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TODAY o January 25, 2001
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Peace Corps recognizes Atlantans' role
Saeed Ahmed - Staff
Thursday, January 25, 2001
In the last 10 years, the Atlanta University Center --- a consortium of six historically black institutions in southeast Atlanta --- has produced more African-American Peace Corps volunteers than any other college system in the nation.
The Atlanta regional office of the Peace Corps will celebrate that achievement tonight at Spelman
College. Dignitaries such as former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young will be in the audience, and the
festivities will include a ceremonial send-off of 25 new volunteers to Zambia.
"This is an indication that we are making headway toward our goal of making the Peace Corps more
diverse and more reflective of America in general," said John Eaves, Atlanta regional manager for the
agency.
Still, Eaves added, a number of challenges remain.
Since 1990, Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown College have
collectively produced 63 Peace Corps volunteers. But the number pales compared to the 38,000
volunteers who served during the same 10-year period.
And this year, when the Peace Corps is boasting its highest number of volunteers ever, fewer than 200 of the 7,600 volunteers currently serving overseas are African-Americans.
For Sterling Taylor, a senior at Morehouse College, the reason is obvious.
"As long as blacks remain
economically disadvantaged, those of us who are fortunate enough to graduate college will not take two
years off to serve in some other country at the expense of building our careers," said Taylor, who serves as editorial page editor of the campus newspaper. "It's an
indulgence we simply can't afford."
Eaves says the Peace Corps must counter this "misdirected perception" if it wants to boost the
number of minority volunteers.
"We're programmed to think we have to take a linear approach with our lives --- college, graduate
school, career --- and that somehow serving in the Peace Corps is taking time off," he said.
But the Peace Corps is like a real-life graduate school, Eaves said. By working in developing countries,
participants are not only able to help those people, but they return with cross-cultural experiences that are
tremendously marketable.
"Where else can you spend your first two years out of college engaged in an altruistic endeavor that
you can then turn into a professional asset?" he said.
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