"Rebuild the Peace Corps": Peace Corps Week Op-Ed in USA Today

It's Peace Corps Week, and in today's USA Today, you will find a great op-ed piece by RPCV writer Bob Shacochis. Please click on the link below to read, and leave a comment: 

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/02/rebuild-the-pea.html

A short excerpt from this the piece:
"Dollar for dollar, you cannot get a more reliable, cost-effective answer than the Peace Corps when the challenge is to win hearts and minds around the globe. For all of Africa's wars since President Kennedy launched the Peace Corps in 1961 <http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.whatispc.history.decades> , one of the continent's most liberating achievements in the intervening decades has been the education of millions of African children by Peace Corps volunteers. Those once illiterate students are now Africa's middle class, civil servants and leaders, struggling to meet their nations' basic needs."

About Bob Shacochis: 
Bob was a Peace Corps  Volunteer in the Eastern Caribbean from 75-76. He is the author of Easy in the Island, Swimming in the Volcano, Domesticity: A Gastronomic Interpretation of Love and other novels. He is the winner of the National Book Award for First Fiction, the Rome Prize in Literature, and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. A contributing Editor to Harper's Magazine and Outside Magazine, Bob is also a professor at Florida State University and Bennington College.  He is an advisory council member of the MorePeaceCorps.org campaign.