PCPhilippines Update #78

From Alana:  Below is a link explaining my final project in the Philippines.  I'm working with a practitioner from California to introduce EFT to our Dumaguete community.  We're sharing this with everyone we know in an effort to raise funds to make the project happen.  Thank you for your time and interest in viewing the video.  It'll be very worth it!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/651374800/in-the-city-of-gentle-people

EFT (the Emotional Freedom Technique) is a therapeutic tool focused on balancing the energy systems of our body.  The intent is to reduce or erase the impact negative emotions and experiences have had on us in the past.  The science behind EFT is rapidly growing- shedding light on the powerful connection between our energies and healing.  While studying EFT, I met Rob Nelson via Skype.  He is a gentle soul passionate about sharing EFT with the world.  

While living in the Philippines, I've seen the power of limiting beliefs time and again.  I believe there is a collective unconsciousness here preventing bright Filipino locals, full of potential, from finding success.  EFT is a simple tool to use, proven to be very effective in improving negative and limiting thought patterns.  I'm excited to see EFT at work in our community!

From WORLDVIEW: The Magazine of the National Peace Corps Association

Summer 2012, Vol. 25, No. 2

 

The Peace Corps and Peace.  Time to re-emphasize "Peace" in the Peace Corps: (by Kevin F F Quigley) Within the Peace Corps community, we talk often about the agency's three goals, which can be paraphrased as: 1) help others help themselves, 2) help others understand Americans better, and 3) bring understanding of the world home.  Disappointingly, there is a lot less talk regarding the agency's overall mission established in the Peace Corps Act of 1961: promote world peace and friendship.

 

Promoting world peace was the overriding concern of Sargent Shriver, the architect of the Peace Corps.  As a World War II combat veteran, Shriver understood keenly the importance of a strategic and disciplined approach to waging peace.  In his last major public address at Yale University in November 2001, less than two months after the 9/11/01 attacks, Shriver suggested that the Peace Corps must place a much greater emphasis on peace.

 

He lamented that: "No matter how many bombs we drop, no matter how skillfully our soldiers fight, we are not responding to the ultimate challenge until we show the world how and why we must all learn to live in peace - until peace becomes the only permanent alternative to war."  Shriver also knew that to succeed at winning peace would require comparable resources to waging war.  In that same speech he said, "Peace is much more than a mere absence of war.  Peace requires the simple yet powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us."

 

Although the Peace Corps creates this powerful common recognition of our shared humanity, Shriver lamented that the Peace Corps had fallen short of its promise in promoting peace by saying that, ". . . our dreams were big and our accomplishments were small . . . we did not do enough . . ."

 

Our country, much to Shriver's and others disappointment, has never really put the resources into waging peace. In fact, the Peace Corps entire budget in its first 50 years - roughly $8.7 billion - was spent by the Department of Defense budget in just five days this year alone.

 

Although not directly engaged in war zones, the Peace Corps is indirectly engaged.  The Peace Corps is not now or has not ever been engaged in places where peace is at greatest risk.  Today, that means countries like Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Despite the fact that the Peace Corps is not engaged there, one cannot travel to Khartourn, Baghdad, or Kabul without meeting Peace Corps alumni who are striving to create better conditions for peace in those war-torn places.

 

As the Peace Corps moves forward into its second half-century, a far greater part of how we bring the world home could be to aggressively promote the common recognition of shared humanity that Shriver spoke so eloquently about, along with a clear recommendation that our country must put more resources into waging peace.

 

 

From: Peace Corps Times (newspaper), Inside Issue 2, 2012

 

The Importance of Listening with Our Third Ear:  (by PCV Darlene Grant / Cambodia)  Recently, while sitting with a small group of my fellow Volunteers during a break from teaching activities at our respective sites, our conversation moved from pride in how much we've learned, to the things that frustrate us.  A generally universal lament in our country of service goes something like this, "I still don't understand why I can't get a straight answer.  My co-teacher and my students always answer 'yes' to my questions when I find out later was really 'no.'"

 

Maybe it's miscommunication or misinterpretation, or the desire to not seem negative on the part of my host family, students, and teaching counterparts, yet I do find myself arriving late, overdressed or underdressed for an actual occasion, and generally feeling behind or lost more often than not.

 

However, a fellow Volunteer, Lisa, recently provided an insight that has changed my perspective. First, in formal and informal speaking, Cambodians generally use the Khmer word for "yes," as a way of "pausing" or checking for clarity.  As another Volunteer put it, "It's like the American version of 'Ummmmmmm.'"

 

Lisa said, "It makes sense then, that in cross-cultural situations, we shouldn't be so quick to consider the 'yes' response as the definitive response to our queries.  Too many people make that mistake. 'Yes,' is usually not the actual answer, yet rather a 'pause,' or a way of letting us know they understand what we're asking and they are processing the information."

 

Bells went off for me as this revelation resulted in a simple, yet logical, answer to almost all daily challenges.  "Could it be as simple as "Ummmmmmmmm'?" I asked myself.  "Yes!" is my resounding and very Khmer response.

 

I now have a new appreciation of what successful integration into a cross-cultural context involves.  It requires Volunteers to cultivate and use many skills.  Among the most important is listening in context with a purposeful pause, to allow the possibility of nuanced information to break through our typical rushed interpretation of the response from the person with whom we're communicating.

 

We stand a better chance of understanding what's going on if we attend to the cultural pacing of communication, and how that might translate in our own interactions.  This epitomizes listening with our third ear.

 

 

Goals Two and Three a Tunisian Standard: (Unknown Author) In 1962, 13 newly sworn-in Peace Corps Volunteers arrived in the small northeastern African country of Tunisia to serve as architects.  The Volunteers worked collaboratively with their new counterparts to design buildings and other landmarks, eventually transferring their skill set to local Tunisian architects.  Over the next four decades, nearly 2,500 Volunteers went on to work in the country in areas like agriculture, education, health, and community and youth development until the program was closed in 1996.

 

President Barack Obama recently announced the re-opening of a Peace Corps program in Tunisia. The first Peace Corps Volunteer will arrive later this year to work in English language training and youth and skills development.  For many of the Peace Corps pioneers who served in Tunisia, it's exciting that 50 years since the first Volunteers arrived in the country, Volunteers will once again walk the same streets.

 

Roger K Lewis is one of the original Volunteers who served in the only Peace Corps program designed for architects, working as an architect to the Tunisia Ministry of Public Works and Housing in 1964.  "At the time, I and my Peace Corps colleagues did help set a few architectural precedents:  we designed modern buildings that, nevertheless, used traditional materials and construction methods. We also introduced aesthetic motifs that were challenging and new to the Tunisians," he says.

 

While noting that his impact as a Volunteer was felt in many ways beyond his architectural skills, Lewis states, "Perhaps the most enduring and important imprint on Tunisia was made in pursuing the Peace Corps' Second Goal:  living and working directly with Tunisians, enabling them to get to know, learn about, and better understand Americans."

 

Bruce Cohen, who served as a teacher from 1967 to 1969, agrees.  He says an initial case of mistaken identity endeared him to his community.  "They actually thought I was Tunisian.  When I went to the city of Tunis, I would have soldiers sleeping on me, people putting their chickens on my lap and asking me the price of tomatoes and so forth.  If you were tired it could get exasperating, yet if you were ready to be culturally immersed, you always had the opportunity."

 

"I think Tunisians will be anxious to learn and have their young people exposed directly to Americans rather than only hearing about us through the media and for our Volunteers to have that same opportunity," Cohen says, adding, "I'm very excited about the possibility of another opportunity for Americans, through Peace Corps, to be introduced to the Arab world and to see its beauty."

 

InHarmony

- Jaco

J Jacques Fournet II

US Peace Corps Volunteer

Philippines Batch 269

Daro, Dumaguete City

Negros Oriental

NORSU
LCP