(via peacecorpsonline.typepad.com)

Amy Potthast writes: “The reason getting an invitation to Peace Corps becomes such a problem now is the way the nomination process works. If you aren’t familiar, it may help to know that after you apply and interview, you can get nominated to join the Peace Corps from your local recruiting office. Then your application travels to the headquarters office in Washington, D.C., where your placement officer considers whether you are a good program fit for a specific country assignment, and invites you. (In the mean time you undergo a medical and dental examination to be deemed physically fit to serve in a developing country where medical care isn’t always on par with that of the United States.) Sounds easy, right? Well the problem is that Peace Corps regional recruitment offices throughout the country race against each other once, quarterly to get all their applicants nominated through an online system—and because the number of applicants has far outnumbered the openings, within 15 minutes of opening the online process, one day every three months, the generalist slots all get taken up. If generalist positions made a small percentage of Peace Corps openings, the problem wouldn’t be so dire. But generalist positions make up about half of openings. Not only that, but the generalist contribution to Peace Corps is important. The power of the Peace Corps is that it not only provides needed technical assistance to developing countries, but it also transforms people who don’t necessary have a lot of prior international or development experience, who may otherwise never have the opportunity to live oversesas for that length of time, and to learn another language. “

Beneficiaries:

Congratulations to Philip Chan, an RPCV from Guyana, who won our hearts – and our first small grant – with his proposal to assist a small villiage in Guyana in their effort to obtain clean drinking water.  Please take a moment to read his magnificent project report below.

PROJECT REPORT FROM PHILLIP CHAN

(Slightly abridged by FROG)

Summary:

The purpose of the trip was to implement a small scale clean water project in the Amerindian village of St. Monica.  The decision to conduct this project was based on ongoing communication I had with my village since COS-ing regarding the rise in gastrointestinal complaints (vomiting and diarrhea) reported at the health post and village concerns about the increasingly polluted waters of the Pomeroon.  Prior to the trip we conducted research on applicable clean water applications, including portable filtration systems, Life Straws, water purification packets, and river bank sand filtration.  We consulted with the local Philadelphia chapter of Engineers Without Borders (regarding the river bank sand filtration method) and with Dr. Andrea Thorpe of the Miami Chapter – Rotary International.  We also invited a guest speaker, Dr. Christiaan Morssink-president of the United Nations Associations of Greater Philadelphia to come to our school and give a lecture on water security in the developing world.  Dr. Morssink had previously lived in Suriname, where he was head of the Department of Planning and Project Management in the Ministry of Health.  Ultimately, we settled on rainwater collection as the application for use in our project, primarily for three reasons:

• Turbidity and conductivity data collected by a 2006 CDC team to the Pomeroon indicated rainwater as the cleanest natural source of water in the region.
• Village leaders identified rainwater collection as the desired source for clean water in the community, and already possessed resources to support the set up of a rainwater collection system on the central village compound (including four 450 gallon rainwater tanks).
• In conjunction with Rotary International, a successful larger-scale project to set up rainwater tanks had already been conducted in the neighboring village of Kabakaburi.  Assessment plans to expand this project to St. Monica and Karawab were already underway, and our efforts would complement those of the RI team.

We arrived in Guyana on the morning of Sunday, March 22, and arrived in St. Monica the following day on Monday, March 23.  On Tuesday we traveled with the tushao to Karawab at the request of Dr. Thorpe, who wanted to collect population and resource data for expansion of Rotary’s clean water project to this community.  We were also planning on setting up a second water tank stand at the Karawab village compound, near the primary school and health post.  However, due to time limitations we were restricted to setting up a single water tank stand at the St. Monica compound.  Wednesday and Thursday were devoted to clearing the work site area and gathering materials for the stand, including 384 BMs of lumber donated from community members, representing nearly half of the necessary resources for the project.  Construction commenced on Thursday, and was completed the following afternoon.  Friday evening we had a sendoff dinner and party at the village community center.  Paiwari was shared.  I danced the Worm.

Read the rest of this entry »

(via economist.com)

A MOST unusual document landed on your correspondent’s desk recently: a financial report from a rainforest. Iwokrama, a 370,000-hectare rainforest in central Guyana, announced that it was in profit. It added, more intriguingly, that rainforests had entered the “global economy”.

Iwokrama is part of the largest expanse of undisturbed rainforest in the world, which overlies the Guiana Shield. It has a unique history. In 1989 the president of Guyana had the foresight to give the forest as a gift to the Commonwealth for research into global warming. Today it is administered by an international board of trustees, who have devolved the day-to-day management to the Iwokrama International Centre. It is this centre that has been working to exploit the forest sustainably.

Edward Glover, one of Iwokrama’s board of trustees, says that it became clear more than a decade ago that the forest could not rely on donor funding to survive, so it had to look elsewhere for finance. The centre’s first job was to identify the forest’s assets and to exploit them. It seems to have perfected its art. Today the centre makes money in areas such as ecotourism, timber-extraction, forest-products such as honey and oils, bio-prospecting and forestry research. Its results for 2008 reveal that it made a surplus for the first time that year, with revenues of $2.4m and a profit of $800,000. The previous year it had lost $200,000. Revenues from timber were up by 44%, ecotourism by 26% and training by 22%.

There should be more money to come. Eighteen months ago, it sold a licence for the measurement and valuation of the forest’s “ecosystem services”. This is not to say that the forest has actually sold these rights, but that an investment company, Canopy Capital, based in London, has bought the rights to create a financial deal for the forest’s services.

Ecosystem services are what a forest provides merely by existing. A standing forest can generate rainfall, prevent flooding, regulate the soil, provide biodiversity and store carbon. These benefits are received by everyone in society, but no one pays for them. Such environmental services are often termed “externalities” because they are not included in the price of the forest. When forests are traded in a traditional way, their price usually depends only on the value of the timber and the land on which it grows. No account is taken of the broader services to society. The result is that forests are being cut down because an incorrect price is put on them.

(via etaiwannews.com)

Brazil is asking Guyana to quickly open a border bridge that will give farmers in remote northern states better access to Central American and Caribbean markets.

Brazilian officials in Roraima state recently held an unofficial opening of the river span.

But Guyana has delayed opening its side until a ribbon-cutting ceremony can be arranged. Oil drums are blocking traffic from crossing.

Brazilian Ambassador Arthur Meyer urged Georgetown late Friday to let trucks across the Brazil-funded Takatu Bridge while a date is set for a ceremony.

(via huffingtonpost.com)

The bold new Peace Corps was born today in room 2172 in the Rayburn House Office Building. It took place as members of the House of Representatives were marking up the Foreign Affairs Authorization Bill authored by Committee Chairman Rep. Howard Berman. For almost every item, the California Democrat kept to the figures in President Obama’s budget, but when it came to the budget for the Peace Corps he tossed out the administration’s fiscal year 2010 figure of $373 million and made it $450 million. In terms of the overall budget this was chump change, but if the bill passes Congress, the Peace Corps will be able to begin the extensive reform that it needs and to move toward a doubling of the 7,000 volunteers.

Rep. Berman is a loyal Democrat and a team player of the first order. It took courage for him to support this enlarged figure, seemingly opposing the administration’s number. In fact, Berman stood up for President Obama’s highest ideals and values. Berman supported the movement that elected Obama. Berman saved Obama’s own vision.

Obama is the one who in his campaign promised to double the size of the Peace Corps by its fiftieth anniversary in 2011. Obama is the one with a profound understanding of service as an essential feature of the American spirit. Obama is the one who has gone ahead to include in his budget tripling the size of the domestic volunteers to a massive 275,000.

What is increasingly apparent is that at its top levels, the Obama administration does not realize that it has reneged on the President’s fervent campaign pledge. I know how unlikely that sounds, but it is the truth, and Berman has done the President an immense service.

If the Peace Corps is able to reinvent itself for the 21st century, Berman will deserve a place not simply in the history of the organization but in a new American presence in the world. He does not stand alone. The politician was accepting figures in a bill written by Rep. Sam Farr, cosigned by 120 of his colleagues.

…continue here

(via HuffingtonPost.com)

While Obama is building the domestic program up to at massive 270,000 volunteers, he intends to increase the Peace Corps budget only 10 percent, and envisions a 20 percent increase in volunteers by 2012. It would appear a betrayal of his campaign promise and of his ideals, a tragic failure to change America’s image and its very presence in the world.

The National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) is seeking a temporary Project Assistant to help in the development and implementation of our innovative new program, Africa Rural Connect (ARC).

The ARC Project is an online work collaboration website designed to encourage development work in Africa by drawing on the skills and talents of the African Diaspora, current and returned Peace Corps volunteers, as well as other individuals with development experience on the continent. The website will launch in June and aims to attract tens of thousands of users and their ideas, and will feature a business plan competition to spur creative and practical content generation.

The ARC Project Assistant will assist the ARC Project Manager with responsibilities associated with the website that may include research, communications, participation in strategic planning sessions, and other web-related tasks as assigned.

The ideal candidate will have significant computer skills including some experience working with databases, editing websites and troubleshooting technical problems. He or she should be creative, self-motivated, committed to the goals of the Project, and willing to work in a highly collaborative environment. In addition, the Project Assistant should have ties to the African continent, either as a Peace Corps volunteer or equivalent experience.

For more info, please go here - http://www.idealist.org/if/i/en/av/Job/336373-69/c