"One Person Can Make a Difference"

Critics of the Peace Corps sometimes carp that volunteers don't do much in the way of lasting development.  "What do we have to show for 45 years of sending Americans overseas?" they ask. 

Well, here's a story that points to the value...and values... of Peace Corps service. 

This letter made its way to the NPCA, and is addressed to Carolyn Nickels, leader of the Friends of Thailand affiliate group.

Ms. Nickels,

I am chair of the University of Michigan's Wallenberg Committee.  The Committee oversees the award of the annual Wallenberg Medal ( http://www.wallenberg.umich.edu/medal.html).   This award was established in 1985 to commemorate Michigan alumnus Raoul Wallenberg who, as a Swedish diplomat during World War II, engineered the rescue of tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis in Hungary.  The Medal recognizes outstanding humanitarians whose courage calls to mind Wallenberg's extraordinary values and accomplishments.  Past recipients have included Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, Congressman John Lewis, and Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan hotel-keeper who rescued many hundreds of Rwandans during the 1994 genocide.   

This year the Committee has selected Sompop Jantraka to receive the Wallenberg Medal.  Starting in the late '80s, Sompop began working to rescue young girls from being trafficked to Thailand's sex trade, and established the Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities in Chiang Rae.  He resigned as director this past spring, and has embarked on an effort to address trafficking of young girls in the broader regions of the Mekong basin, including Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Yunnan Province.  The organization ( http://www.depdc.org/index.htm), with support from Canada and several European governments and NGOs, is continuing to do very important work.

We noticed in an article that appeared about Sompop in Time Asia, that he attributed his start to a Peace Corps volunteer named Rebecca Pherin, who he met in Surat Thani.  He says that she gave him two gifts:  the chance to get an education and the sense that he could do something with his life. They may have met in the 1970s or early 1980s.  The Committee would very much like to find Ms. Pherin who, like Sompop, exemplifies the inscription on the Wallenberg Medal:  "One Person Can Make a Difference." We would appreciate it greatly if you or some of your colleagues in the Friends of Thailand might know how we might find her.

Many thanks for your assistance,

John Godfrey

Comments

[Patricia F. Neyman]

I just have to write in response to the Wallenberg person's letter above. In 1970-74 I was a volunteer in Colombia. I was engaged to "study monkeys" in Colombia, and I ended up studying a small monkey called the Cottontop Tamarin (Saquinus oedipus).

I used the data I got to do my PhD thesis; but, based on my research, we were able to get this monkey declared an endangered species and to stop its export from Colombia. Later on with a small grant from the New York Zoolical Society I revisited Colombia (I think it was 1975 or 6) to get more data and, more important to "make a survey" of possible reserve sites with populations of this monkey. What I am getting to is that many things grew out of this work-- because one of the reserve sites I wrote up for the Colombian equivalent of the Interior Department (at that time called INDERENA) actually was made into a reserve. It was near a town I had learned of during my tenure as a volunteer. I was told then that the town had had a sort of benefactor, a woman who lived there for some years and who laid the basis, you might say, for a positive attitude toward conservation.

Some students from Wisconsin later went down there and studied the monkeys there; and they also began working with the villagers to get them interested in protecting the monkeys. You can find references to the site and their exciting work if you Google Salguinus oedipus or maybe Cotton-top. There's nothing yet about all this on my web site, but some day -- some day -- it is coming.

When I was in Colombia, I met many people who were very suspicious of me. They thought I must be working for the US government and gathering data somehow to take away their natural resources. (It did help a bit to remind them of Jane Goodall!) The internet is a great new tool for international exposure of what volunteers do.

Wish we'd had a blog when I was "in"-- though of course there was neither electricity nor running water where I spent most of my time!