Saturday, October 8, 2011

Be the Change: Back story on Peace Corps

I was so moved by a comment, Evie, my sister posted I wanted to share it.  Evie and her husband Chris were some of the earliest PCV's in Tunisia when PC first began.  In fact, my visit with them in Tunisia in the mid-seventies certainly helped ignite the flame of my love affair with the exotic  places and developing countries.  Never gave a thought to being in Peace Corp myself until a few years ago and yet...   Here's the quote - thanks Evie.


"One of the the things one of the speakers at the PC 50th anniversary celebration reminded us  was that Margaret Mead said "Never forget that a few thoughtful people can make a difference, in fact, it's the only thing that ever does." I was moved to tears to remember that a handful of college students had taken then campagning Kennedy seriously and gone ahead and sighed up for this "Peace Corps" idea and told him that now he had to create the way to get them there! And their inspiration had come from a handful of Black students in the South bucking the institutionalized racism they faced daily."


It was Ghandi who said "You must be the change you want to see in the world."  But you don't need to do Peace Corps or eat white ants to do it.  Each of us can be an agent of change in some way - teaching kids or a health care class, raising conscious and caring children,  living authentically and doing the ordinary in a non-ordinary way.


And on the wings of that lofty thought - I'm going to give one last effort to scrub the red mud out of my  one pair of capri-pants!  


Be well, Nancy



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