Living Poor; a Peace Corps Chronicle

Living Poor; a Peace Corps Chronicle PDF Author: Moritz Thomsen
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295969282
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book

Book Description
At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation--including his own--and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have madeLiving Poora classic. "Hilariously funny at times, grimly sad at others and elavened with perceptive insights into the ways of the people and with breathtaking descriptions of the Ecuadorian landscape."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Living Poor; a Peace Corps Chronicle

Living Poor; a Peace Corps Chronicle PDF Author: Moritz Thomsen
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295969282
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book

Book Description
At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation--including his own--and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have madeLiving Poora classic. "Hilariously funny at times, grimly sad at others and elavened with perceptive insights into the ways of the people and with breathtaking descriptions of the Ecuadorian landscape."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Living Poor

Living Poor PDF Author: Moritz Thomsen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295979960
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description


The Farm on the River of Emeralds

The Farm on the River of Emeralds PDF Author: Moritz Thomsen
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book

Book Description


When the World Calls

When the World Calls PDF Author: Stanley Meisler
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807050512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
When the World Calls is the first complete and balanced look at the Peace Corps’s first fifty years. Revelatory and candid, journalist Stanley Meisler’s engaging narrative exposes Washington infighting, presidential influence, and the Volunteers’ unique struggles abroad. He deftly unpacks the complicated history with sharp analysis and memorable anecdotes, taking readers on a global trek starting with the historic first contingent of Volunteers to Ghana on August 30, 1961. In the years since, in spite of setbacks, the ethos of the Peace Corps has endured, largely due to the perseverance of the 200,000 Volunteers themselves, whose shared commitment to effect positive global change has been a constant in one of our most complex—and valued—institutions.

The Lower River

The Lower River PDF Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547746504
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book

Book Description
A taut, tense, darkly suspenseful novel about a man who flees to Africa after his marriage falls apart, only to be caught up in a precarious situation in a seemingly benign village.

Nothing Works But Everything Works Out

Nothing Works But Everything Works Out PDF Author: Leigh Marie Dannhauser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781733354004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book

Book Description
Leigh Marie Dannhauser gets sent to Cameroon to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. She faces the challenges of adapting to a new way of life while not knowing French or the patois. But she persists, and in the process learns about herself away from American society. This is the story of her time in a village that became her home but is now a memory.

River Town

River Town PDF Author: Peter Hessler
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062028987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Get Book

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

The Last Train to Zona Verde

The Last Train to Zona Verde PDF Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 061883933X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
The world's most acclaimed travel writer journeys through western Africa from Cape Town to the Congo.

In Their Own Hands

In Their Own Hands PDF Author: Jeffrey Ashe
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1626562202
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
Two and a half billion people worldwide, most of them desperately poor villagers, need a better way to save and to borrow. Even the most innovative banking institutions can’t reach them; savings groups can. In savings groups, members save what they can in a communal pot and loan their growing fund to each other for their short-term needs. Jeffrey Ashe and Kyla Neilan illustrate how these savings groups form and function and how little “outside” support is actually required for their success. Drawing on decades of Ashe’s personal experience, this book describes how he developed Saving for Change, which leveraged the wisdom and strength of group members to train and establish new groups. This model has impacted the lives of 680,000 people across five countries. Savings groups are a “catalytic innovation” that bypasses subsidies, dependency, and high costs while effectively reducing chronic hunger, building assets, and empowering the community. Today, saving groups have 9 million members around the globe—with minimal support, membership could grow to ten times this number.

The Peace Corps Experience

The Peace Corps Experience PDF Author: P. David Searles
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813189349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book

Book Description
For more than 35 years, the Peace Corps has pursued John F. Kennedy's vision of helping people of the Third World build a better life. Yet with the exception of a few celebrations of its early years, little effort has been made to document that organization's history. Now a former deputy director of the Peace Corps offers a first-hand look at life in the agency—both in the field and at headquarters—and a radical reinterpretation of its history during the Nixon and Ford administrations. By the end of the 1960s, the Peace Corps was in disarray. Debate raged over its effectiveness, and many new volunteers embraced the antiestablishment behavior of the day's youth. When President Nixon appointed Joseph Blatchford as director in 1969, some insiders felt the agency's days were numbered—especially when Blatchford set about re-evaluating the Peace Corps' mission and initiated a program called New Directions to reorient its work. Many observers simply lump Blatchford's efforts with the failures and faults of the Nixon administration. David Searles, however, contends that the new director's initiatives revitalized the Peace Corps and made it a more relevant organization. Searles faithfully relates the history of these policies and their implementation in the field, drawing on his personal experience as country director for the Peace Corps in the Philippines. He shows how, despite constant carping from veterans of the early Peace Corps and much furor at headquarters, New Directions reenergized the agency and renewed and reaffirmed the Peace Corps' mission. Searles's descriptions of political maneuverings are incisively observed, and his firsthand characterizations of Peace Corps life richly impart the joys and frustrations of volunteer work. The Peace Corps Experience will give historians a new perspective on the agency and will also interest anyone who has served in the Peace Corps or who wants to understand it.