(00:00:00) You know say what you will about President John Kennedy. He did manage to fire the imagination of young people in this country the ask not what your country can do for you. But what you can do for your country syndrome and perhaps nothing symbolizes that Spirit as much as the Peace Corps set up in 1961, the Peace Corps offered young people a chance to go overseas and help people who needed help and young people responded by the mid-60s despite the subsistence wages that they were being paid 12,500 Peace Corps volunteers were serving in more than 50 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America these days you don't hear as much about the Peace Corps as you did back then but the Peace Corps is still very much alive. The Peace Corps currently has 65 hundred volunteers, including 225 minnesotans serving in 96 countries, and it turns out many of the volunteers. These days are older people including people like Lillian Carter Jimmy Carter's mother who once was a Peace Corps volunteer for joining us today to bring Up to date on all aspects of the Peace Corps is the Peace Corps is director. Carol Bellamy is Bellamy was sworn in last October and she is the first former Peace Corps volunteer to actually had the Peace Corps. Thanks for coming (00:01:12) in. Well, my pleasure. Thank (00:01:13) you. How is it that the U of M is ended up as one of your prime sources for (00:01:17) volunteers. Thank you. This is my day to visit Minnesota schools. I just came from Bancroft Elementary where we have a worldwide school program. We connect up Volunteers in the field with Elementary and secondary schools around the country. We actually have 4,000 classrooms connected up with volunteers and you're right. I'm heading off to the University of Minnesota University of Minnesota has been over the years the sixth strongest contributor of Peace Corps volunteers, but in recent years actually is ranking number three in the country of volunteers, and we're going to be signing some additional agreements in terms of encouraging some of their students in the forestry program to come into Peace Corps. I've always gotten great. We've gotten great just folks from University of Minnesota with backgrounds in agriculture with backgrounds in teaching English teachers science teachers Math teachers and then just across a whole range of fields. We always come and recruit hearted Minnesota. Now, is there (00:02:20) any age limit to the volunteers (00:02:22) anymore? We have to be at least 18. The law says, you've got to be 18 and American citizen, but there isn't an age limit and indeed in those early years. So those years as you said when John Kennedy really put the spirit into Peace Corps getting going and assigned his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver and said run with the ball. Although I always like to point out when I'm at least in this state that Hubert Humphrey had that first idea about it in John Kennedy ran with it, but we are having now more diversity in our age of volunteers. We have 10% of our volunteers are over the age of 50. I was a little worried because last week our oldest fondant volunteer Arthur good friend who was 87 Finished his service and hungry and I was a little worried we were going to go down but I understand now our oldest volunteers 85 and she is working on an environmental project in Ecuador 85 you have yes 85 and obviously we still have a lot of those really bright-eyed bushy-tailed 20 year olds or two in their 20s, 24 25 26. The the average age of Peace Corps volunteers now 30 the mean is still around that 27 years of age. What you do have to be is in pretty good health as you might expect. I mean Peace Corps is not Club Med and whether you're in a an apartment in in Saratov and Russia or whether you're in a thatched roof, it's not so much a hot, but it's that thatch roof building in the Philippines or wherever you live. If you live in the mountains of Nepal or on an island out in Micronesia, these are pretty tough assignments. And so you've got to be up to it, but you know, we take it into account I can say this because I'm over 50 we take into account that once you Eating that kind of educational things don't entirely work perfectly, but you still got to be in pretty good (00:04:05) health. Uh-huh. Now do you have any what's the focus these days for people with (00:04:11) specialized (00:04:12) skills or can the traditional old liberal arts type person show up and say take me in I want to (00:04:19) go overseas. Well, the answer is both and I want to make sure it's both there's no question that we are looking for people with very specific skills today and that and we recruit a lot looking for people. For example, we're in all four regions of the world Africa where we still have our largest number of volunteers Asia Latin America and more recently in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and we're in our traditional Fields like Agriculture and health and education but in education while we've always taught English as a second language and continued to do that. We also have math and science teachers. We have special ed teachers. We have teacher trainers today. We've always been in agriculture, but Now we also do an addition to things like crop diversification and basic agriculture. We're looking for people with a background in agribusiness or experience in agriculture. As an example. You do not have to be a college graduate in any of our areas. If you bring the experience in health, we've always done maternal and child health. But today we also look for nutritionists or physician assistants or we look for people might who might be a generalist but who for example in Thailand and Cameroon and Malawi and Molly will at the request of those governments work in AIDS prevention programs. We you know, we try and be relevant our two fastest growing areas where we're looking for people or people who have experience in business that could be a ba in business science or you could have started a business and run it for 15 years. What or you might have come out of a bank or you may have just started a business while you were in college. We're also looking for people in the environmental area. We actually with 900 plus Volunteers in natural resources from forestry to rebuilding Coral reef areas have different countries to working on Urban sanitation programs. We're one of the largest if not the largest International environmental organization. And we use people who may have worked in a summer for the National Park Service or we use people also who really have advanced degrees. So it is a real balance. We always ask people to call Peace Corps that great old 800 number or in this area in the Twin Cities. We actually have a recruiting office in Minnesota in Minneapolis. (00:06:28) Our Guest today is Carol Bellamy, who is the director of the Peace Corps. Let's go to the phones first caller on the line. Hi. Hi. Yeah, I listen to mrs. Bellamy when she was I believe at the national Press Club speaking and she said that she did she often didn't hear a rarely heard anything critical about the Peace Corps and well, I've got a few critical remarks keep them short. Okay? Okay, I was A Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay in the mid-80s and well, I find that this trend or the emphasis on Specialists and experts is is something that tends to not up build the self-esteem of the countries that they're working and I find that generalists had a much better Knack at up building the self-esteem of the countries and and the other thing all the hoopla about older folks in the Peace Corps. I found that older folks are generally more set in their ways. They have more difficulty with language and there's often an attitude of let's go change the natives and and I found that there were some problems with that. Can I take my answer on the air place? So we're actually (00:07:55) agree with both things that you said. I don't think that Peace Corps should be just solely. Very very specific skills indeed. I've tried to suggest to some of our country staff that if the country is requesting skills that are so excessive or if they are just requesting people with letters after their names because it looks good. That's not good for us. We really want to make sure that we can provide a good balance in the Peace Corps for people who bring skills because we are in development agency, but also have that that wonderful talent that particularly are generalists as we call them bringing that is to be flexible and to be able to be willing to change with the circumstances. So I've put out a directive at the Peace Corps headquarters at least while I'm director. We're going to have a very good balance of generalist and so-called very skilled people. Also most of our generalist these days, you know, unlike me I was in early Peace Corps. I was just totally unqualified to do anything most of our generalist these days have really had in their life whether they are a English Lit graduate or a or Communications or poli-sci. They generally speak a little bit of another language which already gives them a leg up. Or they've done interesting things in their life to and they bring those experiences to Peace Corps secondly with respect to older volunteers. We still do want to have diversity in terms of age. But actually we have actually learned and I can say this because I'm over the age of 50 we've learned what you just mentioned. It takes a little longer for some of our older mom tears to learn the language. So we're going to try to mend our training a little bit to take into account when there are older volunteers the fact that we may have to treat teach them a little longer the Latin the language skills. We also have learned quite honestly and this applies to older and younger volunteers that we have to do a little bit more on our cross cultural training so that people understand that we as Peace Corps volunteers are not there to tell other people how they should act but rather to work with other people are our counterparts to try and and actually if you work together, we found that those projects where people work together not where we instruct but work together. Those are the projects that were the most successful on so I happen to think your comments are quite valid. I actually I have heard that many times. I didn't mean to suggest that the Press Club or here that there are complaints there have always been complaints. Hopefully we're responding to some and I'm sure we're going to screw up on (00:10:09) others in terms of interacting with the culture of a country do volunteers put their two cents worth in and if for example if they see what they would perceive to be kind of continuing human rights problems that sort of thing today metal in that or do they just go along with the flow and join the oppressors or why because that piles that work out well to (00:10:35) tell you the truth each individual volunteer does his or her own thing but on balance Peace Corps is to supposed to stay out of the politics of a country. I mean, we really are there. We are not a government to government program. We are there as a Grassroots development age / called cross cultural agency. And so we are more effective in the long run working in the community wherever it is whether it's in a urban area or a rural area. And whatever part of the world it is, I mean we do we had Peace Corps try and make some judgments in terms of for example where we will place our volunteers so they won't be in the middle of a situation where there might be some civil war going on or some safety problem or some cultural happening that will that would have a very negative impact in which we think it's inappropriate in this case. But we do urge Peace Corps volunteers to stay out of politics while there are Peace Corps volunteer. We they can have their own personal views and I can assure you I've never met a Peace Corps volunteer or a return volunteer who didn't have strong views on on matters, but those are there to be their views and not to be part of some kind of activity really they their challenge is to try and work at whatever they're working at whether they're teaching or or farming or working in Fisheries project. That's that's really their Challenge and we urge them to do (00:11:54) is take another caller with a question for Carol Bellamy. Hello? Hello. My name is John. I'm calling from the Gee, thanks Carol for a noting the involvement of Humphrey in the Peace Corps. And as a former volunteer myself, I think the greatest benefit that I received from the Peace Corps, which is an Uruguayan. The 60s was the fact that a sparked the spirit of new discovery and an event and certainly it made me more aware of cultures. And in fact my wife served with me and by the way, she right now is in Guatemala nurturing a linkage between Guatemalan women and women from Bemidji. My questions are two one is that is most of the training done now in the in in the host country and second our families being permitted to go into the Peace Corps. I supposed to just single individuals (00:12:46) the actually I had a vile. I had a one of the volunteers in my Guatemala three group. I was a third group in Guatemala and although Guatemala wanted to wear very small groups was from Bemidji. So it was my first introduction to Bemidji back. In 1963, I being a kid from the New York area. The answer is most of the training today in the early years of Peace Corps just for your listeners. So most of the training was done in the United States, for example, our group trained at New Mexico State University. And in those days this was early Peace Corps. They thought you had to go through like Marine boot camp training. I remember we had something like drown proofing they would tie you tie your hands behind your back and throw you into the new New Mexico State Pool and say do something about this. Well needless to say when I went to Guatemala is a volunteer. I didn't fall into some kind of river or lake with my hands tied behind me, but we didn't quite know what we were doing in those early days. But thank goodness. We again we had that kind of spirit today. We know a little bit more about what we're doing and most all of our training. I think we barely do any training now out I'm sorry in the United States almost all of our training is overseas. I would say 90% of it is in the country where you will actually be working and living and that's good for several reasons because We always train language. We think language is very important in Peace Corps. You're dealing with people. You can't just yell at people in English. If you're going to be a Peace Corps volunteer to we try and train culture three, we try and train on technical skills. And for we trained about health and safety issues among others. And so we trained in the country right now with respect to couples with children. We do take couples. I will tell you this is one of the areas of Peace Corps struggles a bit because we can't just take the one spouse and say even if the if they're willing to pay for each other we can't just say one spouse can come and the other can just be the spouse of the Peace Corps volunteer. We need to place both. I've I'm urging that we take a hard look at really working hard to place more couples and we have we have some but it is it is tended to be a bit of a struggle for us children. Can they take children alone? Basically, we prefer couples at this point if they're going to be couples who are not bringing children (00:14:52) back to the phone. So another (00:14:53) callers although I would I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt this caller. I do want to say however, we are very I always say this were very profound. I believe that more people have gotten married as a result of the Peace Corps. So I know I'm people to think that we're not that we don't care about families out there. There are more husbands and wives and relatives because of Peace Corps experience. I'm sorry to interrupt that (00:15:11) color. Now, let's go to the phone and say hey, that's okay. This is another couple question. I'm a graduate student in the masters of social work program at University of Minnesota in Duluth. My wife is an elementary school teacher. I know I one time Peace Corps had a commitment of two years are there shorter programs and are they available or will they be available in the future and now hang up and listen? Thank you. (00:15:41) And that's a very good question. The answer to your question with respect to Peace. Corps is no there aren't short of programs. Now that is not to say that we in Peace Corps don't think that you can work a shorter time in a country and make a difference. We do believe you can but our experience over 30 years. In fact, we just on March first celebrated our 33rd anniversary. Experiences at for Peace Corps the two-year stint or even a little bit longer makes the most sense and let me explain why I mentioned before that. We train our volunteers we take very seriously our training. It isn't just something that it isn't just a map on the wall that says this is Senegal. Here's here are some of the places in Senegal or or here is Uzbekistan. Here's how you get around. We really take two to three months and we train our Volunteers in all of those things. I said and more and then we asked of them two years and our experience over a number of years is it takes you a while once you get to your community or your village or your town or your urban area it takes a while before you get on you figure out what you're doing. Now. It doesn't mean we don't have brilliant volunteers. We have wonderful volunteers. They're great. They're great Wheeler Dealers, they figure out the way to get things done, but you get there and you find you have to kind of accommodate to the culture learn the language a little bit better. Get a sense of who are the change agents who are the people you're going to be working with and our experience has been that for the first OU three six nine months. It really is a getting a accommodated situation and we have volunteer. We bring our volunteers back in for interim training in those period of time and we find in the beginning of the beginning the volunteers are sitting there going. Oh my God, why did I do this? How am I going to get through two years? I can't believe I'm here. You know, I can't get good food or you know, I was sick last week or don't they understand? I'm here and I know what I'm doing and you know, they go through these kind of Trends and we find though by the time of kind of near the end of that first year on starting at that second year the city and going what do you mean I have to go home and in 12 or 13 months. I'm just getting going on. My projects are working. I don't mean it exactly happens at those points. But we do have experience that for us says that that two years really allows volunteer in many ways to at least have the opportunity to make a difference and really get a sense of the culture what we can do if you check with some of our offices if you only want to do A year or less is we can sometimes refer you. We can't give you access to but refer you to other programs that take people for a shorter (00:17:59) time. Do you still hear the charge that the Peace Corps volunteers are spies for the CIA that agents of the Yankee imperialist that kind of (00:18:09) thing. We do we hear it lasts in places. We've been for longer like Latin America or Africa or parts of Asia, but now that we have volunteers in about nineteen countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, we hear it all the time. Aha Peace Corps volunteers are CIA agents and and I want to a couple things first of all I said before what you had to be to be a Peace Corps volunteer you had to be 18 and you had to be a not a you don't have to be a college graduate to be 18 in an American citizen our legislation actually specifically prohibits. Anybody who's been in intelligence gathering you can't if you've been in the CIA you could be the most wonderful person in the world. You can't be in the Peace Corps. That's not because we're not Americans are patriotic. It just means we've tried to keep That separation nevertheless. For example, the Russians for years. We're told in former Soviet Union people were told Peace Corps CIA. So we're still dealing with that and all we can say to people is no we're not and secondly, you don't have to believe us by hearing us. But watch what we do and I think actually ultimately it's the actions of the Peace Corps volunteers that make it quite clear that they're really not CIA agents (00:19:14) take another caller with a question. Hi your turn. Yes Carol. Yes. I'm really glad that the hands behind the back and into the pools gone. If if I were in Zimbabwe or Zambia Botswana and thrown into a river with my hands tied to crocodiles would be really happy. I'd be (00:19:31) unhappy I know and I bet you they wouldn't eat the Rope on your hand. Say God for your (00:19:35) hands. That would be the last thing that I have a quick question. Do you let especially older volunteers negotiate a little bit about where they could go for instance if we had a real preference of three or four countries? Will the answer. Can I the answer (00:19:52) is we really do not treat any of our volunteers differently. There are no more special volunteers and no more Super volunteers than anybody else. I mean, I don't care if you got an MBA and 20 years of business experience. That's great. And we love you and we think you're great or you may just have graduated last year from some small school with a with a degree in political science. We love you as much. I mean all of our volunteers are special volunteers, we may make some accommodations here and there a little bit for example, if you're in a wheelchair we probably will not send you to a sand-based country, but that doesn't mean that you are excluded from Peace Corps. And if you were older as I said a moment ago we or and maybe your knees while they're good your legs are good, but they're not quite as strong as they may have been before we may not send you to Nepal. We take those things into account on the other hand. We do generally challenge all of our volunteers to be up to the task because we get fourteen thousand good applications a year and we take about four thousand. So we want everybody up to be up to the task as far as specifically Desiring to go to a location. You can always indicate an interest whether you are that 22 year old or that 66 year-old. We will not necessarily guarantee. If we are able to accommodate you we will and I will tell you how that works. For example, if you are somebody who's has worked on a farm got a good deal of agricultural experience and may even have been involved in agribusiness. We're always looking for somebody with those kind of experiences. So you will probably have a little better shot of saying gee I'd only like to work in the Baltic countries or I'd only like to work in an Asian country. It doesn't mean you could particularly pick your village, but you might have a little better shot. If you're more of a generalist probably you're going to have to throw yourself on the You know out there and say here I am and these are the various things I can do. So depending on the skills and the skills requested. You have a better shot of going to where you're asking you can always ask but we don't promise you that you will automatically get there if we can do it we'll do it, but we can't promise. (00:21:56) Let's take another caller with a question. I yes. Hello. My name is Dan am calling from South Minneapolis. Good afternoon. Hi, I found it really interesting that you open the show with the John F Kennedy quote about asking what you can do for your country, but we're talking about an organization that sends people overseas and you know, I can certainly understand the Good Will and the good work that the Peace Corps does but there are problems in this country that have ever similar to problems in third world countries. I was wondering if there's any discussion in the Peace Corps about using resources in word and in certain parts of the United States, I'll hang up now and lesson. Well, first of all, how much does how much does the u.s. Spend on the (00:22:36) Peace Corps? Well, I was just going to say if you consider the Billions and billions of the federal budget and and they're spent for many good things the entire Peace Corps budget and I don't want this to sound like I'm not happy for it. But the entire piece of Peace Corps budget is 219 million dollars. That's am not a be we think we are actually one of the best bangs for the buck our volunteers do get is this volunteers or as somebody said they do get paid a monthly subsistence wage. Its it really literally allows you just to live in that country and the other payment they get at the end of their tour they get 50 right now. It's $5,400. It's basically $200 a month for the months that you were there. And that's a close of service Readjustment allowance. Now when I left Peace Corps and 65 when I was finished the amount was last but it allowed me to go to my first year of law school some volunteers use it to go to graduate school some travel some just use it for other things. So in the long run our money doesn't go to building big huge projects that goes to our volunteers and we really I think are good bang for the buck on the other hand. We know there are many (00:23:39) people. Rollins back here. (00:23:40) We think that by working overseas. We are also making a contribution back to the United States as well in many ways. First of all our own volunteers, they get trained they come back about 10 percent of the state department foreign service agencies World Bank a ID care UNICEF many of the organizations that work in improving the quality of life around the world are in the foreign assistance area about 10 percent of those people are Peace Corps former Peace Corps volunteers, and we think we gave them a good training. We also have a lot of former volunteers who come back who go into as they were teachers overseas they teach over here or they go into Healthcare over here. A lot of volunteers come back who will go into business and have that International experience and that's very good as well. But I mentioned something at the beginning of the program. I just come from Bancroft Elementary. This is just one of four thousand schools around American schools around the country where we presently have volunteers in the field or form. Volunteers connected up with these schools so that the kids get to learn about other cultures and people not just from a book or a picture in a book but from real life experiences learning about what's going on, for example bancroft's connected up with a volunteer in Nepal and a volunteer in Swaziland. Both of whom are from Minnesota. So they get to make these connections and learn about these different cultures. We also have a program that is small but growing it's called the Peace Corps fellows program. It's a program Open to returning volunteers. They compete to get scholarships to go for graduate study. We now have programs in 22 universities around the country. The graduate programs are in areas, like education public health planning and we hope to have them in natural resources where Peace Corps goes out and helps to raise funds privately not government funds that will flow through the schools so that the students get these graduate degrees in a subsidized ways the student the school's get good students and the Since the former volunteers are able to compete for this program. If a they're good be there have the qualifications and see they agree to continue to work in the community. So we have some of these 275 fellows are now teaching in urban schools in Miami, Philadelphia Detroit La New York. They're working in public housing authorities in Boston and the going to work with the l a public housing authority their teaching on an Indian reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They're working in Border schools in El Paso. So in our own small way Peace Corps is trying to take the experiences that our volunteers have had in working in communities and knowing how to try and improve communities overseas and bring it back home. (00:26:21) Let's take another caller with a question for Carol Bellamy. Who is the head of the Peace Corps. Hi. Hi, welcome Carol to Minnesota. Thank you. It's good to be here. It's great to see a woman and an RPC V at the head of his core good for you. Thank you. I was a volunteer as well as a recruiter for the Peace Corps. And I'm very committed to diversifying the ranks of Peace Corps to include more ethnically diverse people. So my first question is how is that effort going and then secondly in the implementation of that getting a face that looks more like America as a recruiter, what ended up happening was that we were we were having to select select a minimally qualified minority candidate over perhaps a more qualified white candidate in order to get that face that looks more like America and I know that's a difficult question. I wonder if you can comment on that. (00:27:17) Well, we are committed to trying to as you said have Peace Corps look a little bit more like a the face of America Peace Corps for a number of years had really leveled added about 7 percent minority participation African-Americans Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans and Native Americans and minority. Tears, I must say largely as the result of a gnome from one of my predecessors Paul coverdell who's now a u.s. Senator from Georgia and Then followed up by hard work by Peace Corps Recruiters around the country. We now have and we have a long way to go but we're now up to running somewhere between 12 and 13 percent of our volunteers are minority volunteers a couple things. We actually think we're getting some really good volunteers out there, but we need more and we want more and we think this is a great opportunity for a minority American to have the experience across cultural experience the international experience the maturity maturing the comes from being in the Peace Corps secondly with there being more minority volunteers again, we need a long way to go. But with there being more minority volunteers as they come back to the United States, we've learned in the past that some of our best recruiters because they're just out there talking to people are former volunteers I could tell this person was a former volunteer because he called me an RPC via returned Peace Corps. We have our Peace Corps gobbledygook because you know, well, when they come back when they are rpcvs, they'll tell you they'll take a straight the good in the bad of what was going going on about the good days and the bad days. So we think by having more minority volunteers will get more minority Volunteers in the future third. I'm also committed to trying to increase the number of minority staff. I think that's actually an area where we could stand some growth and I think that will help us also in recruiting more nrt volunteers. So we're going to keep trying if if there's some people listening who think they might be interested but wonder if our their special problems are special circumstances that Minority volunteers confront and occasionally that occurs interestingly enough for we had an incident in one of our African countries where two of our African American volunteers were harassed because it was perceived that they look like they belong to a tribe that wasn't indigenous to that particular area. So it isn't just always a black volunteer being in a country where People are white and there's some kind of Harris medic. There are sometimes some special problems. We try and take them into account. But we think it is an extraordinary experience for potential minority volunteer and hope that we'll continue to see growth in their participation. (00:29:54) Lots of listeners on the line with questions about the Peace Corps and let's hear from another listener. Hi, Go ahead. Wow. Thank you. Coleman Survivor of goes. (00:30:07) Well the end I suppose I should say since I was in Guatemala. I try and keep up my Spanish and now I'm feeling guilty because everybody Peace Corps speak so many languages. I'm even taking French lessons. (00:30:20) I have a I'm a housewife some chervil one of a Dying Breed. I guess. I'm home all day. I have a point of personal privilege though, right David Eisenhower of the grand old party suggested the Peace Corps just before he warned of a military establishment. Okay, thank (00:30:44) you. You know what? The great thing about Peace Corps is I hope a lot of people had the idea and I'm willing for everybody to take credit. I point out quite honestly to remind people whatever they think of Peace Corps. I know a lot of people think. Well Peace Corps John Kennedy all those Peace Corps volunteers or returned volunteers must all just be Democrats. I always point out for example, we presently have six former volunteers serving in Congress at this very moment. Three are Democrats and three are Republicans. So I want always point out that you can never never make any assumptions about whether Peace Corps is philosophically here or philosophically there what I can assure you as I said before I've never met a volunteer who doesn't have an opinion, but we come in all different stripes and colors and political (00:31:31) views do most of the volunteers work by themselves in a community or do you generally send in teams of people? How does that (00:31:39) work? Actually it's changed a bit over the years a lot of our volunteers. Individually in a community, but there may be many other volunteers around where they are so they will work with him. I recently visited Volunteers in Thailand and Philippines and Micronesia for example, and on the island of pohnpei and Micronesia the volunteers work individually, but they are within oh, maybe an hour or half an hour of another volunteer by walking or biking that are Peace Corps is General mode of travel is the mountain bike. I will tell you I visited volunteers on the island that cuts into honest in the Philippines. We have what we call the small island project in that case. There are five volunteers there ones working in agriculture ones working in Fisheries working on developing muscle mussels and oysters ones working in environmental work on replanting mangroves. One is a one of those liberal arts graduates. She's great. She's working on income generation some business projects. They're doing page creation paper. They're all there for women and then there's a guy and he's the best writer of the group. So he's Hang on water projects and also helping them write proposals. But the point being that they're working also as a team there in five very different places. It'll take one of them is about two hours away. If the roads are at all passable, but they also work as a team and they support each other in different ways. When one of them needed some help and writing a proposal the fellow who is a great proposal writer came when he needed some work in doing some Community Development with the generalist came. And so we find that you're not going to have a whole bunch in an area generally. Sometimes you'll have one or two, but very often recently. We found that by bringing people with different kind of skills. Like for example, somebody who's very skilled in in planning and environmental engineer working with a generalist who can help build the community support for the project and then you can have the more specific skilled volunteer kind of design the project that can turn out that team approach can turn out to be very effective. (00:33:40) Let's take another caller. Hi. Hi. Good afternoon. My question is I'm wondering if you're familiar with a American comic book called Tales From The (00:33:49) Heart actually, I'm not I'm sorry. I just shows you really out of (00:33:53) it at the comic book has been published for seven years and it's based on a Peace Corps volunteers experiences in central Africa University of Minnesota. Graduate by name is Cindy God took her experiences as being a Peace Corps volunteer and made them into a fictitious at adventure story. There's no superheroes or animals or things like that and it but it's a straightforward telling of one's experiences of Griffin with the cultural differences and Africa. Well, we actually I (00:34:22) don't I'm not familiar with that and I'm sorry that I'm not but I will tell you we have more terrific writers who've been Peace Corps volunteers and our probably Peace Corps volunteers. Now more of a lot of our returned volunteers have written books some on Peace Corps some having nothing to do with Peace Corps, but really shaped by their Peace Corps experiences. In fact, one of them works for Peace Corps. Now, John coin was just about to come out with a book and we're going to have a book. Party at the Peace Corps celebrating not only his book but celebrating so many of the books and writings by Peace Corps volunteers. I always point out we have volunteers who've written for the Wall Street Journal and who write for People magazine. So one of the things about Peace Corps volunteers from this comic book to something else is that they are creative if nothing else Peace Corps volunteers are creative and if people can learn from their experiences as you're suggesting that people can learn about different African cultures. I mean, I point out sometimes it you know, we think well are we really the smartest people or other people smart? Well in some countries people have to learn three four five languages just to exist in that country and we in the United States sometimes can barely learn one other language, so we should never make judgments about whether people are smart or we're smarter than other people but really respect these different kinds of cultures (00:35:35) some of us struggle with one language. And if I might add well I (00:35:38) I come I Come From Brooklyn so I obviously struggle with the English language as well. (00:35:44) Our Guest today is the Peace Corps director Carol Bellamy, let's go back to the phones. Hi. Hi. This is semi retired businessman and I volunteer a lot of time promoting the p-site idea. We adopted that program in 1987 started. In fact, it was the Minneapolis Elementary School Longfellow International Fine Arts Center and that has grown now into a tremendous opportunity for young people to I think the future prospects for you. We've got ninety one piece sites in Minnesota and some 500 in the world and I'm just wondering number one of you ever heard of the piece site program, (00:36:27) you know, I've heard of it. I'm not even that familiar with it, but I just want to mend some mention something that was mentioned in the beginning because it is related to what you're saying is Well, Minnesota has historically been a state not only the University of although the University of Minnesota has always been a Rate recruiting ground for Peace Corps, but Minnesota has always been a place that we've gotten a lot of great volunteers out of and somebody asked me earlier today why that was so and I said I said one because one the University of Minnesota has ranked historically 6, but in recent years third and contributions of Valen of people to the Peace Corps. Secondly, we've always gotten wonderful skilled people in agriculture and health and education now, we're getting them in the other fields as well. But third I really think and you know, this is just my off the top of my head, but I really think there's a sense of service in a place like Minnesota that that you really want to bottle up and have people drink in other parts of the country as well. (00:37:27) Let's take another caller. Hi. Your turn. Yes. Hello Carol. Hi, this is George Beauchamp in Minneapolis. How are you? I'm okay. I had two parts to my question. The first had to do with the philosophy of the Peace Corps you referred to that earlier and I'm wondering if especially for the benefit of younger listeners today and perhaps others who may not be familiar with it. If you could State what the overall goals and Mission would be and the second part. I'm curious to know how you feel Peace Corps volunteers are generally being received in various countries around the world where they serve (00:38:06) well Peace Corps as I pointed out was created 31 33 years ago and people ask me well has it changed and it clearly has changed in terms of what we're doing today. And I've talked about some of the different things that we're doing. We weren't doing a lot of business work 30 years ago. We weren't doing a lot of the environmental work or some of the youth work. Although we've always worked with children. We didn't have urban planners that much then and we have them now. What hasn't changed in many ways is really the premise of pain which Peace Corps is built. We say we have because it's built into our legislation three goals goal. Number one is the Development Goal that is the transfer of skills. And in fact, one of the previous callers with his complaint and I thought Valley complaint pointed out that he thought there was more emphasis on the so-called cross-cultural than the development. That's why we're trying to be a little bit more careful in that development piece, which is that hopefully the volunteer that we send over does have some skills that in the course of working with people not not directing or dictating to but working with people will be able to transfer some of those skills. So there is that development piece and the other two are those cross cultural goals that hopefully people in other countries will get to know America just a little bit better. If only through that volunteer and the third goal very important. Hopefully America will get to know and respect from other cultures much better. If only again through that volunteer whether it's just that one volunteer coming home whether that volunteer comes home and gets involved in international. Activities whether that volunteer goes each year as we encourage them to do during Geography week and teaches a class at their local school. However, whether that volunteer Works in conjunction with their Church in terms of projects overseas, whatever it is now how our volunteers being received well probably today the truth in every which way probably in some places that people pay only know they exist in other places places. They love them. I mean you travel through parts of Africa where they've been volunteers for years. They love their Peace Corps volunteers. I'm we are about over the next year to go back to go into irit Rhea the president of Eritrea. This is a new country that not totally new but come been received its independence recently. The president of irit Rio was actually educated by Peace Corps volunteers the president of your tree. I came to the United States to ask for Peace Corps to come into Eritrean. The president of Nigeria was in Washington about three months ago with a torso of his top aides three of them had been educated by His Corps volunteers and then you have other countries where they like Peace Corps, but they're getting to know Peace Corps and I think that's not unlike some of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Although I would point out just about two weeks ago the ambassador to the United States from the kyrgyz Republic a young woman Dynamo. She's terrific. She was in the Peace Corps Office and she was meeting with us and she said I know we love our Peace Corps volunteers, you know, they're teaching English, but we know that you have business Volunteers in Kazakhstan and we want business Volunteers in kyrgyz Republic as well. So, you know, it differs in most places if a country is not interested in having Peace Corps. And again, this range is everything from dealing honestly with our budget to what we are doing to what we were accomplishing if we're not actually being invited to be there or if we feel at some point there really is come to be a disinterest in that country or our volunteers aren't safe. We make some judgments some cases. We have removed following we have evacuated Example over the past year from Burundi and from Rwanda both in Africa and from the Congo in Africa. We believe it is now safe to return a volunteers to some places in the Congo but it is not safe to return our Volunteers in Rwanda and Burundi not because they were attacking our volunteers. It just wasn't safe. So if we think that there isn't safety enough safety or if we think there is an interest in our volunteers, we won't Force our volunteers on people but there are different levels of really loving the volunteers as contrasted with just working with the (00:42:00) volulip do volunteer go out and recruit countries, or do you wait for them to come to you (00:42:05) know, we basically although I must say over the 33 years. I suppose people could pick a couple that we kind of encourage mostly we wait for them to come to and we have to we can't go into a country where we don't have an invitation. We've come out of somewhere. We've concluded that the work that we could do. We can we done for example, Korea is an example of that. We concluded that they were there but they were developed enough. There's some countries concluded that they didn't want. Peace. Anymore because they didn't want to be seen as developed countries developing countries. I should say. I'm sorry Brazil and India are examples where their countries we are. Not today that we've been in the past. Somalia is an example where we don't think our volunteers are safe and there are countries that were thinking about going into our most recent official request has come from Cambodia and we're taking a look at the possibility of going into Cambodia (00:42:53) Sarah from another listener. Hi. Hi, my name is Joe. Yes, Joe. Hi Joe. I am calling from Rochester Minnesota. I got two questions for you, you know, sometimes if I'm a volunteer I would like to stay and work even when the place is unsafe by trying to be that the Peace Corps always try to move the volunteers who even were willing to stay and work and certainly by Nia seems like there is a large number of people on the waiting list and your could have tend to favor more men. Hiring the men and women are far and what are you trying to do about it? You think (00:43:37) well, actually I hadn't heard the second complaint that we were favoring guys over women. I probably hear the other side some time. So when Peace Corps was first started actually the very very verse sink first thinking about Peace Corps. Somebody reminded me recently was that it would only be men. Well, I must say once it finally got started. It was about 65 percent male and about 35 percent female. It's about 50/50 today. Actually. It's about 52 female 48 men. We do not go out and recruit because we need more men or more women we go out and recruit because we want good volunteers and their I know of no instance in which we've been favoring men over women or women over men and that would be Folly. If we were trying to do that with respect to your first question about people wanting to stay in a country because they think it's safe even though we may conclude it's not safe. Actually. I will say to anybody who's listening that the people that give me the most grief me. The director whoever the director is if we make a cake if we conclude that we don't think a country is safe and we have to evacuate our volunteers use the are our volunteers who probably are really working very well with their communities and their communities like them. In other words. They probably aren't in danger, but we cannot assure their safety. We don't remove volunteers from a country until we really are have concluded that things aren't safe. For example, we had some problems not Auntie us but just there were some problems in Yemen last week. We moved our volunteers out of that area in Yemen, but we didn't move them out of the country, but I will tell you my view is as long as you are a Peace Corps volunteer, even though you may conclude it's not safe. This is a decision that has to be made administratively and we can't afford to jeopardize your health and safety a we can't do anything about it. If you're no longer in the Peace Corps and you choose to be there but but as long as you're a Peace Corps volunteer, if the conclusion has been made that for safety reasons, we have to move you either in the country or out of the country. Then you have to move at that point or you can't be a Peace Corps volunteer if your piece for (00:45:35) Corps volunteer and you want to quit, can you quit and go home or is it like the military once you're there you're going to be there until your hitches up (00:45:43) boy. I can just see me trying to keep a volunteer there who didn't want to be there. I sometimes say when I'm talking to return volunteer groups that we don't have any legal authority over them and over them and then I laugh about the fact that sometimes I think I barely have legal Authority or Volunteers in the field. They are all independent thinkers. The answer is some people don't finish out their tours and if they choose to go home they can go home. I mean we there we have no we won't try and keep you in a country. If you don't want to stay there and sometimes people we call it ET early termination and we have about maybe fifteen percent on an annual basis of people that eat a for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they just get homesick. Sometimes a family member gets sick and they just need to go home. Sometimes they don't like what they're doing where they don't like how we are offering we Peace Corps. I mean they just they don't I think themselves, you know, this isn't what I wanted to do. And occasionally we conclude that they're not they're not appropriate to what the program is. So it ranges from everything from very personal matters to dissatisfaction on the part of the volunteer to a dissatisfaction the part of Peace Corps. If you want to go home, you can go home. I mean, we're not going to force you to stay in the country. That would be crazy on our part. We try and encourage you to work out the problems you have but you want to go home. You can go (00:46:56) home steak a listener with another listener with the question. Hi. Hi, my name is Karen Salem and I was wondering if you have any jobs for elementary teachers working with Somalian Refugee children in Kenya or other countries surrounding Somalia. (00:47:10) Actually when he first started talking and said some II was going to remind you we aren't there, but I was going to say but there are a lot of refugees coming into Kenya we have programs in Kenya. We have programs in Kenya where we have teachers in those programs. We generally at this point are not officially working on Refugee programs. It's not one of our program. Out of program areas. Although we do know that a number of our Volunteers in what we call it what they call their secondary projects. In other words. They may be a teacher. They may be a farmer. They may be a business person. They may be a physical therapist. But in there like later hours or afternoon hours or evening hours may work with refugees before the program is over if if you will allow I would like to give our eight hundred-number absolutely and I just didn't want to interrupt while you're giving the regular number and I would advise this caller to call our 800 number and ask specifically I don't mean not to answer your question. I do want to tell you we have we do look for teachers and we look for teachers in Kenya and some of the surrounding countries, but I just don't know what the exact request and numbers are these days. So I would suggest you call one of the local offices and get some more specific (00:48:16) information and those of you waiting for that 800 number we'll get to that in a minute. Will you good chance here to get your pencil and paper ready? If we've got time for one more caller. Anyway, hi. Hi. Go ahead. Carol my name is Julia. I'm a student at st. Scholastica. Whoo. And my question is this I've been interested in Peace Corps. However, I had a friend who was a veterinarian who was in Zimbabwe and she was a victim of rape not once but twice once in her home Village and then wants while she was traveling and how do you address these issues of personal safety? And how do you give people the resources so they can protect themselves in a situation like that? (00:49:05) Well, I'm sorry to hear about that. I do want to I do want to say that this has occasionally happened in Peace Corps. I don't want to deny that that is so when I don't weave okay, she had sexual assaults and we've had physical assaults. I mean it is it is a fact of life these days. We try and avoid it. I've mentioned a couple times at in training we are doing even more intensive health and safety training and this isn't just G. Take your Pills it is also trying to give people as much advice we as we can about what may happen out there. I'd make the point and this is not to make anybody feel any better that that some of these things could happen anywhere in the world nevertheless for us in Peace Corps anyone incidents. Like this is more than we want to have happen. So we try and train our volunteers more we try and get them to be more sensitive. We try and provide them with some guidance in terms of how they might protect themselves. There are some countries actually where we provide some assistance in terms of and this is not in every country. It's based on the termination of the country where we provide some, you know money for ways to put protections around their houses or or wherever they're living. It is of concern to us. We've just recently were doing a video for our volunteers that we want to get around even more on sexual harrasment. We're also doing a video for our own volunteers on AIDS education as well. So It's a more volatile terrible world out there. We have to deal with these issues every day. We try and give our volunteers as much support as possible and the the instruments to deal with these problems and hope that we will continue to see these not the number of these incidents go down Peace Corps 800 number. Yes. If you have any question about joining the Peace Corps and how you get yourself qualified if you're that super skilled person or that wonderful generalist, we can give you good advice. So it's one 844 eight five eight. Oh one eight hundred four two four eight five eight hundred it is still the toughest job you'll ever love (00:51:07) and is it very briefly. I mean you have so many people wait on the waiting list now, that would (00:51:12) make absolutely not. Let me tell you we do not take and everybody who applies I will tell you that but the fact is that the majority of people who ultimately they themselves want to go ultimately do go and I said, I want to grow the Peace Corps, so we're going to be looking for a few more people. And the better we job we do out there then in fact, I think the stronger the argument I can continue to make in Congress. Although they do love us up there because I will say again we are good bang for the buck and we actually are on balance a government program that does work.