Apropriate Development

Peace Corps Encore! is a great opportunity for those of us Returned Peace Corps Volunteers back on home soil and longing for that experience again. Through short-term assignments from three weeks to three months, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and staff members are deployed to serve on projects with the skills they have gained in their professional lives. Most importantly, "an eLearning tool will be created at the end of each project to ensure that the lessons learned and the processes adopted during the project are available to those who come after us." So not only service, but sustainability! www.peacecorpsencore.org

It's not the Grameen Bank, but I asked Monica Myers to tell us about how a Partna is done in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.

Two teenagers outside of Boston, the Bergquists, have been collecting used cell phones for the last three years and recycling them for about five dollars each to buy phone cards for soldiers in Iraq. The CBS Evening News tonight said that they had started the project when they heard about a local soldier that had rung up over $8,000 on a cell phone trying to call home to keep in touch with his family. They did lots of fundraisers to pay off his bill and then started the project. They just got a huge donation from AT&T and AT&T has also set up cell phone recycle drop off boxes. I am really excited to see these kids doing something so positive and beneficial to others. Check them out at www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com.

Check out takingitglobal.com. It's a great website for youth that are interested in sharing ideas, information, and jobs/internships and ways to get involved. Youth from around the world can share stories about their countries and share ideas and solutions, informing each other and crossing cultures! There are articles, poems, galleries, different databases, bulletin boards, and more. I am not quite sure what constitutes "youth," but I don't feel too old to be looking and participating on this site. They are a non-profit and work with the UN as well as corporations. Check it out! www.takingitglobal.com

I hate to say it, but I have signed up to support numerous causes by adding my name to their mailing list. I have good intentions. I think I might donate or at least follow the cause or even volunteer, but more often than not I end up hitting delete every time the newsletter arrives in my inbox. I don't even read it. I might glance at it, but usually not. I also see the material in the mail and toss it, or open, glance through and toss it. Working in the development office of a non-profit, I know how much it costs for printing and mailing some of those information or donation requests. Yet, I still can't think of it as more than junk mail. I thought I would be better with the e-mail newsletters or solicitations, but they are even more frustrating. I wish those other development departments luck - we have yet to start sending more than a general annual appeal that is more like a letter to friends.