Menu:

Archives:

Fall 2006 Newsletter

In this issue:

Announcements

Meeting Information

Mark your calendars! Our next RPCV-SA Meeting is scheduled for Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 6 pm. Come join us at Pam and Phil Lopes’ house (with your family, friends, and a dish of food to share), located at 1421 N. Camino de Juan. To get there drive west on Speedway, pass Greasewood, and just as the road merges to one lane you will come to Camino de Juan. Take a right and the Lopes house is the last house on the left side. Meetings are potluck/socials.

Ethnic Dinner

The next ethnic dinner will be at Pei Wei Restaurant at Ina and Oracle (on the south side of Ina just west of Wild Oats) on October 21st at 6:30 pm. See you there!

Peace Corps Latrine Reader

Steve and Jake here with a Peace Corps Latrine Reader reminder. We've received many excellent stories thus far and hope to get more over the next three months. In case you doubted our sincerity (Dave Dimatties), rest assured that this bush taxi is pulling away on September 15, 2006. Your opportunity for literary fame grows nigh. For submission guidelines, a word on our aesthetic and other details, check the website: http://peacecorpsreader.blogspot.com/ Send stories as either an MS Word or Rich Text file to stevemcnutt@earthlink.net or jfawson@gmail.com  And look for our ad in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers, which hits newsstands in a few weeks. Yours, Jake & Steve

RPCV-SA Activities

From the Prez

Dear Fellow RPCVs, I want to start by thanking the wonderful folks at Milagro Co-Housing for hosting our July meeting and pool party. We’ll be back at the Lopes’ fabulous home for our next group meeting on September 23rd at 6:00 pm. I recently talked to the new Peace Corps Fellows, and I hope you’ll get to meet many of them at that time. In addition to the fun socializing, one of the main functions of our group is to raise money to fund Peace Corps Partnership projects. We currently get this money from three sources: membership dues, calendar sales, and volunteering at the street fairs. Current PCVs and their host communities will greatly benefit from our ability to fund these projects. In that vein, I’d like to remind all of you the local memberships are just $15. Courtney will be collecting this year’s dues at the meeting. We don’t want the dues to chase anyone away, so they are optional. But you are encouraged to contribute so we can give more to the projects. Second, 2007 calendars will be available for sale at the meeting. We bought a few extra this year, so please help us sell all of them! :) Third, we are fortunate to be able to raise quite a bit of money by volunteering at the Fourth Avenue Street Fairs twice a year. We’ll start planning for the December Street Fair soon. And finally, … We’d like to take some time to think of other opportunities that might be out there for us to raise money. So I’d like to ask you to put those thinking caps on and come to the meeting with your great ideas. If you have friends who are RPCVs but aren’t active in the group, I encourage you to bring them to one of the next couple of meetings. We’d love to increase our impact by growing our group. I look forward to seeing you again soon. peace, Catherine

From the Treasurer

Our current account balances are: Checking $1266.56 and Savings $699.11. As a reminder we will begin the renewal of our local memberships at the next meeting. Last year we implemented this program in order to bring in more funds directly to our local group. Instead of members having to pay $50 to join the National Peace Corps Association, we are offering a lower rate of $15 to join the local group. Membership is not required; however, it does help us fund additional PC Partnership Projects. Last year we had a great response and expect to have more this year.

From the Peace Corps Partnership Coordinator

Last meeting, Terry Sprouse spoke briefly about the volunteer opportunities with the Nature Conservancy in its local water harvesting pilot project at the Tucson - Fort Lowell offices. The pilot project is moving forward slower than expected meaning there are no volunteer projects at this time. In lieu of working with the NC, I have contacted Habitat for Humanity. We will be volunteering on a construction project Saturday, October 14 approximately 7 am to 1 pm. We need 5 to 15 people to commit to working with Habitat in October. I will bring the Volunteer Packet and the liability waiver forms that you will need to complete prior to participating. The AIDS walk is coming up soon. Contact Al from Afghanistan for more information: The AIDS Walk is on Oct 8 at the U of A Mall. Information is available at www.aidswalktucson.com  or 791-9255. We want to try to put a team together to walk on that date. The sooner we organize, the sooner the participants can begin to solicit funds from friends, family, etc. Thanks. Al

Information on new RPCV Fellows

We are delighted to announce an incoming class of 27 Peace Corps Fellows/USA who will join 31 continuing fellows - a total of 58 students - who will bring their talents and resources to internships that benefit underserved communities in Tucson and southern Arizona. We have invited a number of community agencies and campus outreach units in to recruit the students for projects/internships that meet The Peace Corps Fellows/USA goal of providing service that (directly or indirectly) benefits an underserved community. 2006-07 Fellows (# by Department)

Anthropology (1 Fellow)

Arid Land Resources Studies (focus on crisis management) (1)

Art Education (1)

Landscape Architecture (1)

Latin American Studies (2)

Language Reading & Culture (3)

Management (Business) (1)

Natural Resources/Watershed Management (4)

Public Administration & Policy (6)

Public Health (7)

For more information or to find out about future meetings contact gehlers@u.arizona.edu or 520-621-9103.

Georgia Ehlers

Director Office of Fellowships

Internships and Community Engagement Graduate College Administration Building 322B

Tucson, AZ 85721-0066 520-6219103

 

Request for Information

Does anyone in your group know much about Graham County AZ? I was recently in contact with an employer there but was not much interested in part based on the remote location and low population of the area. Any insight into Graham County or the town of Safford would be great.

 

Luke Kelad

RPCV Guatemala

Email: lkelad@hotmail.com

Peace Corps News

July 25, 2006

From: Ken Hill

Chair Subject: “NPCA Membership Structure: Recommendations of NPCA Staff.”

The intent of this message is to share recommendations made by the NPCA staff regarding changes to the NPCA membership structure and systems. Your comments are welcome. Please provide them to the Director representing your group or to the President of NPCA.

Background: Over the past two years, NPCA has conducted an extensive and systematic examination of its membership structure in an effort to develop a business model to more effectively meet the needs of members, affiliated groups and the national organization. We very much appreciate the intense and extensive efforts of the Membership Work Group, chaired by Bruce Anderson, as well as the work of our excellent consultant, Merrill Rose.

The goal of this review has been to increase membership in NPCA and affiliated groups by reducing barriers for joining and making the value equation for membership more competitive. Specific efforts have focused on simplifying systems, reducing associated costs, improving service and the cost/value to members and groups.

NPCA’s current membership structure is a product of years of evolution reflecting past needs. In September, NPCA Directors must make critical decisions to create a membership structure to meet the needs of the future. The Board now has the requisite information upon which to base its decisions, including;

 

These are the recommendations from NPCA Staff:

Please note: The materials and information included in this listserv are provided as a service to you and do not necessarily reflect endorsement by the National Peace Corps Association. To subscribe to this list, send an e-mail to: groups@rpcv.org including your name, affiliate group and officer title. To post to this list, send a message to: groupleaders@lolo.cidi.org. Replies go to the sender. Always sign your name and give a contact e-mail address. To administer your Group Directory page on the NPCA website, use your group login at http://www.rpcv.org/admin. To administer your group in the NPCA database, use your individual login at https://www.npcaonline.org/npcassa/ssaauthmain.login_page 

Peace Corps News on Line: http://peacecorpsonline features the following stories plus more:

Phoenix area RPCV group: If anyone would like to subscribe to the Phoenix RPCV group, the site is as follows: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rpcvphoenix/