March 22, 2010 : Celebrating Five Decades of Peace Corps Service to Morocco Hosted by the Tangier American Legation Institute for Morocco Studies (TALIM) and the Friends of Morocco The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) The Johns Hopkins University Rome Building, Rome Auditorium 1619 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 6:30 to 7:00 pm Networking; 7:00 to 8:00 pm Program; 8:00 to 8:30 pm Networking. Refreshments available before and after the Program Chair:
Tim Resch, President, Friends of Morocco,
timresch@gmail.com 703 470 3166

Panelists:Rueben Simmons, Peace Corps Morocco Director 1963
Marilyn Charles, Peace Corp, Morocco 1,
Reuben Simmons, Peace Corps Morocco Director 1963
Marilyn Charles, Peace Corp, Morocco 1,
Tim Resch, President of Friends of Morocco
Charlie B. Kellett, RPCV/Morocco 1994-96
Bruce Cohen, ex-Peace Corps/Morocco Director 2003-2008
David Lille, Peace Corps Country Director for Morocco (PPT)

This event is part of the Washington Moroccan-American Club 20th Anniversary Celebration with 20 events in 20 days in March 2010. The Peace Corps/Morocco Memorandum was signed in May 1962 and the first Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco started service in February 1963. Over the last five decades over 4000 Americans have done two years of service in Morocco in a wide diversity of disciplines and locations. 250 volunteers are currently serving in what is Peace Corps second largest country contingent. Currently, Volunteers serve in the following sectors: Environment, Health, Small Business Development and Youth Development. Hear about the start of Peace Corps in Morocco by Rueben Simmons, Peace Corps Morocco Director 1963 and Marilyn Charles, Morocco 1, meet former Peace Corps Directors over the decades, watch video interviews by long serving Moroccan staff at the Peace Corps Office in Morocco and hear about Peace Corps/Morocco today and tomorrow. Agenda 6:30 to 7:00 pm Networking and Refreshments 7:00 to 8:00 pm Program: History of the start of Peace Corps in Morocco Reuben Simmons, Peace Corps Morocco Director 1963 and Marilyn Charles, Morocco 1 News Video of Morocco 1 reunion visit to Morocco Morocco in a Peace Corps context Tim Resch, RPCV/Morocco 1970-74 Valeries Staats, RPCV/Morocco 1983-85 Charlie B. Kellett, RPCV/Morocco 1994-96 Bruce Cohen, ex-Peace Corps/Morocco Director 2003-2008 Video interviews with long time Moroccan employees of Peace Corps M'Hamed El Kadi, Information Resource Center Director Daouia Belmokadem, Accountant Abdou Laanaya, Facilities Hakim Illi, receptionist Peace Corps/Morocco: Today and Tomorrow David Lille, Peace Corps Country Director for Morocco (PPT) 8:00 to 8:30 pm Networking and Refreshments For more details see the Peace Corps Morocco web site Plan now for Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Celebration Sept. 22-25, 2011 The National Mall, Washington, DC This four-day series of events will include many activities honoring the service and impact of 200,000 Peace Corps Volunteers and include a wreath-laying ceremony at President Kennedy's grave and a walk across Memorial Bridge carrying flags representing Peace Corps' 139 countries of service. Peace Corps/Morocco 50th Anniversary Celebration Memorial Day Weekend May 26-27, 2012 Rabat, Morocco Celebrate five decades of Peace Corps service to Morocco by over 4500 volunteers. This two-day series of events will include activities hosted by the National Peace Corps Association/Friends of Morocco, Peace Corps/Morocco and the government of Morocco. Returned volunteers are invited to bring family and friends to their sites of service across Morocco before and after the weekend.
More to come. Ideas welcome

Event report

Celebrating Five Decades of Peace Corps Service to Morocco

A program hosted by the Tangier American Legation Institute for Morocco Studies (TALIM) and the Friends of Morocco as part of the Washington Moroccan American Club’s 20/20 events  in March 2010.

Venue:  Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Johns Hopkins University Room 500 Bernstein Office Building 1717 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.

Reporter:  Tim Resch

The Peace Corps’ 20/20 Event

The celebration of five decades of Peace Corps service to Morocco was a key event among the 20 events sponsored by the Washington Moroccan American Club in March 2010.  This report covers many of the matters addressed at the program, including the nature and origins of Peace Corps service, and provides an in-depth discussion and chronology of Peace Corps involvement in Morocco, starting from its inception.  The speakers and their presentations are described throughout this report.

The start of Peace Corps in Morocco

As noted at the event, the Peace Corps/Morocco Memorandum was signed in May 1962, and the first Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco started service in February 1963. Over the last five decades more than 4000 Americans have done two years of service in Morocco in more sites, sectors, and projects than can be accurately reported. They have included such endeavors as lab technology, urban development, commercial development, education of the blind and deaf, rural water supply, small business development, beekeeping, and English training.  Currently, Peace Corps volunteers serve in the following sectors: Environment, Health, Small Business Development, and Youth Development. 206 volunteers are currently serving in what is the Peace Corps’ second largest country contingent. 

On May 2, 1962, the Peace Corps sent Lawrence Williams to Rabat, the capital city of independent Morocco to negotiate Peace Corps operation in Morocco. These discussions were comparatively brief - a sign that in its second year the Peace Corps was becoming an established institution around the world.  The program in Morocco called for English teachers and rural community action workers where the emphasis was on surveying and irrigation. The 56 volunteers who were to carry out this program went into training at California State Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo on October 12, 1962. They arrived in Rabat on February 12, 1963. On hand to greet them was Deputy Representative Reuben Simmons.  In that group, was Marilyn Charles, who would eventually marry Rueben when they reconnected 30 years later?   

In his presentation at the 20/20 event, Rueben said that an issue of key concern for Peace Corps/Washington in placing volunteers in Morocco was the country’s tolerance for Jewish Americans.  Simmons, who had also initiated the Peace Corps program in Tunisia, was able to inform Peace Corps Headquarters of the Jewish history and presence in Morocco alleviating concerns. 

Marilyn Charles was part of the first group of the 53 volunteers recruited for Morocco, and who presented at the event, told of the Peace Corps recruitment and training process.  The recruitment process was just getting formalized and ultimately Marilyn had to visit Peace Corps Headquarters to move the process along.  After training at Cal Poly, they then traveled to Rabat for several weeks of in country training at Les Chenin, a small forestry outpost on the outskirts of Rabat in the Mamora forest.  From there the group split up and each volunteer went his or her separate way, serving in the cities and in the bled. Marilyn was assigned to Meknes and Fes where she work as an English teacher.

Morocco 1 volunteers continue to re-connect with periodic reunions and in 2008 17 of them returned to Morocco.   A Morocco 2M television video on their visit was shown to the group attending the 20/20 program. 

Peace Corps in the 1970s:  End of the Beginning or Beginning of the End?

Tim Resch, President of the Friends of Morocco and a volunteer in Ouezzane and Rabat 1970 to 1974 presented the next stage of the evolution of Peace Corps and Peace Corps in Morocco.  From an all-time high of 15,500 volunteers serving in 1966, the Peace Corps was shrinking and stood at 8,000 in 1970.  Richard Nixon, elected in 1968 and an opponent of the Peace Corps, subsumed Peace Corps in the domestic agency Action in 1971.  Joe Blatchford, Peace Corps Director 1969-71, initiated a program called “New Directions” to revitalize the Peace Corps by reversing declining trends in both the number of applicants applying to serve as volunteers and the number of requests from host countries for volunteers.  The Viet Nam war raged.  New Directions meant recruitment of more skilled volunteers, longer training programs, families, “un-matrixed” spouses and more nationals as country staff.

A forestry student at the University of Minnesota, which was twinned with Morocco for recruitment, Tim took language, technical and cultural training during his senior year, trained, along with 10% of his forestry class, for 12 weeks in Morison, CO and then another 4 weeks in Morocco.  He managed a research arboretum outside Ouezzane for 2 ½ years and then established a wild land weather station network from a base in Rabat.  Housing was provided by Morocco, and Peace Corps provided a CJ-5 jeep for work-related travel. 

Peace Corps in the 1980s:  Peace Corps Solidifies

In 1981, Congress passes legislation that made the Peace Corps again an independent federal agency.  In 1982, the number of volunteers has fallen to 5,380—the lowest number since 1962 but climbed slowly thereafter under Loret Miller Ruppe, the longest serving Peace Corps Director to date.  The 20^th and 25^th Anniversaries of Peace Corps are celebrated in Washington, DC. 

Valeries Staats, 1983-85, served as an English teacher at the university level in Casablanca.  Peace Corps TEFL was moving out of teaching at the Lycee and college-level and doing teacher training, university-level and other specialized English training.   

 Peace Corps in the 1990s:  Peace Corps diversifies

In the 1990s, Peace Corps moved into Russia and other former Soviet Union countries, South Africa and China back again with a focus on English language instruction.  Mark D. Gearan launched Crisis Corps, a new program that allowed returned volunteers to provide short-term assistance during natural disasters and humanitarian crises.  The Peace Corps Day is organized to link returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) with U.S. schools.

Ellen Paquette served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia beginning in 1972, as a teacher in a rural junior high and high school. She later served as a volunteer leader for an additional 2 years before becoming one of the core trainers for incoming volunteers, and later, the Associate Peace Corps Director for the education program. She served in Liberia continuously for 11 years. She returned to the Peace Corps as the Training Director in Morocco for 2 years, and continued as the Country Director for another 4 years.

She worked to re-start the Peace Corps program in Morocco after the first Gulf War, when the Peace Corps program was suspended for six months and 135 volunteers were evacuated from their posts.  37 volunteers returned in June of 1991 and by 1993 levels were back to pre-war levels of about 150.

Peace Corps in the 2000s:  Peace Corps diversifies and PC/Morocco goes to the Bled

Under George W Bush, Peace Corps struck new partnerships with Habitat for Humanity and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, received HIV/AIDS money to increase the number of volunteers fighting to stem that epidemic, entered Mexico and returned to Thailand and Sri Lanka.  For the first time, Peace Corps served domestically in the response to the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and associated flooding.

Bruce Cohen, RPCV Tunisia 1967-69 English and adult education, worked in Peace Corps recruitment for about 15 years as he rose to Director of Recruitment in the late 80s. He then became country director in DR Congo (Zaire) 1987-89, and Senegal 1990-93.  In December 2002, he became Director for Peace Corps Morocco and served until August 2008.

Post 9/11/2001, he accepted a position with the possibility that the U.S. would invade Afghanistan and Iraq and that the Peace Corps program in Morocco would be impacted.  Peace Corps/Morocco evacuated in April 2003 and started to return six months later in September.   Volunteers were posted to mainly rural areas, most had cell phones and internet access, and the government of Morocco provided close protection for volunteer safety.  Morocco and Jordan are the only predominantly Muslim Arab countries where the Peace Corps is serving. 

 Video interviews with long-time Moroccan employees of Peace Corps/Morocco

Short video interviews were shown of Peace Corps/Morocco staff describing their jobs and the impact on their lives serving as Peace Corps volunteers for Morocco.  They are as follows:

M'Hamed El Kadi, Information Resource Center Director
Daouia Belmokadem, Accountant (retired)
Abdou Laanaya, Facilities management
Hakim Illi, receptionist

Peace Corps/Morocco: Today and Tomorrow

David Lille, current Peace Corps Country Director for Morocco, prepared a PowerPoint presentation that described the current program.  There are 206 Volunteers working in four project areas:  Environment with 45 Volunteers, Health with 55, Small Business Development with 49, and Youth Development with 57.

Peace Corps does a 10-week pre-service training in Morocco that delivers integrated training reflecting the realities of service of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. This is achieved through: A Community-Based Training Approach (CBT), An Enriching Home stay Experience, Self-Directed Training (SDT). and Interaction with Volunteers in the field.    

Environment

The Environment sector assists local communities and the Department of Water and Forests to translate country development plans into community-level actions.

Environment volunteers work in teams with local partners and Water and Forests Department personnel to promote environmental education curricula in rural schools and protected areas' information centers.  Additionally, they expand the communities' capacity to improve environmental quality, and they thereby motivate the public to be more environmentally-conscious and make responsible and balanced decisions in order to protect the environment.

Health

In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the health sector addresses community health problems such as high infant mortality rates and adverse living conditions associated with poor water quality and inadequate sanitation facilities. In order to do so, volunteers are assigned to small communities and villages where they work to:

·         Promote personal and environmental health and reinforce appropriate health behaviors, and,

·         Enhance the capacity of targeted professionals and organizations, in order to deliver effective preventive health education throughout rural communities.

Small Business Development

The small business development sector collaborates with the Ministry of Tourism, Artisans and Social Economy. The program prepares Moroccans and their local associations or cooperatives to develop and enhance sustainable microenterprises.

Volunteers provide technical assistance to women and men artisans, who work mainly in the handicraft sector. They help increase the quality of production; enhance basic small business practices, marketing and entrepreneurial skills; improve business management practices; seek available and appropriate resources, including grants and micro-financing options; and effectively use information technologies.

Youth Development

Youth constitute the majority of Morocco's population. Volunteers assigned to youth and women's centers provide youth, women, local partners and communities with participatory educational opportunities that develop their own capacity to improve their lives.

Volunteers encourage local youth to become more involved in their communities through targeted activities, which build leadership skills and community awareness. They mentor youth; teach computer, business, English, and literacy skills; lead HIV/AIDS and health awareness activities; and organize community cleanups and tree plantings. Volunteers encourage students’ participation in national English camps, environmental clubs, and sports teams. Their work helps empower youth and women to improve their lives and increases the capacity of local professionals who work in youth, gender, or community development.

Press Coverage of the 20/20 Event

Video:  US Peace Corp News coverage - Experience in Morocco by Ava Mo (videos) 4:15 minutes

 Friends of Morocco (FOM) is an organization of Americans, mostly returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCVs), with experience in Morocco and Moroccans in America united with an interest in promoting educational, cultural, charitable, social, literary and scientific exchange between Morocco and the United States of America.

FOM seeks to:

v Reunite Americans with Morocco experience and Moroccans in America

v Improve the awareness of Americans regarding the culture, needs and achievements of Moroccan peoples

v Keep members and others current on events in Morocco

v Support projects of the U.S. Peace Corps and private charitable organizations in Morocco

v Organize and implement development education and outreach activities

v Fund and support charitable projects and scholarship on Morocco and Moroccans.