{"id":1313,"date":"2018-10-31T14:47:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T13:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/didouqen.com\/?p=1313"},"modified":"2021-02-17T11:02:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T11:02:47","slug":"a-legacy-of-peace-corps-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-haf.ddev.site\/a-legacy-of-peace-corps-service\/","title":{"rendered":"A Legacy of Peace Corps Service"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u2013\u00a0A Legacy of Peace Corps Service, Friends of Morocco,<\/a>\u00a0Friends of Morocco News<\/strong>, by Lillian Thompson (HAF-Peace Corps Response Volunteer),\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0February 2016.<\/p>\n I’d like to share with you a story about the origins of the High Atlas Foundation, and my experience with it as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer. The High Atlas Foundation resulted from its founder, Yossef Ben-Meir’s Peace Corps experience as a volunteer from New York City assigned to a remote mountain village struggling with poverty and drought in the High Atlas Mountains in the 1990’s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Foundation’s work is grounded in the principles of community participation, which engages\u00a0<\/span>beneficiaries in the process of receiving and using aid effectively. This is a perfect match for the Peace Corps, which engages Americans through living and working in these communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The world we live in today needs to know about and support initiatives like this.<\/span><\/p>\n Lilliam Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n lillianthompson2005@yahoo.com<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n —-<\/span><\/p>\n Since the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) arrived in Morocco in 1963, over 5,000 Americans have served as part of the organization\u2019s partnership with the country to develop resilient communities through education and similar voluntary initiatives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For so many PCVs, this represents a physical, intellectual and emotional journey into the unknown that can be compounded by a sense of a lack of accomplishment, owing to an inability to perceive their contribution to the continuing process of emerging country development and the Peace Corps’ long-term commitment to that mission. \u2018Why am I here?\u2019 and \u2018why was I there?\u2019 could be said to be something of a PCV refrain.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2010, having previously served in Eastern Europe, I was posted to the Kingdom as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer to work with Yossef Ben-Meir, an environmental PCV from 1993-95 and president of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF), which turned fifteen years old last year.<\/p>\n RCPV service differs from that of PCVs in that it is project-focused and there is a more intensive, exact matching of Yossef was teaching at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane when I arrived in the country and it was there, in his kitchen (a Moroccan version of Whole Foods!) that I had the privilege of talking with him about participatory development.\u00a0 Over many a chicken tagine dinner I came to learn\u00a0<\/span>his story and that of the HAF, founded by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), including himself, who served in Morocco.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tale of love and commitment on the part of PCVs \u2013 towards each other, towards Morocco and with respect to the Peace Corps\u2019 \u2018three goals\u2019 \u2013 and a testimonial to the lasting impact Peace Corps service has the capacity to impart.<\/p>\n
\nvolunteers to assignments.\u00a0 Mine focused on NGO development and I worked alongside HAF staff, in particular Nabila Jaber (included here in a photograph conducting a participatory meeting in a High Atlas mountain village), coordinator of the Center for Community Consensus and Sustainable Development at the Faculty of Law, Economics, and Social Sciences of Hassan II University in Mohammedia.<\/span><\/p>\n