulting insecurity fosters open disputes that could threaten the security of Volunteers working in the camps. And the agency’s continuing concern for Volunteer safety could rule out posting in many camps.

“Security would be an issue,” says Bellamy, “but security is an issue everywhere.” She believes experienced Volunteers could safely serve in many of

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 25

the camps, particularly those that have continued to exist for more than a couple of generations and offer relative stability.

Bellamy believes Peace Corps should strongly consider it. “I see it as something that could happen,” says Bellamy, “but it is something that could go against the grain of the government which is the initiator of the request.” In some cases, camps form as a result of conflicts in which the host country has played a significant role. And in the end, the local government decides whether they want Peace Corps in the camps.

Most camps lack the social cohesion of the traditional Peace Corps site, a remote village. Schneider cautions that a camp Volunteer would need more than local language, cultural empathy and tangible teaching or health provider skills: the Volunteer must be good at conflict resolution, “and be ready on day one.”

Bellamy proposes a middle-ground where Peace Corps could have a role. “The communities around the camps are also very much in need and very often not

receiving very much attention. Serving on the periphery of refugee camps might be needed as much as in the refugee camps themselves.”

Local supervision Under more stable political conditions, Schneider believes a host country interested in putting Volunteers in camps may be preferable to working with a multi-national agency such as the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. “My preference would be to work with a national body rather than UNHCR.” After Peace Corps, Schneider became a senior vice-president and adviser in Washington, D.C. for the Crisis Group, an international research and advocacy organization focused on conflict management. He argues that working with local governing bodies is a better fit for the agency and its Volunteers. The United Kingdom assigns their volunteers to international agencies but they have five or more years of professional experience, he says.

But Schneider says nothing should be ruled out in an agency discussion with two possible exceptions: service in camps in Europe and in some Islamic countries in which the current international climate could be hazardous for Americans.

All three former directors say a proposal to send Peace Corps Response Volunteers with previous and appropriate service into camps for the internally displaced or refugees should be under agency consideration.

“If ever there was anyone who would have encouraged this,” says Gearan, “I would argue it would have been Sarge Shriver because the agency he set up was created for renewal and innovation.

He would be the first to promote those conversations.”

David Arnold is editor of WorldView magazine. He taught school in Asbe Teferi, Ethiopia from 1964 to 1966 and has written and edited for U.S. newspapers and magazines and for international radio.

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26 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

TIRED AND POOR You can help refugees through our RPCV network

By Alan Ruiz Terol

I

the question: Can I do anything to help?

The answer is yes, you can. Sharing your experience and promoting intercultural understanding is crucial, and the members of our community are in the best position to do so. Talk to your representatives. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Become an advocate on behalf of refugees.

Even though the White House has taken controversial steps to curtail the arrival of refugees, a lot can still be done. Improvements can he made at the local level to help every refugee who has arrived. Our help is vital to their success in starting a new life here. No matter where you live, there are probably nearby organizations already helping refugees.

Find them because they understand the needs of your community’s refugees and how you can help.

Many RPCVs have already done so. Their work depends on the needs

The Peace Corps Community for the Support of Refugees is an affiliate group of NPCA engaging those in the greater Peace Corps community in national and international efforts to support refugees. Its goals are to connect our community with US-based resettlement agencies, provide direct assistance to refugees overseas and advocate on behalf of refugees at the national, state and local levels. The website is pcc4refugees.org. Or contact info@ pcc4refugees.org.

of the organization, as well as on the Volunteer’s availability. For instance, some welcome newly arriving refugees at the airport, give them rides to the hospital, or organize dinners to celebrate

CHRISTIE MATERNI/HIAS

n his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, then-Senator John F. Kennedy wrote that modern America is “the greatest migration of people in all recorded history.”

Their contributions, he wrote, can be seen in all aspects of American life, religion, politics, business, arts, education, athletics, and entertainment. “There is no part of America that has not been touched by our immigrant background,” he wrote.

Kennedy envisioned a fair, generous, and flexible immigration policy that would allow the U.S. to turn to the world “with clean hands and a clean conscience.”

At a moment when this welcoming stance is being challenged, the Peace Corps community—born in President Kennedy’s administration—remains true to its foundational principles and stands by the migrant and the refugee.

Many Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have reached out by asking

Dominic Shamas (center) led Syrian refugees Jawhr and Helal through the aisles of Food Town supermarket near their new home on Toledo, Ohio in 2016.

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 27

As agreements are made and more RPCVs join this national network, the greater Peace Corps community may become a key partner in the U.S. refugee resettlement process. local holidays. More deeply involved RPCVs support families on a regular basis with weekly English as a second language lessons. Some NPCA affiliates commit to mentoring refugee families for a full year, enhancing their integration into this new American life.

HIAS has resettled over 4.5 million people worldwide.

PCC4Refugees is also discussing partnerships with other voluntary agencies eager for RPCV support. As agreements are made and more RPCVs join this national network, the greater Peace Corps community may become a key partner in the U.S. refugee resettlement process.

How to get started The Peace Corps Community for Support of Refugees (PCC4Refugees) now has about 300 members and in December A system that works became an official NPCA affiliate. Their It’s worth remembering that the U.S. goal is to help you locate your nearest resettlement system has largely been a resettlement organization. success. The government established The group began to emerge over a a public-private partnership that has year ago when former Peace Corps staffer resettled hundreds of thousands of Barbara Busch returned from the Greek refugees since the Second World War. island of Lesbos and called the NPCA’s Since 1975, it has resettled over three president. million refugees, more “We need to do than any other country The future of U.S. immigration something,” she told in the world. Since policy remains uncertain as Glenn Blumhorst. then, the United States federal district judges dispute Others RPCVs has resettled refugees the legality of President Donald subsequently joined from Vietnam and Cuba Trump’s efforts by executive Busch to determine and deepened working order to curb current flows the best way to help relations between the of immigrants and refugees. the growing numbers independent voluntary of refugees. This agencies and the This political and legal improvised group grew State Department, battle threatens the work of from a few people to the Department of nine resettlement agencies become a recognized Homeland Security and identified here. Contact NPCA affiliate. the Citizenship and PCC4Refugees for the latest The Peace Corps Immigration Services. updates and learn how to help.

Community for Refugees The Refugee Act of is now prepared to help 1980 set a legal basis of committed RPCVs discover how they can refugee admission and adopted the earlier make a difference.

Geneva Convention definition of a refugee On behalf of PCC4Refugees, NPCA as someone who “owing to well-founded fear recently formed a collaboration with the of persecution for reasons of race, religion, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) nationality, membership of a particular and seven other agencies, to engage social group or political opinion, is outside RPCVs in U.S. resettlement efforts and the country of his nationality and is unable pilot a model for mentoring refugees or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail in several cities. HIAS is one of nine himself of the protection of that country.” domestic voluntary agencies the U.S. State Department relies on to resettle The government process newly arrived refugees. Since the 1881 The law provides assistance to help newly exodus of Jews from Imperial Russia, arrived refugees through an annual

28 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

process in which the President sets an admission ceiling in consultation with the Congress.

The process of being approved to come to the U.S. as a refugee requires a security screening that can take up to two years and occurs abroad. Most initial interviews are conducted by UN High Commissioner for Refugees staff before referral to the State Department.

The Department of Homeland Security conducts background checks and security screenings in conjunction with law enforcement and other security agencies.

The State Department refers refugees who have been accepted for entry to any of nine resettlement agencies that maintain over 250 community offices in 49 states and the District of Columbia.

These local offices arrange for reception, housing, education, medical assistance, and other basic services.

The local affiliates of the nine agencies review each refugee case and match them based on housing costs, the local resources and whether the refugee has relatives in a community. The main goal of the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program is for refugees to attain economic self-sufficiency as quickly as possible.

Refugees are entitled to work and may receive different forms of assistance: financial, medical, vocational training, job placement or language training.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services oversees and supports the domestic resettlement process. In recent years, however, their budget has not kept pace with inflation or the demands of an increasing number of refugees. The agency’s mission to ensure that refugees become self-sufficient has necessarily focused on recent arrivals rather than those already here. As the Office of Refugee Resettlement faces an uncertain funding future, HIAS and other voluntary agencies need the help of local RPCVs now more than ever.

Alan Ruiz Terol is a journalist from Barcelona who served as a communications fellow at NPCA from October 2016 to February 2017. He is a press officer for the European Union parliament.

TOUGH JOBS

Careers working with refugees here and overseas

W

ith a proven tenacity and resiliency working in unfamiliar and often harsh global environments Returned Peace Corps Volunteers might be the ideal models for helping refugees resettle in the United States and abroad.

The possibilities are endless. InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based international NGOs, provides a good starting point.

With more than 180 organizations that meet high standards of transparency and accountability, InterAction is a good resource for professionals interested in humanitarian and development work focused on refugees and the displaced.

The alliance’s NGO Aid interactive map allows searches for country and topics. A special map on the Syrian refugee crisis response is also available online. The job opportunities are posted by organizations based on their needs and they change regularly. Here are some examples of offers recently available. For current job postings, check their website.

For 30 years InterAction has organized one of the largest gatherings of international development and humanitarian workers. For those interested in networking opportunities and engaging with partners from a variety of sectors, InterAction Forum 2017 will be held in Washington, D.C., from June 20 to 22. The forum offers workshops, high-level plenary sessions, and an awards banquet.

Job opportunities Here’s a sample of recent job opportunities found in their NGO Aid Map. For current opportunities, please visit ngoaidmap.org and syrian-refugeeresponse.ngoaidmap.org/ The International Rescue Committee.

Delivering Health and Protection Services for Syrian Refugees and Vulnerable Jordanians in Northern Jordan. Services include health, humanitarian aid and protection. www.rescue.org

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Asylum Protection Center.

Increase the capacity of mobile teams so they may more efficiently provide legal and psychosocial services to refugees transiting through Serbia. Services include humanitarian aid and protection. www.uusc.org Church World Service. Provide protection and legal assistance, psychosocial support, and education for refugees & asylum seekers in Cairo, Egypt. Service include education, humanitarian aid and protection. www.cwsglobal.org/ Headwaters Disaster Relief Organization.

The Headwaters team work at the on-site clinic serving a refugee camp in Greece, organizing supplies, establishing an effective system of response to intercamp health issues while meeting the needs of the camp’s residents. www.headwatersrelief.org/ World Renew. Providing food vouchers and milk and diapers to Syrian refugee families in Lebanon. Services include food aid and humanitarian aid. www.worldrenew.net/ International Catholic Migration Commission. Providing assistance and emergency items meeting the basic hygiene and households needs of Syrian refugees and extremely vulnerable Jordanian families. Services include education, humanitarian aid, protection, shelter, housing, water sanitation and hygiene. www.icmc.net/ Lutheran World Relief. Provide kits of non-food items and training for women on how to start their own business, amongst others. Services include economic recovery and development and humanitarian aid. www.lwr.org Save the Children. Give Lebanese street children a healthier, safer and better life.

RPCVs can also work with many of the voluntary organizations that manage U.S. resettlement of refugees. Contact these groups directly to identify needs in a nearby community or check with NPCA affiliate PCC4Refugees. org that coordinates RPCVs for these organizations. One other voluntary organization, Episcopal Migration Ministries, is expected to join the RPCV network later.

Church World Service www.churchworldservices.org skrause@churchworldservices.org Hebrew Immigration Aid Society www.hias.org mark.hetfield@hias.org International Rescue Committee Jennifer.sime@rescue.org www.theirc.org Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service www.lirs.org U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants llimon@uscridc.org www.refugees.org United States Conference of Catholic Bishops iyoung@usccb.org www.usccb.org/mrs Ethiopian Community Development Council tteferra@ecdcus.org www.ecdcus.org

The project will focus on children and adolescents (at least half of whom are Syrian refugees) living and working on the streets to address their psychosocial health, safety and protection, and educational and lifeskills knowledge to give them a better life. www.savethechildren.org Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation.

Distribution of food and non-food items, such as blankets, winter clothing, fuel and rice. Services include education, shelter and housing, water sanitation and hygiene. www.tzuchi.us

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Near East Foundation. Provide training, equipment and services to introduce urban agriculture in order to increase economic resilience, empower mothers through development and business support, prevent early marriage through access to financial education for adolescent girls.

Services include agriculture, economic recovery and development, humanitarian aid and protection. www.neareast.org Islamic Relief USA. Facilitate integrated health service for Syrian refugees in Jordan through the provision of primary, secondary and tertiary health care as well as hemodialysis and awareness raising on health issues. Services include health and humanitarian aid. www.irusa.org

From 20th century walls to 21st century bridges.

From geopolitics to global business.

From security to humanitarian aid.

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30 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team.

Increase social stability in Lebanon through non-formal education programs (basic literacy and numeracy, kindergarten and grade one) and support to formal education programs (school transportation, psychological support, equipment). www.amurt.net Doctors of the World. Providing critical emergency and primary medical care, mental health care, and sexual and reproductive care in Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Services include health, humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement. doctorsoftheworld.org/ Zakat Foundation of America. Sponsors teachers and elementary school for children, as well as providing uniforms, school supplies and backpacks. Services include education, humanitarian aid. www.zakat.org/ Plant With Purpose. Supporting Burundian refugees who returned to their country after the civil war to restore their own land and increase food security by diversifying crops, implementing agroforestry techniques and using sustainable farming methods. Services include agriculture, economic recovery and development, environment and conflict prevention. www.plantwithpurpose.org

WHY I BECAME A REFUGEE The unintended consequence of opposing Egypt’s military

By Maikel Nabil Sanad

W

hen I was younger, opposition parties, a position which, tortured and sexually assaulted by the I was against according to political laws at that time, Egyptian Military Intelligence. Seven emigration. I wasn’t would have allowed me to run for weeks after Mubarak’s ouster, the military against migrants president of Egypt, if I had been above the arrested me, and charged me with spreading coming to my age of 40. In the same year, I became the rumors. I had a brief secret trial, with nearly home country, Egypt; I was against second Egyptian to speak publicly about no rights at all and was sentenced to three Egyptians leaving Egypt. Egypt is a poor his atheism. The first, Kareem Amer, was years in prison. The military kept targeting dictatorship, but I believed that nothing in prison at that time, spending a fourmy friends and family. My father, a banker, would improve if every educated was demoted in his job four times that open-minded Egyptian left the year on grounds of national security. country. I believed that developed Many of my friends received death democracies are such because and prison threats, and some were previous generations of these assaulted and killed. I spent two societies struggled to make them months in solitary confinement in free and developed. If my ancestors El-Marg, the army’s main prison and had struggled more for freedom, detention facilities run by military Egypt wouldn’t be as depressing as intelligence. While in prison, I went on it is today. a hunger strike for 130 days to protest I was born in 1985 to a Coptic my trial and incarceration. Prison Christian family. As I grew up, I never deterred me; I kept writing from noticed that many Christians were prison, promoting peace, democracy, leaving the country to flee Islamic and human dignity. persecution. Although I no longer Thanks to a group of dedicated believed in Christianity, I believed friends who struggled tirelessly that if Christians, atheists, and for my freedom, my case gained other minorities kept leaving the international attention. Amnesty country, Egypt wouldn’t become a International recognized me tolerant country, but a less diverse as a prisoner of conscience. one. Making Egypt a tolerant place Members of the U.S. Congress and An Egyptian seeking asylum in the United States, the journalist meant staying and struggling for parliamentarians from Canada, Mikael Nabil Sanad decided he should tour the home of 19thtolerance, not fleeing the country.

Germany, and the European Union century black abolitionist Frederick Douglass across the Anacostia My plan has always been not to advocated for my freedom. The River from the nation’s capital. leave, but to stay and fight to make United Nations Working Group on things better. I studied veterinary medicine year sentence for blasphemy. At the age Arbitrary Detention declared that my trial in Assiut University, and law at Cairo of 24, I started NoMilService, the first was unfair and my detention arbitrary.

University. From the age of 20, I became anti-conscription movement in Egyptian I was nominated for the Nobel Peace heavily involved in Egyptian politics. I history. At the age of 25, I became the firstPrize by Alex White, Ireland’s minister joined several political parties and groups ever conscientious objector to the military for communications, energy and natural and, in 2006, started my blog in Arabic, and service in Egypt. A few months later, I resources. All of this international pressure later added English and Hebrew. The blog joined millions of Egyptians who protested forced the Egyptian military to release me attracted millions of visitors, and I had an Mubarak’s regime, demanding freedom, on the eve of the first anniversary of the audience of an estimated 100,000 online democracy, and human rights. We thought revolution on Jan 24, 2012. followers. I promoted liberal democracy, that Egypt would become a better country Upon my release, after spending 10 a free market economy, non-violence, after his ouster, but it didn’t. months in prison, I came to realize the religious freedom, peace with Israel, and horrors which the Egyptian military demilitarization of the Middle East. I Arrest, trial and torture carried out against the demonstrators in demanded a complete separation between Struggling for change never comes without Tahrir Square while I was detained. Several religious institutions and the state. a price. I was detained, not once or twice, massacres had occurred in which hundreds At the age of 23, I joined the high but five times. I was detained a week before or maybe thousands of peaceful protesters committee of one of Egypt’s main Mubarak’s removal from office, and was were killed by the military and the police.

I had a brief secret trial, with nearly no rights at all and was sentenced to three years in prison.

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 31

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… the U.S. government’s arms deals with Egypt are made for years forward, and the United States won’t stop sending these weapons any time soon, even when those same weapons are used to kill democratic activists in Cairo.

No more military aid for Egypt I decided to use my new fame to appeal to the world to stop arming Egypt. I made my request to many politicians in the United States and Europe, with no result.

In March 2012, I was invited to Washington by the non-profit Project on Middle East Democracy to discuss U.S. military aid to Egypt. I met several officials from the White House, the State Department, and the U.S. Congress.

During my visit, I learned that the U.S. government’s arms deals with Egypt are made for years forward, and that the United States won’t stop sending these weapons any time soon, even when those same weapons are used to kill democratic activists in Egypt. I made similar trips to several European capitals, and realized that Europe will continue to arm North African dictators, as long as these dictators continue trying to halt the immigration from the former European colonies in Africa to Europe.

In June 2012, after a disputed presidential election, the Egyptian military delivered power to an Islamic government. The new Islamic government led by Mohamed Morsi started a new wave of persecution. In October 2012, they charged me with blasphemy, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

I learned about the charge while I was studying in Germany. In December of that year, they charged me with treason, a crime that could be punished by the death sentence. The treason charge was made because I gave a speech at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem about peace between Egypt and Israel. Luckily, I was still studying in Germany and I’ve never been back to Egypt to face trial.

In June 2013, the Egyptian military launched a coup d’état against the Islamic government, throwing its leaders in prisons, sentencing thousands of its followers to death, and massacring hundreds of its supporters in the streets of

32 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

Cairo. Although it was clear to the whole world that the Egyptian government was killing, torturing, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of innocent Egyptians, the flow of cash and arms from the West to Egypt’s military never stopped. Annual U.S. military aid to Egypt is around $1.3 billion annually, and the EU sends around €5 billion each year. The UN and the other international organizations ignored what was happening in Egypt, and did nothing to stop the massacres.

Seeking refuge By the end 2014, I found myself in an awkward situation. Those who had imprisoned and tortured me are now in power in Egypt. Egyptian democrats were either in prison or in exile. If I went back to Egypt, I might face prison, torture, and even death. The world was going to continue sending arms and cash to Egypt, whatever the Egyptian military does. The world was already closing its eyes to the genocide in Syria, and doing nothing about the continued use of chemical weapons there.

This was the moment I realized that I couldn’t go back to my country. This was one of the hardest decisions I ever made in my life. I was throwing away a career in Egyptian politics, giving up on what I fought for all my life. I knew that I might not see my family and friends again, and that I may live the rest of my life a stranger in a strange country. I did everything in my power to make Egypt a better place, and I failed. Becoming a refugee in the United States wasn’t a happy choice; it was painful choice I was pushed to take because all the other options were horrifying.

Maikel Nabil Sanad is an Egyptian writer, former political prisoner and refugee.

He serves as a social media associate for PCC4Refugees and writes a blog, www.

MaikelNabil.com.

WOMEN WHO SUFFER

They must become Colombia’s priority after the world’s longest civil war

By Alyssa Eisenstein fresh displacement of local citizens, while the demobilization and disarmament of former FARC fighters poses new risks to women in communities hosting the demobilization.

A law on paper While these various factors continue to put civilian populations, especially women, at risk, Colombia has made great strides and has been rightfully lauded for its comprehensive and humane response to victims of its armed conflict. A Victim’s Law passed in 2011 established the Unit for Assistance and Integral Reparations to Victims through which people affected by

mental health services are nearly nonexistent. The Victims’ Unit – despite its best intentions – simply cannot respond to the millions of cases brought to its attention, as more than eight million Colombian citizens have registered as victims.

Across the country, nearly all of the victims we spoke with had yet to receive humanitarian assistance. In one city on the Pacific Coast, we saw queues wrapping around entire city blocks outside the Victims’ Unit offices, lines filled with women simply trying to put their names on a list for a needs assessment appointment—a meeting REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL

C

olombia made history last year when it signed a peace agreement with one of the world’s most well-known guerilla groups, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias ColombianasEjército del Pueblo (FARC-EP). The peace agreement was celebrated as a major achievement, bringing to a close one of the world’s longest-running civil wars. Moving forward, Colombians now face the difficult task of rebuilding communities and livelihoods ruined by decades of conflict.

Colombia is host to one of the world’s largest populations of internally displaced persons, with more than seven million people registered. Women have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, with thousands kidnapped, raped, tortured, mutilated, or killed. Countless other women have been displaced and left to care for and support their families, often after their husbands have been killed.

In a three-week mission to Colombia last fall, my Refugees International colleague Francisca Vigaud-Walsh and I interviewed nearly 100 women displaced or otherwise impacted by Colombia’s conflict. We wanted to better understand how the Colombian government— supported by international donors, including the United States—can improve the lives of displaced women in the postpeace agreement period.

It is important to note that the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC does not signify an end to conflict in Colombia, but it is a giant leap forward in Colombia’s quest for peace and stability.

Additional armed groups continue to control large swaths of territory across the country, often taking over land recently abandoned by the FARC. These groups maintain strong control over the cocaine trade. Former paramilitaries-turnedcriminal gangs also contribute to a general environment of insecurity in many areas.

Further, mining and mineral extraction in other areas of the country are causing

Despite a 2011 law in Colombia offering reparations and humanitarian help for more than 7 million displaced, many such as these indigenous women receive erratic assistance, or none at all.

the conflict are entitled to humanitarian assistance—including food and shelter, education, psychosocial support, health services, and various forms of reparation.

But as Francisca and I heard time and again from international humanitarian and civil society organizations in Colombia and from the victims themselves, many of these laws and services exist only on paper.

Humanitarian assistance and reparations for the displaced appear to be granted on an almost arbitrary basis, payments—if they are granted at all—are erratic and

not likely to take place until months into the future. Years after they were displaced or victimized, sometimes even decades, many women have yet to receive any form of reparation, let alone any acknowledgement, of their situation.

In some cases, this neglect has had catastrophic consequences in the lives of women victims. I write here about a few of their stories, but have changed their names to protect their personal security.

In Bogota, we met Marta, a young woman trying everything she can to move

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 33

her life forward after years of unimaginable abuse. At age 24, Marta was kidnapped by an armed group and was subjected to rape, mutilation, forced labor, and trafficking.

She escaped after nearly a year, discovered she was pregnant as a result of one of the rapes, and gave birth to a son. Marta has since spent years attempting to navigate the endless bureaucracy that is the Victims’ Unit, with little success. She received just one lump-sum payment, but because a needs assessment was mistakenly never conducted, she has not received any other assistance to which she is potentially entitled.

But Marta’s tragedy did not stop once she was released by the armed group.

Homeless in Bogota, with no support and an urgent need to provide for her newborn son, Marta was forced into sexual exploitation. Again, she found herself under the control of armed groups who operate brothels in Bogota’s so-called “tolerance area.”

“The world of prostitution [is] much crueler than any war, but it’s my daily life and it’s what feeds my son,” Marta told us.

Listening to her story in a Bogota shopping mall, a safe public area where she felt comfortable to meet and share these intimate details of her life, it was difficult to imagine how Marta would find alternative options to end this cycle of abuse. The conflict may have officially ended, but, for women like Marta, peace has not easily followed.

With so many cases like Marta’s seemingly lost in the endless paperwork and bureaucracy of the Victims’ Unit, we were left to wonder how the government of Colombia will be able to respond to the immense scale of need. The laws are in place, the institutions have been created, but an enormous job remains.

Death of a son Across the country in Putumayo, Esperanza opened our eyes to another difficult aspect of responding to victims of Colombia’s conflict. Esperanza’s son was killed a decade ago by the FARC-EP. She told us that not a day has gone by since her son’s death that she has not thought about him. The loss clearly weighed heavy on her; at various points in our conversation, she broke down crying.

When she tells others about that loss 10 years ago, they say she should move

on. “I wish they could put their hands on my heart and feel my pain,” she said.

Without additional family to support her, Esperanza’s economic situation is precarious; yet accepting a payment from the Victims’ Unit is not an easy task. Even if she was offered a payment for the death of her son, “I don’t know if I would feel capable of receiving it,” she told us.

Esperanza’s story forms part of a larger question of how a country moves past a dark, turbulent history while treating its surviving victims with dignity and respect. Simply giving victims money is clearly not the answer.

Humanitarian assistance, psychosocial support, and a path forward for victims must be part of the equation. Colombia

Women have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, with thousands kidnapped, raped, tortured, mutilated, or killed. has the basic institutional framework in place to respond to cases like Marta and Esperanza, but the government will need to drastically scale up its ability to assist victims in navigating how to access its registry and receive the various forms of humanitarian assistance. In each of the cases “lost” at some point in the process is a woman suffering, in need of support, in need of hope.

“To achieve lasting peace in Colombia, the humanitarian needs of women and girls must be addressed,” Francisca wrote in her report, A Battle Not Yet Over: Displacement and Women’s Needs in Post-Peace Agreement Colombia. The signing of the peace deal was a historic and momentous occasion that should rightly be celebrated. But “Colombia still faces many challenges that should not be understated. As such, the humanitarian community must remain present and engaged, with dedicated and adequate resources, to help the displaced weather these challenges,” she concludes.

34 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

Declaring their rights Despite the daunting challenges ahead, there is room for optimism. Across the country, we met women activists—mestizo, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian—voicing their demands for women’s rights and garnering support for women victims of the conflict. They refused to be sidelined, whether it was at the negotiating table in Havana or in this crucial post-peace agreement period.

My colleague and I were privileged to attend a regional conference of women community leaders who were in the midst of planning awareness-raising activities ahead of the national refendum on the peace deal. Many of the women we met were victims themselves, but chose to channel their frustration, personal trauma, and indignation into collective action. Household by household, community by community, this is how peace will come to Colombia.

And this is how we should be supporting Colombia moving forward—by raising the voices of those at the forefront of the quest for peace, reconciliation, and justice.

With new conflicts erupting around the globe and many long-running conflicts still unresolved, Colombia offers hope for those working in the field of global peace and development. Years of painstaking negotiations finally ended one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. The world is in need of a success story in conflict resolution, and peace for those affected by it. And no one deserves it more than Marta, Esperanza, and the rest of Colombia’s conflict-affected women.

Alyssa Eisenstein is Refugees International’s press and information officer. Refugees International advocates for solutions to displacement crises worldwide. In August and September, Eisenstein traveled to Colombia with the organization’s senior advocate for women and girls, Francisca Vigaud-Walsh. Vigaud-Walsh wrote the Refugees International report, “A Battle Not Yet Over: Displacement and Women’s Needs in Post-Peace Agreement Colombia,” at refugeesinternational.org. Eisenstein was a Peace Corps health education Volunteer in the town of Condega in Estelí department, Nicaragua, from 2011 to 2013 and cofounded a home for pregnant women in the municipality.

SCHOOL FOR REFUGEES

How Colombia’s young refugees cope with discrimination in Ecuador

By Aned Ladino

T

he biggest challenge for refugee children and the growing immigrant population is integrating into Ecuadorian society.

They face a high rate of discrimination because of negative stereotypes about Colombians which many Ecuadorians believe. Such stereotypes suggest that they are all thieves, drug dealers, criminals, con artists – and that the women are prostitutes. These stereotypes have made finding a place to live difficult for some refugees.

Landlords have even told them, “We do not rent to Colombians.”

The majority of immigrants in Ibarra are Colombian. I am serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, a Colombian American working in Ibarra in the Youth and Family program. Ibarra is the capital of the Imbabura province located in the northern part of Ecuador; it is three hours away from the Colombian border. It has a population of around 181,175 according to the last census. Ecuador is host to over 60,000 refugees, 95 per cent of whom are Colombians. According to the U.N. refugee agency, the Province of Imbabura has a total of 4,153 refugees and 14,555 asylum seekers.

The first time I met Laura and Luisa, they were sitting down in the office waiting room of The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in Ibarra. They were dressed alike with blue jeans, white tennis shoes and pink shirts. Laura is 13, and her sister Luisa, is 14. Regardless of their oneyear age difference, Luisa is much taller than Laura. I was conducting a survey about youth rights when I met these two sisters, refugees from Colombia. They had arrived five months ago with their parents and extended family but didn’t know anyone else in Ibarra.

They could not answer many of my questions. They struggled with adapting to a new culture and were confused about their life in a new country, new people, new food and a new and fragile life as refugees. They were not allowed into Ibarra schools until another term began, but Luisa and Laura did not understand why they couldn’t go to school with the other kids. When I asked question related to education and school, they just stayed quiet and looked at each other with a doleful expression. Laura just played with her braid, and as she desperately avoided eye contact I could see tears in her eyes. It wasn’t until their mom came that I found out that they could not attend school.

Looking down on Colombians Another young refugee, Paula, 15, told me, “People here are mean to me just because I am Colombian. When they notice my accent, their attitude changes.”

Like many of the young refugees who arrive in Ecuador a month or two into the school year, they were not allowed to enroll that semester. And those who are in school are met with discrimination from their classmates.

Jose, a 13-year-old, has been living in Ecuador for over a year but still experiences difficulties when attending school. He says that some of his classmates call him names and try to start fights with him. One time, they even threw rocks at him.

I felt powerless about their situation, and I thought they needed a routine because they have a lot of free time. The psychologist at HIAS and I decided to lead a youth group for young refugees.

We started with six teenagers, and now we have a total of 12. Ten of the members were not allowed in school because they arrived to Ecuador months after the school year had already begun.

We have been meeting every Thursday for the past six months to focus their attention on self-esteem, critical

Young members of the Colombian refugee community met weekly with Peace Corps Volunteer Aned Ladino to overcome the discrimination they experienced when they moved to Ibarra, Ecuador. Ladino is in white shirt, third from the left.

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 35

thinking, communication, short- and long-term goals, recycled art, sports, and information about HIV. I know it is not the same as attending school, but they are learning something instead of just watching TV at their houses.

For kids like Jose, the youth group has become like family. “In the group, we have fun, we share, and at the same time we learn,” he says.

Jose has made friends here and met other kids from Colombia who are escaping similar cases of violence and are going through the same difficult transition.

FEEL GOOD ABOUT THE FUTURE 0F THE HUMAN RACE. For MPH student Elizabeth Toure, the word “community” conjures an unlikely picture: a bowl of rice with sauce. When she shared the dish with a group of women in Guinea, as a Peace Corps volunteer, she felt welcomed into their community.

Establishing community trust is central to breaking down barriers to advance public health and health education globally. As a neighbor, teacher and friend in her Guinea community, Elizabeth led reproductive health and family planning classes, went doorto-door to hang mosquito nets and even founded a girls’ soccer team in the village.

Elizabeth joined the Peace Corps to challenge herself and help a community. Now she’s earning an MPH from the Bloomberg School to change the world.

Join us in protecting health, saving lives—millions at a time. jhsph.edu/feel-good Scholarships and financial aid options are available.

Taking positive steps In one of the most popular activities, each of the members has a piece of paper taped to his or her back. Everyone in the group will write something positive on all of their neighbor’s backs. They were excited to know that other people see positive qualities in them because so often they only hear negative stereotypes thrown at them or their families. When the exercise is over, they like to keep those papers on their backs, as they leave the class.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I feel lucky to be working with my kids, and I am very proud of them. As a Colombian American, I feel honored to be a part of a cause that I can truly relate to while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador and working with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to help these refugees.

These young Colombians have learned to work together and have become a family. They are excited to come to the group every Thursday regardless of the 30-minute walk that some of them make. The youth group has been a support system for these young refugees. Most importantly, some of them have increased their self-esteem and confidence. In our youth group, 12 Colombian refugees can be themselves and know that they will not be judged.

They have found a safe space.

Aned Ladino was born in Colombia and moved to the United States when she was 15 years old. Now she serves as a youth and family Volunteer in Ibarra, Ecuador and will close her service in August of 2017.

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MENTORING REFUGEES

How to welcome new neighbors in Portland and Cincinnati

By Alan Ruiz Terol

B

eing a refugee is hard.

Helping one is not. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers can help refugees in the United States in many ways.

Some members of our community are already teaching English as a second language and other skills to refugee families. Others are helping the newly arrived families move into new accommodations. RPCVs have organized welcoming events, helped refugees navigate the U.S. bureaucracy, and taught them how to shop for groceries. Some RPCVs are doing all of the above, and more.

For the past year, several NPCA affiliates have partnered with local resettlement agencies to mentor refugee families. Mentoring refugees implies a strong commitment, time, and a coordinated effort. The results, so far, have been positive.

A family of Syrian refugees was resettled in Cincinnati last year by Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio, one of the volunteer agencies in that area.

Six months ago they offered members of Cincinnati Area Returned Volunteers who were helping in resettlement activities a chance to mentor the family.

“They were aware that we had a strong RPCV group and that we would be able to work as a team,” says Susan Robinson, a member of the Cincinnati group.

The first priority was to find a job for the father. He had sewing skills and had worked as a shoemaker back in Syria. Underemployment is a frequent problem for refugees who can’t validate their past experience and are forced to work low-skilled jobs. But thanks to great networking, they got him a job in his field. This provided the family with a stable job and their first salary in the United States.

The language challenge Attaining economic self-sufficiency is the ultimate goal of the U.S. resettlement program but there are other ways RPCVs can help the families achieve independence.

A study in 2009 found that more than half of the refugees who had lived in the United States for at least 20 years still had difficulties when communicating in English.

The Volunteers in Cincinnati help members of the Syrian family improve their language

A study in 2009 found that more than half of the refugees who had lived in the United States for at least 20 years still had difficulties when communicating in English. skills. When the mother could no longer attend the official English lessons due to a difficult pregnancy, the Cincinnati Volunteers started teaching her English at home. They also tutor the children.

By ensuring that the mother can continue to learn English despite her health circumstances, they are addressing one of the flaws of the resettlement system. And they are not the only ones. In Portland, Oregon, members of the Columbia River Peace Corps Association are mentoring a Chinese family that arrived six months ago.

The family followed Falun Gong, a Buddhist spiritual practice, and fled religious persecution in Jilin Province. The family has four members: the mother, an elder sister, and two adopted boys whose parents, also Falun Gong practitioners, asked the mother to bring their children to the United States

because they could no longer care for them.

Phyllis Shelton (Honduras 1986-1988) and other Portland Volunteers hosted the family for a couple of weeks at their own homes because the accommodation that the local resettlement agency had to provide was not ready yet. The school one of the boys now attends provides no language support for non-native speakers so Gabriella Maertens (Niger 1964-1966) takes extra time to tutor the child and help him to improve his language skills.

RPCV groups can empower refugee families in other ways. Shelton gave the elder sister driving lessons and as the elder sister improved, the group collected money to pay for more driving lessons at an official center and pay for her exam.

Overall, RPCV groups provide refugees with a safe haven in a new, unknown country. They also become a safety net for these new American families in one of the most formidable tasks of their lives: starting a new life.

For this reason, some RPCVs see the need to help as self-evident. “The need to support refugee families resonated in our group,” Robinson says. “And it really makes sense to us to give back, to be good to other people. And it’s amazing that now, with the current climate, it feels even more urgent—not only that we do it, but also that we talk about it. Our family, friends and all the people we are in contact with know what we are doing and that this is what we believe in.”

Alan Ruiz Terol is a journalist from Barcelona, Spain. He served as a communications fellow at NPCA for five months from October 2016 to February 2017.

He reported for Spanish newspapers from India, Scandinavia and the United States and is a press officer for the European Parliament.

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 37

PROFILE

‘WE DESERVE BETTER’

Two Shriver Award winners help a Togo community fight for its rights

By Kitty Thuermer

W

hen Jenny Schechter was a little girl, she told her mother she was going to be an explorer.

Thirty years later she’s still exploring.

Before I talked to Jenny, I knew that she was chief executive officer of Hope Through Health (HTH), an NGO successfully serving neglected communities in northern Togo. I also knew that HTH grew out of a tiny community of people living with HIV/AIDS. And that she and her husband, Kevin Fiori, had spent 14 years pioneering this successful rural health care delivery system.

But I wanted to find out where it all started.

I told Jenny about my own experience with HIV/AIDS a generation earlier in Tanzania. There, on the shores of Lake Victoria, I once held the microphone for NPR reporter Laurie Garrett as she interviewed families of patients who were so skeletal that—to my untrained eye—they simply looked dead. Garrett’s reporting was some of the first to announce a wasting disease in Africa that

was so mysterious it had no name. They referred to it in hushed tones as “Slim.”

Jenny said she could relate, and we talked about how unjust it was that in some communities, contracting HIV/ AIDS was still a death sentence. She recalled how in 2004 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, her counterpart, Ahmed Zoumarou, asked her to visit his sister, who was dying from the disease.

“He asked if I could do anything,” she

Jenny and Kevin developed a strong bond in Peace Corps, sharing “the same anger and outrage” at inequities in the healthcare system. recalled. She told him that she was not a doctor and had no real medical skills, but she agreed to visit the woman anyway.

“She was the sickest person I had ever seen in my entire life,” Jenny told me.

“She essentially looked like a skeleton— and after I got over the shock, I asked if we could try and get her to the hospital.”

A flurry of activity ensued, involving

a taxi ride to the capital city of Lome, a hospital visit, stretcher, and an IV—but when nurses wheeled Ahmed’s sister to the intensive care unit, she died. The entire intervention, including taking the body back to town, took only two hours.

Jenny was devastated. She worried that she had done more harm than good. “I locked myself in my house for a few days after that,” she said.

More sick people came forward and with trepidation, Jenny again organized transport to the hospital. Miraculously, two of the men who had left the town on death’s door returned a month later in good health. It was a turning point not only for the patients, but for Jenny. She had found a new purpose in her work. Her next step was to reach out to fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Kevin Fiori.

Hope for Tomorrow Jenny had first met Kevin during an early visit to his site in the northern city of Kara, the regional capital of Kara state. Kevin gave a presentation about his work with the small community of people living with HIV/AIDS,

Kevin Fiore and Jenny Schechter open a Hope Through Health satellite center in 2005 in Bafiole, where Jenny served earlier as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Standing in white shirt is another PCV, Chris Hamon, who worked at the clinic.

38 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

called AED/Lidaw—or Association Espoir Pour Demain (“Hope for Tomorrow”). Lidaw is the Kabiye word for hope.

After the talk, she approached Kevin with questions that, in the finest Peace Corps tradition, were best discussed over Castel beer in the local bar. From the beginning, Kevin was struck by Jenny’s curiosity and how she asked very specific questions, such as “How are you building your organization?”

Kevin Fiori had arrived in Togo the year before Jenny, in 2003, armed with a Masters in public health—and a big heart.

When he was assigned to Kara, he spent six months observing community groups.

At one event, when word spread that anti-retroviral drugs might be available in Togo—a man from AED/Lidaw said they needed to have them: “We deserve to have them!” After attending too many funerals,

After attending too many funerals, Kevin was struck by the courage of these people who believed their lives were worth fighting for. Their determination galvanized Kevin to join with them, and he has never looked back.

Kevin was struck by the courage of these people who believed their lives were worth fighting for. Their determination galvanized Kevin to join with them, and he has never looked back.

Kevin was inspired by Rose Assi, whom he describes as his best friend in Togo. Both her husband and her child had died of HIV/AIDS. When the husband’s family found out she was HIV positive, they kicked her out of her house—and AED/Lidaw was the only place left for her to go. When Rose found out that her husband had been unfaithful and that one of his girlfriends had also died of HIV/ AIDS, Rose offered to take care of their child. Today, she is taking care of many AIDS orphans. Kevin’s voice is full of emotion when he speaks about Rose.

In the early years, Kevin partnered with a ministry of health worker, Christophe

Gbeleou, who was a founder of the AEDLidaw community. Christophe is now country director for Hope Through Health, the U.S. name for the NGO that grew out of that community Christophe had worked with many other Peace Corps Volunteers but from the moment they met, Christophe later told another Volunteer, “Kevin was different. … he really wanted to work.”

Both shared a strong work ethic.

Kevin says, “I have never come across a harder worker than Christophe.” He says no job is beneath Christophe, that “… he still makes home visits on weekends and treats everyone from the medical director to the janitors with the same respect.”

Starting with Kara Kevin was the most unlikely super volunteer, says Louise Krumm, who was country director at the time. She calls it “leading from the back.” She convinced U.S. Ambassador Karl Hofmann to use his funds for the Kara clinic. The community built it. Kevin told his brother to reach out to friends for support to supply the clinic. Kevin and Jenny stress the crucial role that family, friends and donors have played in the organization’s growth.

Once the Kara clinic was up and running, people started coming from other under-served communities. Kevin was anguished when he realized that “people were making a cruel choice of not eating or not sending a child to school—in order to make the trip to the clinic that might save their lives.” When the idea of a satellite clinic came up, Kevin says, “Enter Jenny.”

The two Volunteers set up the first satellite clinic in Bafilo, next to Jenny’s town of Koumondé. Now there are nine clinics operating in northern Togo: Kara, Bafilo, Ketao, Kante, Kabou, Djamde, Kpindi, Sarakawa and Adabawere, a periurban neighborhood of Kara.

Jenny and Kevin developed a strong bond in Peace Corps, sharing “the same anger and outrage” at inequities in the healthcare system. But they were not a couple. Louise Krumm says, “Everybody knew they should get married.” Eventually,

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WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 39

they did. They moved to Seattle where children, Jenny is sensitive to the mothers she received two Masters’ degrees and he in Togo. As an executive occasionally finished medical school and a residency. meeting with a room full of men, Jenny While Jenny and Kevin were in has experienced a sharp learning curve.

Seattle, Hope Through Health continued “We are still shocked sometimes at the to operate in Togo and weathered some level of sexism out there,” she says. “I have challenging economic times. learned from this and am making it part The year 2012 was a pivotal one for of my mission to empower women.”

Hope Through Health. Jenny’s life was For inspiration, she points to Elise busy enough when she was working Warga, Hope Through Health’s chief full time, going to graduate school, and operating officer. Fourteen years ago, the volunteering with Hope Through Health. group of people living with HIV/AIDS But when their first baby, Julien, was needed a treasurer. Elise volunteered, born, “I realized something had to give.” So she persuaded the HTH board of directors to hire her as full-time chief executive officer. In 2012, she decided she wanted to lead Hope Through Health full time as CEO and convinced the board to believe in her and make it happen.

In less than five years, HTH has grown demonstrably and made the bold decision to expand the medical services already offered to persons living with HIV/AIDS. While more babies were being born HIVfree, the mothers were now concerned that their babies were falling ill from malaria and other treatable diseases. So the clinics expanded to include maternal child health and pediatric care.

A member of the staff and a young patient outside the clinic.

Empowering other women Today, HTH has 100 staff in Togo: 40 community health workers, nurses, physician’s assistants and midwives in the nine clinics, and program managers, accountants, technological, data entry and support staff for the organization.

Kevin wears multiple medical and teaching hats at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, New York, while serving as the chief strategy officer for HTH. Jenny has thrown herself into leading HTH, and learned how to shape the direction of her work. One of those lessons was women’s empowerment. As the mother of two

even though she only had a fourth grade education. Since then, armed with determination and on-the-job tech training, she now manages a million dollar budget. “Elise is my role model,” says Jenny, “and a symbol for all the patients who walk through the door.” Elise gives motivational speeches and helps to change perceptions about women’s roles in Togo.

Donors ask whether it wouldn’t be better for her to run HTH from Togo. She is quick to reply that HTH runs very well from within Togo.

In 2016, the National Peace Corps Association honored Jenny and Kevin

40 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

with the Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service.

For Louise Krumm, who nominated them, the key was that “their Peace Corps service never stopped.” Another nominator, Ryan MCannell, also cited their firm adherence to local ownership—and how HTH “moves at the speed of the village rather than the deadlines of donor agencies.” That reinforces Kevin’s early management structure that Hope Through Health was designed so that those living with HIV would have a say, and could veto programs that they didn’t feel weren’t helpful to patients.

Now based in New York, Kevin and Jenny make at least one or two trips a year to Togo.

Before their oldest son, Julien, was two—they brought him to Kara, where he was embraced by the community. His middle name, after all, is Lidaw—the Kabiye word for “hope.”

Now, whenever they visit, the first question is “How’s Lidaw?”

And when they’re not there—as Kevin’s good friend Selifa says, “You’re not allowed to come back without the boys.”

Christophe and Rose and Elise and Ahmed and Selifa now join Jenny and Kevin and hundreds of others in Togo’s movement that has an ambitious goal: to ensure access to quality health care for the more than 5 million people in Togo.

Can it be done?

Perhaps the best answer can be found in the motto of AED/Lidaw. “Lidaw-yé.”

There is hope.

Kitty Thuermer grew up in India, Ghana and Germany and served in the Peace Corps in Mali from 1977 to 1979. She later worked for the National Peace Corps Association, Catholic Relief Services, Population Services International, and other non-government organizations.

AROUND THE NPCA

GROUP NEWS HIGHLIGHTS A look at what NPCA affiliates are up to

By Jonathan Pearson HOW TO TALK TO CONGRESS In preparation for this year’s National Days of Action, RPCVs of Phoenix advocacy coordinator Alexandria Dresher, designed a set of materials explaining the key principles and how to effectively lobby. The kit included lots of information about members of the Arizona delegation, principles of successful lobbying and the components of the NPCA’s agenda for advocacy. Before setting up their meetings, members met for a “Speaking to Legislators” workshop and studied Dresher’s materials. They came away empowered with the knowledge of how to contact and communicate with their lawmakers. They also felt “not so alone” in their frustration with current political events. Confident and focused, the Arizona advocates made an appointment to meet with Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic, at her 9th District office. And they are now ready to meet more of Arizona’s Congressional delegation to advocate for Peace Corps and other core issues.

MONTANA FAMILY The Western Montana RPCVs has developed a strong sense of community in the past year.

One of the major events of the group was their 25th annual Goat Chase Retreat in June, celebrating Western Montana and the Western Montana Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. The affiliate reports that “a real sense of family and community” has been fostered by its traditional retreat, regular web site, monthly meetings, newsletters and e-mail updates and reminders of events the group has built. They have also reached out to promote Peace Corps with about 15 presentations in area schools and

participating in International Week at the University of Montana.

COMMITTED TO COLOMBIA

president, Arleen Cheston, and member Michael Band talked about their Peace Corps experiences.

Since the early 1990s Friends of SKYPING ABOUT BEES Colombia invested more than a The West Virginia RPCVs group quarter of a million dollars in schools, established contact with many of the 27 institutions and state residents now individuals in Colombia serving in more than WELCOME and in support 20 countries as Peace The NPCA has 163 affiliates of the Friends of Corps Volunteers. The with the addition of three Colombia archive at group is also setting up new groups: Women of Peace American University in a skype-based program Corps Legacy, the Peace Corps Washington D.C. Last for Ritchie County Community for the Support year in conjunction Beekeepers to learn of Refugees, and Share with more than 100 more about beekeeping Your Service: A Story-Based RPCVs from Colombia projects run by Peace met at the Peace Corps Corps Volunteers. The Approach to Social Justice.

Connect conference affiliate funded a solar to celebrate past achievements and coffee bean drying project in Panama and a learn more about the work of new Peace youth camp in Swaziland.

Corps Volunteers serving there. Those Washington, D.C. events included a AMBASSADOR’S HONOR celebration at the Colombian Embassy The U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso, the where Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzon Honorable Tulinabo S. Mushingi, received expressed his gratitude for the service of the second annual Award for Peace from all Colombia RPCVs. The NPCA affiliate the Friends of Burkina Faso. The award is given to an individual who has made a substantial contribution in a powerful and innovative way to the development of Burkina Faso or to the growth of cross-cultural understanding in the service of peace.

“Ambassador Mushingi is widely recognized and admired for his clear—and reciprocated—love for the people of Burkina Faso,” said the NPCA affilate’s president, Michael Lavoie. “Since 2013 he has advocated for development throughout the country and has proactively sought out promising synergies with the United States,” Colombia RPCVs Missy Gilbert, Andrea Doyle, and Katie Johnstonsaid LaVoie. “The Ambassador Davis joined the celebration at the Colombian embassy during last provided calm and steadfast summer’s Peace Corps Connect conference

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 41

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support for peace during the political upheaval in 2014, through the attempted coup d’état of September 2015, through the peaceful election of the new democratically elected government in late 2015, and at present as that government addresses today’s challenges.”

Mushingi worked for Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, DR Congo, Niger, and the Central African Republic and lectured at Dartmouth College. At the State Department he was posted to Malaysia, Mozambique, Zambia, and Morocco, and worked in Washington D.C. before his nomination for ambassador in 2013.

FLYING IN THE DESERT The RPCVs of Southern Arizona, an affiliate that has adopted the name ‘Desert Doves,’ contributed an estimated $7,300 to six Peace Corps Partnership

“I chose Duquesne’s MBA Sustainable Business Practices program after my time in the Peace Corps because it combined my passion for business, sustainable development and traveling.”

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42 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

programs last year. Four of the donations supported water and sanitation projects in Benin, Togo, The Gambia and Malawi.

Funds were also used to help renovate a health clinic in Ghana and purchase a hammer mill for a small community in Zambia, enabling the town to produce maize. In six years the Desert Doves have donated more than $32,000 to support development projects through the Peace Corps Partnership Program.

NEW GROUPS Four new groups have affiliated with NPCA: RPCVs of the Villages, RPCVs of USDA, RPCVs of NIH, and Friends of Indonesia.

Jonathan Pearson served in Micronesia from 1987 to 1989 and is the NPCA’s advocacy director.

COMMUNITY NEWS

RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS OF OUR COMMUNITY

By Peter V. Deekle BOLIVIA Shannon Trilli (2005-2007) was recently appointed director for corporate responsibility by Catalent Pharma Solutions, a provider of advanced delivery technologies and development solutions for drugs, biologics and consumer health products. She served in Bolivia as a microenterprise development volunteer.

CHILE Samuel Cabot III (1963-1965) was recently elected to the Endicott College board of trustees. He is the fourth generation of his family to head the Samuel Cabot, Inc. a Newburyport, Massachusetts manufacturer of wood finishing and care products. Endicott is a small liberal arts college in Beverly, Massachusetts.

ETHIOPIA William Canby Jr. (1962-1964) and Uganda (1964-1966) is one of three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals who maintained the stay on President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. After his Peace Corps service as associate and then deputy director, he became country director in Uganda (1964-1966). Canby returned to Ethiopia in 1999 with three other RPCVs to meet with the presidents of Ethiopia and Eritrea to seek an end to a border war between the two countries.

GHANA Betsy Bullard (1967-1970) returned to Anloga, Ghana to deliver instruction,

classroom management, counseling, eye exams and glasses to students through the International Eye Institute, a nonprofit in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, founded by ophthalmologist Dr. Justin StormoGipson.

GUATEMALA & BELIZE Casey DeMoss (2000-2002; Belize 20022003) stepped down after six years as head of Alliance for Affordable Energy, a Louisiana non-profit agency fostering energy efficiency programs and customer savings.

She learned the value of relationships and listening to community voices during her Peace Corps service among the Mayan people. A Louisiana native, she has worked to protect her home, culture, and coastline from damaging wetland and energy policies.

GUYANA Katie Miller (2012-2014) answered Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh’s call to create a welcoming city and is working with the Latino Food Alliance to encourage Latinoowned corner stores to offer customers healthy food choices. Miller is a University of Maryland Baltimore County Shriver Center Peaceworker who is working to educate the community about Healthy Corner Store Initiatives.

IVORY COAST Skyler Badenoch (2001-2002) has been appointed chief executive officer for Hope for Haiti, a non-profit organization in Naples, Florida dedicated to empowering rural communities in Haiti for a better life, particularly for its children. The organization offers solutions to problems caused by poverty in rural communities.

Skyler has managed international programs in Haiti, Nicaragua, and Malawi for buildOn for the past 10 years.

MALAYSIA The Kennedy Health Alliance’s chief medical officer, Timothy Dombrowski (1971-1973) received a community service award by the Philadelphia Business Journal at the organization’s annual Health Care Innovator Awards event held in Philadelphia in October.

NICARAGUA Tim Hoisington (2012-2014) organized a Peace Corps Storytelling Night on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder during Peace Corps Week to commemorate President Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps. The CU Boulder Peace Corps group hosted the event for community members to celebrate the travel experiences of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and to engage them in a local network.

ADVERTISER INDEX Bryn Mawr College 42 Columbia University SIPA 21 Duquesne University 42 Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health 36 Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing Cover 2 Kennesaw State University 12 Medical School for International Health 18 NPCA 10, 18, 32 Tufts University, The Fletcher School 30 Tulane University 39 Western Illinois University, Institute for Rural Affairs 30 World Learning, School for International Training 2 University of San Francisco 26 University of South Carolina 1 Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies 2

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 43

PANAMA Christopher Upchurch (2010-2012) is now an instructor with EF English First, a division of EF Education First, one of the largest providers of English language learning in the world. He was stationed in Chagres National Park, located just north of Panama City, and worked on lesson and action plans to help groups of indigenous peoples improve their financial outlook.

PARAGUAY Adam Moreno (2009-2011), a forest ecologist, has been awarded a fellowship from NASA to do research at its Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California’s Silicon Valley. At the Ames Center, Moreno will do research with assistance from NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer and data from the space agency’s satellite system. Moreno will use these tools to develop a model for forecasting when a forest is reaching the verge of catastrophic collapse.

PERU Ron Arias (19631965) has published in paperback his most recent book, The Wetback and Other Stories. Arias is a former senior writer

and correspondent for People magazine and People en Español. He is also a highly regarded author whose novel The Road to Tamazunchale has been recognized as a milestone in Chicano literature.

SOLOMON ISLANDS Tom Weisner (1980-1985) retired after serving three terms as mayor of Aurora, Illinois in November 2016.

During his mayoral tenure he fostered a general commitment to infrastructure improvements, including getting a bridge rebuilt on average of one for each year in office; attention to the city’s lower violent crime rate; the growing redevelopment of downtown; an improved image outside the city; and a commitment to Aurora’s place in the Chicago region.

SOUTH AFRICA Sharon Milligan (2013-2015) taught at a public Christian school in a small village called Tafelkop in South Africa’s Limpopo province.

Milligan worked with the Nelson Mandela Library Books Project to support reading in her South African community. She continues her volunteer service, including Operation Christmas Child (providing gifts to school children) now in her U.S. hometown community.

Stay informed.

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SOUTH KOREA The U.S. Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s nomination of experienced diplomat Joseph R. Donovan Jr. (1973-1975) as the next U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, replacing the recently retired Robert O. Blake Jr. Ambassador Donovan’s previous posts were in Taiwan, China, South Korea and Qatar.

THAILAND John Miao (1989-1991) launched the Spelling Coach ECN, a knowledgesharing online platform connecting expert spelling coaches with aspiring and competitive spellers. Miao works for Brainsy, Inc. and is business development director of the Spelling Coach ECN. Individuals can now consult one-on-one with a champion speller or expert coach to study or directly glean competitive strategies. Miso’s development of the Spelling Coach ECN was inspired by the participation of his daughter, Bernadette, in the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

VENEZUELA David Tierney (1966-1969) recently received the Arizona Valley Leadership Man of the Year Award. Tierney is a partner in the Phoenix law firm of Sacks Tierney and specializes in alternative dispute resolution in commercial construction. Before Peace Corps, he was a civil rights activist engaged in voter registration in Mississippi. As a Volunteer, he served as assistant to the city manager in Barguisimeto, Venezuela, and later became regional director for Peace Corps in Venezuela.

Follow us on Instagram at @peacecorpsconnect Join our LinkedIn group. Search for “Peace Corps Network”

44 | WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ National Peace Corps Association

Peter V. Deekle is coordinator of NPCA Achievements. He served in Iran from 1968 to 1970.

IN MEMORIAM

W

e remember those within the Peace Corps community who passed away in the last several months, and thank them for their service to our nation.

Brent K. Ashabranner, 12/1/16

Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” (Fontana) Crepeau, 10/10/16

Melvin Asterken, 1/2/17

BOTSWANA

Robert K. Estrada, 2/1/17

Irene Oriend, 2/11/17

Beth Gittins, 10/23/16 Clyde Bruce Mackenzie, 11/7/16

BRAZIL Jo Carole Dawkins, 11/27/16

Dean Michael Mahon, 10/18/16

Elroy Lyman (Roy) Decker Jr., 12/13/16

William “Bill” Mangin, 1/22/17

John W. Fryer, 11/11/16 Merle Hunt, 2/6/17

Leo E. Palensky, 2/3/17

Kenneth Ray Persinger, 12/11/16

MULTIPLE COUNTRIES OF SERVICE Mary M. Dunn. St. Lucia, Barbados, 12/30/16 Adelheid Elisabeth Irvin. Liberia, Guinea, 11/23/16 William James Kennedy Jr. Congo, Poland, Mauritania, Uganda, 12/28/16 John Clement McLaughlin. Costa Rica, Philippines, 1/23/17 John Simpson Jr. Philippines, Papua New Guinea, 12/13/16 Michael James Squires. Mali; Togo, 11/21/16

AFGHANISTAN Paul Richard Bitter, 12/30/16

ALGERIA Magdalene E. Voelmle, 1/29/17

BELIZE

James Cornell Riordan, 12/30/16 Mary Ellen Sessa, posted 12/11/16

Maura Smith, 1/3/17 Ty Vignone, posted 11/27/16

FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA Richard T. Boley, 12/8/16

FIJI James Lewis Holman, 12/20/16 Shirley Ebbe Lyon, 7/31/16 William Bradley Thompson, 10/7/16

CHILE Susan Crocker, 10/12/16

GHANA

John Daly, 11/21/16 Bruce Gordon, 11/2/16 Philip Charles Morse, 12/19/16

CHINA Sharon L. Pedersen, 1/15/17

COLOMBIA Carolyn Jane Ahlert, 10/21/16 J. Michael Davis, 12/5/16 Merritt Alvin Hindall, 12/25/16 Richard Leo “Rocky” Kunz, 10/6/16 Dale Lasater, 10/21/16 Donald Odermann, 1/11/17

Ardith Gaylord Grover, 9/14/16

BELIZE

COSTA RICA

James E. Linton, 2/4/17

Norman Singer, 10/31/16

William Donald Walker, 1/8/17

Carol Jean Walker, 10/17/16

Carol L. Guerette, 12/9/16

James Joseph (Jim) Plorde, 1/11/17

Jana Ploss, 11/14/16

ECUADOR Lori Fischer, 11/21/16

BENIN

Betty J. Stuart, 12/1/16

Stephen Connors, 11/13/16

ETHIOPIA/ERITREA Will G. Hall, 1/3/17

Thomas Livingston, 1/24/17

NIGERIA

UKRAINE

G. Stephen “Chico” Christopher, 1/9/17

Peter Brigham, 6/22/16 Bob Cohen, 12/6/16

Ashley Hardaway Theriot, 1/5/17

Steve Clapp, 11/30/16

VENEZUELA

Nicholas Thiemann, 10/27/16

Dr. Daniel Harvey Gadra, 10/28/16

Thomas Yeoman, 5/30/16

Patricia Ann Nelson, 11/15/16

PANAMA

George Patrick “Pat” Seery, 1/29/17

JORDAN Bernadette Michel, 10/20/16

KAZAKHSTAN Keith R. Anderson, 10/21/16 David Willaim Altenbernd, 1/23/17

Charles H. Antholt, 11/12/16

Mary (Mlodzik) Redding, 1/28/17 David Ricky, 10/24/16

KYRGYZSTAN

LESOTHO Thomas T. Ashby, 1/14/17

LIBERIA Susan H. (Senna) Connolly, 12/11/16

MACEDONIA Michael J. Murphy, 12/25/16

Lesa B. Morrison, posted 12/27/16

MALAWI

Lorissa Wilfong-Holt, 1/16/17

PAKISTAN

KOREA

Kathleen Lozano, 11/10/16

HUNGARY

Thomas Nolan Doyle, 10/27/16

KENYA

Wayne Gordon Stegman, posted 12/18/16

Christopher Noble Jr., 12/27/16

Karen Hussain Meyer, 8/14/16 Michael Curley, 10/9/16

MALI

Gary Reinhold Beckman, 11/29/16

Benjamin Adam Stull, 12/1/16

Richard Lee Krajec, 2/6/17

MICRONESIA Bob Adair, 1/29/17 Gilbert N. Hersh, 12/3/16

John Archibald Jr., 2/10/17 Norman Beauvais, 1/2/17

Marcel H. Gregoire, 11/6/16

Gloria Bennett, 11/17/16

Mariana Hernandez, 10/30/16

Lawrence Bowmar, 2/12/17

John Harry Lindgren Jr., 10/23/16

Lawrence Boyce, posted 12/12/16

Michael Malley, 11/26/16

Samuel Stephens DuVall, 2/10/17

Todd Louis Massari, 10/22/16

Mary Frohock, 1/14/17

Janice Moffitt, 10/31/16

William Glenn Green, 10/15/16

Linda Nehr, 10/19/16

Celia Hatch, 1/28/17

Edith Pickens, 11/20/16

Thomas Andrew Lassiter, 10/13/16

Mary Margaret Ryan, 10/22/16

Mary Frances “Mitzi” Likar, 1/10/17

Joyce Dorshow Smiley, 10/14/16

Felicity MacGrain, 11/10/16

Donald A. Tolen, 11/23/16

Stuart W. McKenzie, 9/15/16

SAMOA

Michael Joseph Needham Jr., 10/18/16

Prudence K. “Prue” Draper, 1/21/17

Betty Rose (Sanders) Stewart, 11/19/16

Joseph Policano, 1/27/17

COUNTRY OF SERVICE NOT SPECIFIED

PHILIPPINES

Holly Henderson, 9/6/16

INDIA

Henry Elbert Mullins, 12/13/16

TURKEY

IRAN

LATVIA

Jean Helena (Holt) French, posted 1/17/17

Robert Murphy, 1/31/17

Thomas Sheehy, 12/3/16 Barbara Bryan, 10/17/16

Charles Kingsley, 12/29/16

Courtney Anne Lee Dunham, 12/27/16

George Simpson Barton, M.D., 10/15/16

TUNISIA

Thomas W. Price, 12/23/16

GUINEA-BISSAU

Jim Couzzourt, 11/7/16

NAMIBIA

M. Gregg Smith, 10/31/16

Irene Stotts, 12/2/16

HONDURAS

Jill Ann Fain, 11/7/16

NEPAL

Lyle Murphy, 11/16/16

Carol Ann Heaphy, 8/9/16

James A. Shyne Jr., 2/3/17

THAILAND

Jacquelyn Smith, 11/4/16 Nancy Mantle, 1/30/17

We welcome you to send information on additional members of the Peace Corps community by sending a message to obituary@peacecorpsconnect.org.

STAFF

MOROCCO

SENEGAL Karen Freudenberger, 12/1/16

Barbara Rogers, 1/8/17 Kevin Barry Rogers, 2/1/17 Thomas J. Spring, 12/27/16 Dorothy Wadhams Svoboda, 1/16/17

SWAZILAND

Donald Timberlake, 10/25/16

Antoine Delity, 1/13/17

Rose Yates, 12/30/16

WorldView ∙ Spring 2017 ∙ www.PeaceCorpsConnect.org | 45