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Peace Corps
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| A Peulh Family with Sara A. Holtz a PCV participating in activities of the 96-98 CHAP Project in the Tchaoudjo Region of Togo |
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.
Three simple goals comprise the Peace Corps mission:
Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women;
Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served;
Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.
Since 1961, Peace Corps has served in 137 developing countries. It is presently serving in 71 countries, 26 in Africa. In 40 years of service, Peace Corps has recruited, trained and appointed over 170,000 Volunteers to serve the peoples of the five continents.
Peace Corps Volunteers are U.S. selected from various age groups, backgrounds and experiences. They are sent to countries according to their skills and aptitudes and the development needs of these countries. Once they arrive in the host country, they participate in a ten-week language, technical, and cultural adjustment training program. At the end of this training, they swear in and agree to serve this country for two years. Peace Corps is responsible for Volunteer training and health care and provides modest living allowance. The host country community shares responsibility for Volunteer housing, safety and security.
Ongoing Projects
The objective of the CHAP program, initiated in June 1995, is to assist Ministry of Health and other partners to develop and expand community health activities in rural areas and to support these groups in their efforts to fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the other sexually transmitted infections in Togo.
Together with their partners, CHAP Volunteers train, assist and supervise community health agents, peripheral health care unit (USP) agents, teachers, peer educators, and village committees on health and development, especially in information-education-communication activities that are designed to promote healthy behavior change. Priority health programs in which Volunteers intervene are 1) national programs to fight against malaria, diarrheic diseases, HIV/AIDS and the eradication of the Guinea worm, 2) monitoring and promotion of growth, vaccination, and family planning, and 3) health education of the youth population.
The management and technical orientation of these activities are under the responsibility of the Community Health Division of the Ministry of Health. Volunteers closely collaborate with the peripheral health care units, prefectoral and regional health departments (DPS, DRS), and with several associations and NGOs working in their domain of activities, such as the Association Togolaise pour le Bien-Etre Familial – ATBEF (Togolese Association for Family Well-being), Togo Red Cross, and Associations of People Living with the HIV/AIDS.
The Natural Resource Management program responds to the lack of awareness of the potential negative impact of certain agricultural practices on the environment and knowledge of sustainable agro forestry techniques that can provide for better management of natural resources.
Volunteers on this program work with individual farmers, farm cooperatives, and students. In the schools, they provide theoretical training and conduct practical sessions of environmental education with students of the primary and secondary levels. With farmers, they study ways to introduce and promote new activities and develop income generating agricultural products to provide food security for the family.
This program closely collaborates in the field with the agricultural advisors of ICAT – Institut de Conseil et d’Appui Technique) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fishing.
“A girl educated is a family educated; a family educated is a nation educated” Nowadays, this saying is no longer questioned as efforts are underway throughout in the world to promote girls’ education and empowerment. Peace Corps/ Togo initiated the Girls’ Education and Empowerment program in 1999 to promote these efforts through a variety of activities carried out in collaboration with the Togolese Ministry of Education.
The fundamental goal of this project is to provide for the full participation of women in the development process of Togo. Full participation occurs through an increase in access to education of all school age girls and an increase of the success rate of girls in both the formal and informal education sector.
GEE Volunteers collaborate with their Togolese counterparts to organize activities that raise awareness and provide community training to enable every child, whether male or female, to have access to education. GEE Volunteers organize group meetings, informal discussion groups, conferences, youth camps, income generating projects, scholarship funds and private tutorials to encourage girls to stay in school.
The Togolese private sector employs over three times the number of employees as the public sector and continues to play an important part in the economy of the country. Peace Corps initiated the Small Business Development program to assist public and private initiatives in the area of expansion, funding, and management of small businesses.
Volunteers in this program share their business experiences with local credit institutions, savings and loans and NGOs to help them improve their organizational competences and better manage the financial resources at their disposal. These organizations then provide community members additional access to credit in order to finance revenue-generating activities. Volunteers also train and assist their partners “hommes/femmes entrepreneurs” in the search for funding sources, and in the development of regional distribution markets.
In addition to these major projects, the Peace Corps Volunteers collaborate with their communities in the design, implementation and evaluation of various community development projects and activities.
Support to small community development projects In their role as community development agents, Peace Corps Volunteers collaborate with host communities on small participative development projects. They also assist these communities in mobilizing local resources and in searching for funding. Projects and activities often sought by the communities are those related to the improvement of the drinking water supply, the construction and equipment of health and education structures; the production, conservation, and processing of agricultural products, and the protection of the environment.
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