Menu:

Archives:

March/April 2007 Newsletter

In this issue:

Announcements:

Meeting Information

We will be meeting at Phil and Pam Lopes' home Saturday, March 3 at 6:00 pm for our next meeting. Bring your family, friends, and a dish of food to share to 1421 N. Camino de Juan. To get there, drive west on Speedway, until you pass Greasewood. Then, just as the road merges into one lane, you will come to Camino de Juan. Take a right and the Lopes' house is the last on the left side. Meetings are potluck socials.

Peace Corps Writers Compilation

Peace Corps Writers has agreed to edit a collection of Peace Corps letters to be published as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. The book will be called Letters Home From Peace Corps.

You are encouraged to submit your own letters for consideration and inclusion in this volume. The first round of selection will begin on June 1, 2007. For more information, visit the Peace Corps Writers website.

RPCV-SA Activities:

From the Prez, Catherine North:

Dear Fellow RPCVs,

Our group has three main goals: raising money to fund projects abroad, providing a great social network for RPCVs, and participating in community service.

We have consistently raised money through dues, calendar sales, and the Street Fair, and we’ll be doing it again soon. (The next Street Fair will be March 23-25th, and we’ll be soliciting volunteers at the meeting.) We always have a great time. And we regularly volunteer for community service activities.

But in March, we’re going to spend some more time talking about how we can best make an impact in the community through service. We always have a good turn out for the projects, but it tends to be the same group of people that volunteer. While we certainly hope those dedicated volunteers will continue to act, we’d like to hear from all of you about how we can attract others to participate in these projects.

Please come to the meeting with some ideas about community service as we’ll spend some time talking about this. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you on March 3.

peace,

catherine

From the community Services Coordinator, Jennifer Dederich:

Recent Activities

We should all be very proud, 2006 was a very successful year for RPCVSA community outreach. We participated in 4 community activities including serving food at Casa Maria Food Kitchen (South Tucson), painting and carpentry with Habitat for Humanity (Balboa project), creating water harvesting basins with the Nature Conservancy (Fort Lowell offices) and building bikes with Latin American Social Club (Bike Project).

RPCV’s always turn out for the projects, but the number of volunteers is consistently less than we request or anticipate and it tends to be the same group of people that volunteer.

Last year we conducted a survey to better understand how many and what types of activities our group would like to participate in. This year we are going to open the floor to you. These are some questions to think about:

For my part, I am going to work to bring our community successes back to the group in the form of photos, stories and testimonials of the events that will be posted online and/or in the newsletter.

Current Events
Peace Corps Week

Peace Corps Week 2007 is February 26 through March 1. Many of you have expressed interest in participating in the Peace Corps Fair at the University of Arizona on Wednesday, February 28. Specifically, we are recruiting RPCVs who are willing to set up small display tables (photos, memorabilia, clothing, etc.) and share their experience with students, other RPCVs and community members. We are encouraging RPCVs to work collectively with other people who served in the same country or region in order to better create a display. Do not let this task intimidate you--the event will be fun and the display does not have to be fancy! If you are interested and have not yet registered please contact Courtney Martin at .

Details for Peace Corps Fair:

Marana High School Peace Corps Week

Marana High School's diversity program is having Peace Corps Week March 5 through March 9 at Marana High. Monday through Thursday are regular school hours, but Friday is from 9 AM until 1 PM with shorter class times. This is a great opportunity to educate and inspire these young people. It is really fun and the staff and students really appreciate you coming to share your stories with them. The deadline to let Al Pedolsky know the day and time you would like to speak with students is 2/27. Call Al at 742-4514. He will then fill you in on all the details. Let's have a good turnout.

From the Trea$urer, Courtney Martin:

This month we received our hard earned payment of $706 from the December 4th Avenue Street Fair. Our current checking account balance is $1466 and our savings account balance is $717.

As a reminder, we continue to provide an alternative to joining the National Peace Corps Association. For local members interested in paying dues directly to the RPCV of Southern Arizona group we offer the low annual rate of $15/person. If you do choose to join the NPCA, please identify RPCV of Southern Arizona as your local affiliation and we will receive a portion of your membership dues ($22.50).

All proceeds from our fundraising events and membership dues go directly to Peace Corps Partnership projects.

I would like to thank the following individuals that renewed their local memberships at the January meeting:

Elva De La Torre
Nancy Reeder
Bill Davis
Karen Loquvam
Cynthia Zokhrouf
Robin Southern
David Shapiro

Here is the 2006 Financial Report (in Word format) for RPCV-SA.

From the Peace Corps Partnership Coordinator, Casey Boettcher:

We donated $2089.19 to two projects via the Peace Corps website in late January. Over fifteen-hundred dollars went to a Honduran kindergarten and we gave $500 to latrines in Madagascar.

As agreed upon at the January meeting, we've allocated $500 to help RPCV Tony Knapp restore clean water to the community he served in during his stint in Panama. Tony recently returned from Panama and reports that the water supply of the community he served in is indeed polluted by bacteria treatable via chlorination:

The water system in Tijera tested positive for coliforms, meaning that it should be disinfected. I spent the week working with the leaders of the aqueduct commitee to install a water meter on the system to monitor the water supply and demands.

Part of the problem with the aqueduct is deposition of sand and sediment in the tank and pipes. In the attached picture, we are flushing out the sediment trapped at the bottom of the water storage tank. The sediment is dark green in color meaning that it is a good nesting place for algae and bacteria.

I was told that some years ago, the water in the community aqueduct tested clean, leading me to believe that the water system's problems are due to the deposits of sediment. Ideally this problem would be solved with frequent and proper flushing of the aqueduct system but I am afraid that their system is not equipped to do this.

With the $500 we've allocated to Tony's project he will purchase the following:

He's promised to keep us posted as work progresses. Here are some photos of Tony in action:

National RPCV News:

You're encouraged to visit the National Peace Corps Advocacy site for more information on the following headlines: