This fall twenty-five new members joined West Cascade. Welcome to you all!! This has come about, we think, because of increased interest due to the celebration of the 50th as well as new RPCVs moving to the area and more active recruiting of U of O students. Our total membership is now 145. You’ll see the names of all of our members in the updated version of the membership directory which will be distributed to members as a .pdf via email before the end of the year. Please save this document for you will find it a useful networking reference. We invited all members to submit a short biography to include in the directory and a good number responded.

Our membership includes five active PCVs, about 15 first year members who joined WCPCA through the national organization, and a total of forty members who have joined WCPCA through NPCA. West Cascade members who have never belonged to NPCA might like to join now at no cost to learn the benefits of belonging to the national organization. For further information go to http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/.

The board contributed $700 to fund the drilling of two wells for drinking water in a rural village in Madagascar. The community of 2,200 people is currently served only by a single well. The amount of water is inadequate and people often draw water from unsanitary sources. As a result many suffer from water borne diseases. The PCV involved is M. Rao. This project has been fully funded at $1,700 and presumably is under way at this time.

The board also granted $300 for English library materials to support English instruction in a high school in Ukraine. When the project is fully funded the materials will allow students to enhance their English skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The instructional program will build teamwork and organizational skills as students use the materials to complete small-group projects that they will present in English to their teachers and peers.

From Margot:
November 3, 2010

Dear WCPCA,

My name is Margot Paulson. I first met you back in 2009 during my senior year at the University of Oregon while applying to the Peace Corps. It was a time of great excitement and attending your events made the process even more real. I had not met many RPCVs at this time and support and the events that you held were always wonderful and made me become more and more enthusiastic about becoming a PCV. Although, I had majored in French and expected to be placed in French-speaking Africa, I ended up in Ukraine working as a TEFL volunteer.

I have been in Ukraine for roughly 13 months now and have had a wealth of wonderful experiences. I am the first volunteer in my town of 15,000 located in central-eastern Ukraine. I spend most of my time teaching English, but I am also involved in a number of other activities. I run a number of clubs, plan concerts (our most recent one was on the theme of Halloween), participate and run summer camps, teach and do projects related to HIV prevention, and I am currently in the process of building an English Resource Library and Study Room at my school.

I am always working on improving my students’ English skills and the quality of the English taught at my gymnasium. My students are quite enthusiastic about learning English, but their books are poor in quality, old, and basically boring. Along with the help of the English teachers at my school and the director, we have decided to build an English Resource Library and Study Room as we believe this will be more sustainable and useful than replacing all the students textbooks. This will serve as a comfortable place for students to improve their English and the books will both get more use and will not have to be replaced as often as individual textbooks.

Drawing upon on his personal experience and a wide range of interviews with the participants, Bob describes the creation of the first PC program and its immediate influence upon the definition of subsequent programs. The reader will learn about the personal negotiations that took place between Sargent Shriver, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, two American academics who knew Nkrumah, and George Carter, PC Ghana’s first director. A reader will gain a new appreciation of the high level of uncertainty regarding this program for both a newly independent country and for the US in the midst of the Cold War. How little we knew about the developing world at that time!

Readers will also learn how that first training program was organized by American academics. Bob interviewed them as well as RPCVs from his group extensively and shares their and his experiences in the training program and subsequent thoughts about that preparation. Of course the dreaded interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists are featured.

The evolution of PC Ghana is described including Bob’s work to develop the first in-country training program. That’s a legacy that current PCVs should value highly.

All in all Being First is a most informative and entertaining book for RPCVs and prospective PCVs. I highly recommend it for holiday reading and giving. Do our newsletter readers have other PC related books to recommend? If so, please respond.