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>> How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing
to spend your days in God, technicians or engineers.
How many of you are willing to work in the foreign service
and spend your lives travelling around the world?
[ Music ]
>> My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for your country.
[ Applause ]
My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do
for you but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
[Applause]
[ Silence ]
>> And I used to use the analogy, look if you're going
to study geology, you go where the rocks are.
You don't stay in a classroom.
If you're going to study urban poverty, if you're going
to study injustice, all these kinds of issues, you better go
where they are and learn about them.
And you don't come in as somebody who has answers,
you come in as a learner.
>> I have today signed an executive order providing
for the establishment of a Peace Corps
on a temporary pilot basis.
I am also sending to Congress a message proposing an
authorization of a permanent Peace Corps.
>> The Peace Corps was started in 1961 and there was lots
of fanfare because Shriver was a member of the Kennedy family
and of course he had all the support he needed
to do something that was-- hadn't been done before
and then certainly in that way.
So I was assistant dean of the college.
I had come back in 1960 to work
as That Seymour's assistant in the dean's office.
And that registration-- and I believe this was registration
in maybe in January of 1961, something like that.
I put on a little piece of paper and it said "This entity,
the Peace Corps is being started
and involves service overseas for 2 years.
Do you think this is something that might interest you?"
And I had a yes or no or maybe or something like that.
And so I remember with all those old pieces
of paper subject then it came back to me from registration
and I went through them all and tally them.
And about 850 of-- perhaps Dartmouth was 2500 that time,
all male, said yeah, they'd be interested.
And so, well what do I do with this?
So I just sent it down to Washington.
I just sent the tally.
And it wasn't long after my phone rings
and somebody saying well Dean Dey, we have those results
from the registration at Dartmouth and we think
that we'd very much like to come up and talk with you about--
Dartmouth might be a very good place for recruitment.
And it turned out these were 2 senior, Harris Wofford
who is the right hand person for Sergeant Shriver, he'd been dean
of law school at Notre Dame and then Bill Delano
who is a legal counsel.
They were senior deputies of Shriver.
The next thing I know they come to Hanover.
I show them around and introduce them to students in there.
They talk and they were here, they spent the night.
And the next day before they leave, on the way out of town,
they turned to me and they said, "Well,
would you be willing to go?
And I said me?
I said I got a wife, I have a 3-year-old
and a 2-year-old and no!
I mean no!
I had not thought of going."
And they said, "Well, Sarge thinks that what he needs
in the field are college deans.
We both had experience with the unexpected and crisis
and working with young people.
And he would really like for you to consider this.
[ Silence ]
>> The course is called the Great Issues Course.
And in the course, you got out of your own little nation,
the fraternity and the "rah rah rah" of the campus,
and the football season and everything else.
And you began to get an idea that there was something going
on in the world outside of Hanover
and outside of the United States.
>> I was undecided.
I was restless.
I had a certain instinct to explore.
I'm not interested in traditional choices.
And a Peace Corps recruiter came to campus
and I decided to apply.
And essentially we spent 4 years in Hanover.
There were no terms outside the country.
>> Sociology major at best I had some vague idea
about community development as saving the world.
>> I was an international government major.
So I had this international interest very early on.
Probably my biggest activity outside
of studying here was women's soccer
and I was actually the co-captain
of the first women's soccer team at Dartmouth.
So, and I spent time playing intramurals freshmen year
and then we started a club and then by senior year,
we had the varsity status.
>> I was involved into Tucker Foundation,
I did volunteer work, and I think one of the things
that got me thinking about eventually
when the Peace Corps entered my radar
in my senior year is the fact
that I had all these opportunities to travel
and to experience other cultures while I was at Dartmouth.
>> I was a biochemistry and molecular biology major.
So initially I wanted to go to medical school,
got the science really as major but also had the opportunity
to take languages and other--
all of the other classes that Dartmouth has to offer outside
of strictly sticking to the biochemistry.
>> I was at the career fair, I were at the top of the hop,
and I had a great fortune of meeting a recruiter there,
learned about the Peace Corps and the opportunity
to not only work abroad but to really live abroad.
And I knew that international development building off
of my geography major was the career path
that I wanted to take.
And thinking about that, I figured what better way to do it
than do the Peace Corps.
I also knew that I would really have the chance to really work
at the grass roots level,
which during my geography studies became incredibly clear
that that's kind of the foundation for success
when it comes to international projects.
>> My junior, senior year I got a grant
from the anthropology department to study
in doing ethnographic study in Ireland on the border,
looking at border identities.
From the 4 months that I spent in Ireland, I really wanted more
that kind of travel living among different people,
learning their stories, the challenge of another culture
and living in another country.
>> I was always very aware that I wasn't complete in some way,
but I-- I couldn't put my finger on it.
And walking into to college common ground and seeing things
like Habitat for Humanity which I had always wanted to do
but never done, I realized like this was what the point
of the type of foundation was
and this was probably what I had been missing my previous 2 terms
at Dartmouth.
So I signed up for a lot of things.
Didn't get to do them all but made up my mind
that I would do volunteer work in some way.
And it was also during that spring that I decided
that I wanted to do an international volunteer trip.
[ Silence ]
>> My understanding of the history
of the foundation was an article that John Sloan Dickey,
then Dartmouth President had written
for the Atlantic Monthly.
And it was entitled Competence and Conscience.
And the thesis was that this country's liberal arts colleges
had been started primarily for religious purposes.
And the presidents tended to be theologians.
Dartmouth, the last president
who was a minister was William Dewitt Tucker at the turn
of the century, probably from the late 1800's
to the maybe until 1910.
John Dickey was concerned
because throughout the 20th century--
the first half of the 20th century,
these institutions were becoming increasingly secularized.
And how were these institutions to manifest their concern
for issues of conscience?
And that's why he wrote that article and he
and the then Board of Trustees created an entity which was
to represent and carry through the spirit of serving humanity,
of leading not only useful lives and that can be broadly defined,
but in ways beyond self, and John Dickey felt very strongly
about that commitment to service.
>> I would be counseling them about a program in East Africa,
a program in Himalaya and that sort of--
Himalaya, I didn't really know what it was like.
And here I am in some ways encouraging young people to do
that and going to the unknown and what am I doing giving
that advice, sitting in Parker's throne at first floor.
And so my wife and I both thought about that
and we'd always done everything together and said,
"Yeah, we gotta do this."
And so we said yes.
>> Even after 3 years in the Marine Corps, I didn't think
that there was enough that I had really done.
He first broached the idea when he was campaigning
at the University of Michigan I think.
And he gave that speech.
I remember reading about that speech
and that would be a fantastic idea if he ever does that.
>> There was a spirit that was coming alive through people
that talked about what Peace Corps could be.
So we definitely-- you know,
we're in the first wave in there.
There weren't former volunteers to talk
to about what the experience actually was.
So we took-- we were people who just took the leap and about 12
or 13 of my classmates became volunteers.
>> I was a Kennedy kid and the assassination
of Kennedy had a huge impact on me and many,
many others of my generation.
And I was affected by his call for people to go into service.
Second issue was I really didn't have anything better to do,
anything that I was much more interested in.
Third, I had a big interest in seeing the world.
And I didn't really understand what that meant at the time
but Peace Corps seemed to be a way to do it.
And the fourth one which in some ways may be the most important
is that the Peace Corps in those early days
of the Peace Corps sent a very attractive young lady
up to Dartmouth to be their recruiter.
And we ended up having a very nice long conversation
one evening.
And that led to an application
and the application ultimately led
to a letter saying would you-- we'd like you to go to Bolivia
and that led me to go look at a map and figure
out where Bolivia was.
>> When I applied to the Peace Corps,
I did not know a single other human being
that had been in the Peace Corps.
I didn't know anyone at Dartmouth.
I'd never talked to anyone that had been in the Peace Corps.
But I was of that age where I actually remember--
I was just old enough
to remember President Kennedy announcing it
and I can tell you the exact time where I was
when they landed on the moon and where I was
when President Kennedy announced the Peace Corps.
And I'm going to get emotional about it
because that was really important to me.
>> I mentioned a few
of the other places I had interviewed with.
And I mentioned the Peace Corps.
And the interviewer said, you know,
that's such a unique experience the Peace Corps.
You know, I really think
if that's something you're considering
and that's something you're interested
in that perhaps that's what you should do.
And I remember kind of thinking
that my interviewer is telling me this and this kind of means
that he's not going to hire me.
>> I knew that if I want to go to medical school,
that's a long road ahead of me.
And I really want to do something more adventurous
and something more exciting.
And give back with my time before going to medical school.
So I decided to join the Peace Corps and I was very set
on leaving as soon as I graduated.
>> I remember sitting on my futon
with the law school applications that I've put aside to the right
and picking up the phone and kind of nervously calling my mom
and saying mom can I have a change of heart
and I think I want to serve in the Peace Corps and think
about law school maybe further down the road but actually want
to work and live in the communities
because this is what I'm about.
And she took a deep breath and I heard her
and she finally said she was like, you know,
I think this is a good decision,
you've always made good decisions, she trusted me going
to Dartmouth and so I'll trust you serving in the Peace Corps.
And when you got mom's sealed approval, you pretty much are--
you pretty much set to go.
>> I like to tell people
that the real reason I joined the Peace Corps was waking
up Saturday mornings
and watching The Muppets I think it was.
And every Saturday morning they had a commercial
for the Peace Corps.
And at the end of the commercial, it would say--
it would show the symbol of the Peace Corps and say,
"The toughest job you'll ever love."
And that-- for some reason that really stuck with me.
>> I was away for 3 term my junior year.
And one of the places I went was I did an FSB in Morocco.
And I got a chance to meet some of the Moroccan volunteers
and Peace Corps volunteers.
And just talking to them about why they wanted to do this,
why they were doing it,
how it was like to be doing this life of service.
I think it reinforced even more for me
that that was my vocation.
>> That May, June, they sent me down to Puerto Rico
where there was a training camp and my wife is in New Jersey
with our grandparents and the kids are getting their shots
and she told our 2 daughters that this doesn't hurt.
Mommy will go first and they gave her a shot and she passed
out and then the oldest one say, "You've killed my mommy."
>> The Peace Corps training in 1963 was like throwing us
like spaghetti against the wall to see what stuck.
>> A group that went with me trained
as they were qualified diesel mechanics.
And Tunisia is-- build a highway like that
with forth labor-intensive rather
than bringing a Caterpillar diesel
and so these volunteers were sitting
in different cities throughout Tunisia with nothing to do.
>> Graduation was early June and a week later, I was in Lincoln,
Nebraska being trained to go to Bolivia.
>> We learned to slit the throats of chickens,
got a cow, ride horses.
We had to go through intensive psychological interviews,
T-group sensitivity training, peer evaluation, aptitude tests.
Our arms with pincushions for vaccinations,
they pull wisdom teeth.
They did everything.
We had maybe drown proofing.
>> Very much like being in camp.
>> And there was sex education.
And-- which we're told about a new drug called Noasitol.
And if the urge was too strong, the advice was be safe,
as the instructor pulled a *** over a drumstick.
>> We had really good language training.
It was an early version of the Rassias method
of doing language training before the Rassias method
existed as far as I know.
[ Silence ]
>> Boom! June 1964, a flood of humanity comes to Dartmouth.
It was tsunami all over the place.
People walking in with their bags, leases, backpacks,
curious when it was going to happen next, what's going
to happen, what are we-- what's going to happen?
After they put-- settled their bags in, we had a big call
at one of the rooms at Dartmouth, one of the big rooms.
And I told them-- explained to them what was going to happen.
And I said, "Now as you leave this room, I want each of you
to take a pill and a little glass of water and drink it.
Put the pill in the water and drink it.
As a matter of fact I like to see you do it right now."
So they stood up, we gave them cups of water,
the little glasses and put pills in them.
And I said, "Now these are what we're going
to call the revolution of language.
So with this drink, you'll automatically learn language.
So out to you we go cheers, cheers," and pop the bottles in
and that was the way we launched the program.
So it is a question of rhythm which involve as a kind
of a dance and what happens ultimately is
that the choreography is the message.
And if I'm going around the room flopping my finger
and aiming it-- looking at somebody here and snapped me
at you-- looking at you.
You get startled and you become awake and you start to speak.
I keep looking at you and now suddenly, I snap at you
and I point here then I look boom!
And that pushes [inaudible].
So this is why the movement is like that.
This is what it makes it work.
It's a dance, it's a song, it's a sing, it's a commitment,
it's love, it's embracing.
There's no error.
Nobody ever is guilty of making a mistake.
We banish the word wrong!
No, what we say, uh almost, keep moving along.
So no one is ever depressed, no one is ever ignored,
everyone's proud of guide, and that's when you learn.
Because if you are waiting for me to hit you
with a snap like this, oh man!
You better be awake.
And in some cases, they needed a hell of a lot
of brushing up and building up.
And this thing was incredible.
And many, many times I would go by the language laboratory then
and see them working at 3 a.m. And some sleeping on the floor
to get back in the morning and go into breakfast
and then start the course again.
And then you have another 8 hour straight out.
And at the end of the 8 hours, then you have culture night.
They put it on plays, those cycle dramas,
the place is always moving.
There was beat, beat, beat.
And this is the kind of thing that I get
to drove the engine all the time.
And they stayed with this until about the end
of June, July, August.
I think it was the end of August, early September.
>> And the rest of the training was nonsensical.
We had professors who would stand up and say,
"Well I don't know anything about Bolivia,
I'm actually an expert in weed and turkey," but--
and then gave his weed and turkey speech.
>> We didn't know training here.
We all met in Seattle and we had 3 days where we got vaccines
and kind of an introduction from the director
of the Korea Peace Corps program who came over to meet us.
We lived with families from day 1 when we got to the countries.
We had a lot of university graduates, very bright Koreans
who came up to this training site.
We trained in a town that was not too far south of the DMZ.
And then the last day at the end of 8 weeks,
we all sat in a circle and they had a big map
of Korea up on the board.
And they pulled our names out of the hat one at a time
to give us our assignments of where we were going
to spend the next at that time, 2 years of our lives.
>> They just threw that out there.
I think they needed beekeepers and it was a good fit
for liberal arts graduates I suppose.
And then we were shipped from Frogmore, South Carolina
to Zaire because I had to learn French.
I didn't know it was French.
From there, we were sent to the Central African Republic
and we had to do Songo trainings.
>> Just after graduation, less than a month later,
I left for the Gambia and West Africa.
Went through my 3 months of training in the Gambia,
learning about language and thinks
about the Department of Health.
I was a health extension volunteer and part of my focus
in the Peace Corps, one of the reasons why I wanted to go
to Peace Corps, was to do *** prevention work.
>> Every trainee lives with a family, Salvadoran family
for the first 12 weeks and I practiced my Spanish,
I was ready to go and introduced myself and I stood there
and gave my host mom a hug
and Nida Tito [phonetic] was her name and I told her,
[foreign language] which I thought then,
I was incredibly excited to be here
and then instead I've actually said I'm very pregnant
and I'm here.
Training needless to say was full--
tons of laughs but tons of challenges as well and I rode
in on a pick-up truck-- on the back of a pick-up truck,
down to San Vicente and literally spent probably 3 hours
in the morning working on the Spanish language
and then the rest of the day was primarily dedicated
to a combination of technical training which taught me
about a number of different things, organic composting,
how to do natural pest control in El Salvador,
because these were tasks
that environment educators were going to be asked to do.
>> It's a strange experience
when you land in another country.
You've been there for about a week and you're put
with this family and you're told, "Okay, well,
they're going to take care of you.
They're going to feed you.
You're going to learn-- you're going to--
they'll going to help you learn Bulgarian so there you go."
We had a language instructor with us
and so we'd meet everyday for about eight hours I'd say
and by the end of the 3 months,
I had a pretty good understanding of Bulgarian.
I had a pretty good understanding of being a teacher
and a pretty good understanding of the culture and at the end
of the 3 months, they sent us away to our permanent sites.
>> The purpose of the Peace Corps
in the Philippines was to-- in those days, they used language--
Rescue the English language.
One of the major problems was they get to the school
and the principal wouldn't know a foggy idea what
to do with them.
>> I was a physical education instructor in Tunisia.
I-- for a year, their needs were at a different level
than I was prepared to give.
>> Essentially, I was rolled out of a jeep,
introduced to an 80-year-old mayor,
I expected to find a place to sleep and eat and they said,
"See you in 2 years, adios".
[Laughter] So with the mayor's help, I spent the first night
on a cot in the Catholic Church on the plaza.
And my first 2 weeks were kind of lying on a cot
as if I ran an open casket with every curious kid
in town coming to pay respects.
[Laughter]
>> I was assigned to a village where I was supposed to work
with a cooperative of chicken farmer and by the time I got
to that village, the cooperative had disintegrated.
That's really very symptomatic of the way the Peace Corps was
in those days and led me to try and figure out what can I do.
>> It was about 7 p.m. or so when I walked
down that main street trying--
with my address in my hand trying
to find this health center 'cause that's the only address
I had.
I didn't have a place to live.
I didn't know anyone.
All I had was an address and I'm walking in the town
about 7 o'clock at night and I found the health center.
Of course, they're closed but they had this tradition
where 2 men every night would stand and watch,
but when I was showing them this address and trying to talk
to them, I felt, I was pretty proud I kind
of scored pretty well on my foreign service test exam
that gave you at the end of Peace Corps
in your language and I love languages.
Dartmouth was great for training people in languages
and I was feeling really good.
And I go down there and found,
they spoke a very different dialect on this island
and I could hardly understand the word they said.
>> You get dressed up, you go to the embassy, you have--
you do your swearing as a Peace-- you take the oath.
And then, you know, you have a little party
and then very quickly, they put you in a truck
and you go off to your post.
I was put there right in the heart of beekeeping season
and I did have some beekeeping expertise but I was just trying
to figure out what to do at that point and was kind of going
out to different villages and trying to meet the beekeepers,
finding out what they did, what project I might take.
And then before I knew it,
as soon as beekeeping season was ending, and I had lost a year.
>> My place then within the country was in one of the areas
that had the highest *** rates in the country.
So there were some-- a long adjustment time period
of just getting to know what's going on in the community,
who the leaders are, who are the right people to talk
to if you want to get something done,
and just building up that respect.
>> I spent my first night sleeping in hammock
and when they showed me to my house
and it was the hottest night of my life and I remember waking
up the next morning thinking, now what?
[Laughter] Now what do I do?
And so, Don Luis [phonetic] took me down to the school
and he introduced me to all the teachers
and the students immediately stood up as soon as I stepped
for the door, and I didn't know if I was supposed
to stop walking, if I was supposed to continue walking,
what was I actually supposed to do?
>> I got in my apartment, I put down my stuff,
it was about dinner time so I started making dinner
and I just sat down and I was thinking,
"Okay, well, here I am now.
I'm a Peace Corps volunteer.
It's official.
I have my own place.
I have my assignment but I really don't know what to do.
>> Dartmouth students I knew who wanted to serve,
I felt they were well grounded and they wanted to serve
for the right reasons so one
of the things I would be saying is these weren't young people
who were fleeing from something.
Oh, well I couldn't succeed at anything or you know,
you're off to find yourself.
We found that an awful lot about ourselves certainly beginning
with me and my family when we were over there.
>> I was known as a field representative
and so I was responsible for 80 volunteers in Southern Luzon,
Albay Province and the 80 volunteers were scattered
over maybe 200 square miles, maybe more.
There were on islands.
It would take me months to visit each one.
>> I went to Gabon and we built school.
We hired workers and the treasurer over the city
that I was working, he was patting the payroll.
We were paying the worker.
The United States government to help us build the school
but you step back and you say, "There are 30 schools
in that country that weren't there before."
>> So when my motivation had been a sense of adventure,
now my drive was to become useful and to make a difference
in some small way to-- how they lived
and what they might look forward to.
Overtime, we succeeded in bringing medical services
to town and then we decided to build a clock
and we also started our cooperative in the town.
From that, we expanded
to do some regional collective action combining with volunteers
in other towns for digging wells and building roads
and that became the foundation of a social movement
which got quite large.
>> Actually, it was like a graduate course
in community development and something
that I eventually understood I was actually fairly good at
and that coincided with a national program that was funded
by USAID and I was sort of co-opted by USAID
and the Peace Corps and the Bolivian agency
that was doing this community development program
to help move the program or expand the program
from the Altiplano to the Kjocha-Pampa Valley
and get a real, you know, experiential course
in the sociology and anthropology of Bolivia.
>> We were actually terminated early
so we didn't get our full 2 years of service
and because Reagan came in and said,
I'm cutting the Peace Corps budget and any--
there were 4 countries where the last groups were there
and so that's how they made the decision so I only got
about 14 months of service with the Peace Corps instead
of my 24 months and we could--
I could've been reassigned to another country and continued
on with Peace Corps but at that point, the language,
you know an interesting side reason I went to a country other
than where I would be speak in English, I really wanted
to learn another language and I'd invested so much time
and energy in learning the culture
and learning the language and learning
about tuberculosis and the patients.
I developed relationships with the patients
that I took care of on this island.
I mean I was-- you know,
I was the main tuberculosis person responsible for patients
in a population of 200,000 people and I--
you know, you really get to know those individual patients.
You'd visit them in their homes.
You know their stories, you know?
They see you coming up the path to their house
and they were just so gracious and wonderful and warm
and those personal relationships meant a lot.
And I just didn't want to leave.
So instead of relocating to another Peace Corps country,
I found a job on the same island and I was able
to stay there another-- almost 2 years by working
in the ship building industry.
>> I left after 1 year.
I was finding that just too many endemic problems
with the whole beekeeping project.
It was just very difficult when there was no market
to try to create a market.
I was offered another village, a reassignment
to a different village at--
however, I felt that the problems
with the beekeeping program and the Peace Corps,
just that whole program of apiculture
in that particular country were so deep,
I didn't think it would really resolve anything for me.
>> I was paired with the community health nurse
and health infrastructure in the Gambia, there are very few--
there were a few main hospitals but then throughout the country,
there are community health nurses so the Department
of Health provides them with the motorcycle to be able to get
from the village that they're coasted
out to these outposted areas.
The Peace Corps gave me a bicycle so we would--
I would leave a little bit earlier and we both get
to the village on time.
But by the end of 2 years, after you now, I did have malaria
and the dysentery and all that other fun stuff,
you really become so integrated in your community that it's hard
to think about leaving and all of those things that were hard
to learn the first time are now part of your daily routine.
And I-- by the-- actually at the end of 2 years, I didn't leave.
I stayed for a third year.
I did a lot of the *** prevention work
and then a huge major hospital opened nearby
after I've been there for about a year.
So I used to go and see what they needed around the hospital
and what I could do and one of the things that I noticed is
that they had all these shortages of medicine,
they had all this-- all types of records being kept,
all these logbooks being kept, but no one was actually looking
at the data and no one was actually looking
at how many cases of malaria do we have in a month
and do we have enough medication
for that number of cases of malaria.
And so one of the things that I did
with my third year there was actually move to the hospital
and really work under data systems.
>> The majority of my work
as a Peace Corps volunteer while it was environmentally centered
really focusing on working with youth as well.
But when I thought about closing my service,
I knew that I didn't really want to leave yet.
I knew that the work that I had done--
I had kind of come to its own conclusion and quite honestly,
the community themselves-- the community itself was able
to continue the work that we had started.
I didn't end up extending as a volunteer but ended
up extending kind of, subtly working directly
with Peace Corps trainees but when I finally left the country
in 2007 after working as a technical trainer
for a year, it was really hard.
It was incredibly hard and a lot of tears were shed.
I went back to my host-- I went back to my community
and we did what was called a despedida where they see off
and they send you off and it was hard.
>> I just started remedial English starting
from the very beginning and trying to build the students
up throughout the year.
It was a mining town, very low on the economic ladder.
I had applied for funding to do a community project
and the funding had been accepted.
The project was basically a multimedia room
for the classroom where kids could go in,
in different subjects with their class teacher.
Part of it was also in collaboration with the city
so that, you know, if the city had classes for example,
or different kind of training,
they could use this classroom during the weekends
or during evenings for that kind of training.
But I stayed for an additional year to teach
at an American university there in Bulgaria.
There are a few reasons.
I want to see if teaching was something
that I wanted to continue doing.
I met a girl there in Bulgaria
who I later married is now my wife.
>> John Dickey was feeling there has to be a shortcut.
He took me to lunch and rather than having a national search,
asked if I would-- that become dean of the Tucker Foundation.
I had been involved in counseling students
about service projects and going off with my family
for Peace Corps, those stints that I would know more about,
what it was like to serve overseas and had been involved
in service programs here particularly the integration
of first private secondary schools
and then public secondary schools and so it made sense.
Wonderful time to have such a position because all the issues
that were being addressed nationally,
of course the most prominently, the Vietnam War,
the issues of race and the Civil Rights Acts had been passed
but then the implementation of course was difficult.
John's war on poverty, that excessive language
but his heart was in the right place.
>> And I remember thinking, God will be great
if I could bring all of them back to America 'cause they're
such wonderful kids, 20 year or so, 20, 30 years later, my wife
and I along with another couple started the I Have Dream Program
in Hartford, 1 of 3, and we sponsored a group of kids
in the 6th grade and told them we'd pay their way
through college.
We'd assist with their college tuition
if they graduated from high school.
The names were different
but they were basically the same kind of spirit and faces
on the kids that I left behind in Tunisia.
>> What we saw coming back was the racism and bigotry
that was just below the surface
of the ideals we knew growing up.
As Peace Corps volunteers where they're involved
in social change and we are particularly sensitive
to that reality that we found at home and we became activist
for change even as students so I co-founded Action
for Human Rights at the University of Michigan
and was involved both in Civil Rights and peace demonstrations.
>> One of the very most basic messages of the experience
in Bolivia and Panama is that you gotta take people
in the world and communities where they are,
not where you think they are or where you want them to be
and move from there, that philosophy in world view turned
out to be very useful in the work that I'm doing now.
>> Really has one of the highest incidents of uninsured people
in the state, it has one of the highest incidents
of people below 200 percent of poverty
and of course it's historically a center
for migrant farm workers, typically uninsured people.
>> This van served as the clinic and the counseling room
and the reception area.
It goes out 2 or 3 days a week in the summer time to the camps
where migrant farm workers live and provides
on site healthcare services, medical and dental.
It is healthcare without preferences.
>> But I never ever could have imagined how
that Peace Corps experience would have any connection
to my later life the way it has.
I still go to high schools and talk
about the Peace Corps experience.
I'll usually split my time talking half the time
about what I do now which is healthcare consulting
and then you know, part of the time talking about Peace Corps
and quite frankly, it's-- when I get to talking about Peace Corps
that the eyes in the room light up.
My youngest son recently through our church group went
down to the Dominican Republic and he came back.
Finally, I tucked him to bed and I walked down the hall
and he says, "Mom," I'm like, "Yeah," he said,
"Can you come back here?"
And so I go back and he says, "Mom,
you know I know how important Peace Corps was to you
and after working with these Peace Corps volunteers
in the DR, I've decided that I want to go
into the Peace Corps."
>> So the Peace Corps for me was an abbreviated experience.
I have to say it's had a major impact on my life having worked
in economic development in Africa
and having been enmeshed in poverty.
I became very interested in economic development
as an academic field and I did actually go to graduate school
and studied public policy and international planning.
I currently work for Department of Youth
and Community Development and I was working
on an anti poverty program that was designed
to put young disconnected youth into jobs or back into education
or into training programs to try to help the communities
and help them get on a career path.
I got very involved
in the returned Peace Corps group of New York City.
I met my future wife in that group.
She was a returned Peace Corps volunteer
from Albania and there was a coup.
[Laughter] And I went to the bathroom and I came back
and I found out she was now president of the group.
>> Left the Peace Corps after my third year and I moved to London
and I got a master's degree in public health.
And I think my time working as a health volunteer
in the Peace Corps helped show me that some
of my strengths were in organizing and--
some of the data management and not
in the actual patients-provider interaction.
And, since that time, I've been here in the Bronx working at one
of the first analyst in *** programs in the country,
working with a variety of different projects
and different program management for prevention
for *** negative youth, as well as linkage to care
for *** positive youth and I also do a lot of data management
which is kind of goes across the board for prevention programs
and our clinical programs.
So it's really interesting that even though I was all the way
in Africa doing *** prevention, there's a lot of epicenters here
in the United States and there's a lot of work
to be done here as well as abroad.
>> When I finished my service,
the only reason I can logically rationalize leaving El Salvador
was to continue my studies so I went actually--
I left in August and started my graduate studies in September
up in Boston, at Harvard, and my trajectory
in grad school was very much defined
by my service as a volunteer.
I realized how critical education was in particular
and so I did a master in International Education policy.
You know, I love working in the international realm but being
from South Carolina, it's also really important to me
to give back to the domestic community as well
so I started working for a national nonprofit
that outreaches
to under-resourced communities trying to create opportunities
for kids to flourish and develop.
I spent 2 years there and loved it and grew tremendously
but of course still missed the international world.
So I made my way back to the Peace Corps and joined
on as the diversity outreach specialist here
at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC.
And there is-- there's not a better job
that I can imagine honestly.
It's an opportunity to really think about Peace Corps service
and making sure that everyone here in the United States
and folks that come from all different walks
of life are truly aware of the tremendous experience
that the Peace Corps can be and letting them know
that should they choose to pursue it,
it's one that will not--
certainly will not sell them short because there's so much
to be gained but, yeah, 2 years or a year in grad school,
2 years working for a national nonprofit trying
to get back here Stateside and back
on the international side working for Peace Corps.
>> I kind of saw first hand what it's like to live in a country
without a very strong legal system.
My wife and I lived in a small--
in a larger town than where I was before but it's still,
you know, had the small town feel
and even though she was Bulgarian and--
but was from a different town, if we had a problem,
we couldn't go to the police because the police would also--
would always take the side of the locals there.
And so kind of living in that kind of experience--
in that kind of situation, made me really want
to study law and-- back in the States and you know,
it sounds dramatic I guess but make sure it's something
like that never happens here.
So from that, it kind of made me interested
in criminal law especially and as part of what I study here
so that's how Peace Corps made want to become a lawyer.
>> And since 1961, there were 600 Dartmouth alumni
who have also served as Peace Corps volunteers.
Over the past year, we had 17 Dartmouth alumni
who are currently serving which has really kind
of helped Dartmouth maintain its statuses.
One of our top college is it's currently ranked 12
and I am very optimistic that it'll continue to move
up the ranking because the individuals tend
to be very successful.
They have a level of sensitivity
across cultural sensitivity that you really need.
Our mission has remained constant and steady
and extremely relevant over the past 50 years
because at the Corps, it's about world peace and friendship.
I encouraged and I challenged Dartmouth to be a part of that
to really look at how it can continue to get the word
out on our behalf and encourage its students to continue to care
about the world beyond their backyard.
27 months is a very short period of time
but there's an enormous impact that you can have
within 27 months, not just on the communities in which benefit
from you being there but also, really it's the impact
that you have on your own thinking.
And I see that in our Peace Corps volunteers that come back.
I mean they really are changed
and they have a different perspective
around how they interact with the world and the impact
that they can have on the world.
>> It was Africa but it was African in different way
that I had ever known it.
And I remember we-- my friend and I traveled
to the Western Sahara trying to be explorist.
[Laughter] As everybody else went to like, you know,
exotic places for a break that we had
and I met a UN Peacekeeper who was from Ghana
and she was basically the first female Ghanaian, you know,
a peacekeeper to like-- to leave Ghana and come anywhere.
And she said to me, "Where are you from,"
and I said, "I'm from Acarai.
She said the question Ghanaians will usually ask is,
who is your family?
And I mentioned my grandmother and she--
and she was a nurse, this UN peacekeeper.
She said, your grandmother taught me.
And if I had ever doubted that I would do the Peace Corps
that what I was doing was grandmother's path
and what she would have hoped for, for me,
I think that experience, who would have thought
at Western Sahara to meet someone who knew my grandmother
and she spent hours just waiving about the woman that she was
and how radical she was but I never knew,
that she was a radical and I remember thinking, "My God.
She is telling me that I need to this," and I knew--
I guess I knew that the Peace Corps was basically what I
needed to do.
It was-- it's great because 2 years isn't a lifetime
and I think you need a lifetime to make any type of change
but if I can spend those 2 years even solidifying something
that people can continue,
those every single 2 years [inaudible] can beat
that lifetime for those people who will be served.
And that's what I hoped to do when I go.
It's-- Dartmouth has afforded me many experiences
and so while I think if you would ask myself more, yeah,
I would have told you, this place is not for me.
It's not-- it would never be my space.
It is-- I think what it has given me is the strength
to push forward and find-- and make a space for myself
and if nothing else, I think it's the greatest gift this
institution has given me.
[ Music ]
[ Background Music ]
>> Language professor, John Rassias want
to present certification of appericiation
for all the [inaudible] Peace Corps.
[ Applause ]
[ Music ]
[ Background Music ]
>> I hope the spirit will grow that under the guidance
of young Americans and old Americans will go overseas
to share all our best side,
show how much we desire to live in peace.
There can be no greater service to our countrymen,
and know so much the pride more real than to be a member
of the Peace Corps of the United States.
[ Music ]
[ Silence ]