Word: accion
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...surprisingly, ACCION's self-help ideal sometimes falls short in practice. The barrio is a transitory settlement of strangers, and the organizational sense often fades in the rapid population turnover. Moreover, not everyone is interested in progress; sometimes various politicians depend for their power on maintaining the status...
Another problem is that ACCION, apolitical and even without foreign policy goals like the Peace Corps, is often at loggerheads with the anti-American majority in Venezuela, particularly at the grass-roots level. Then too, as a private organization, ACCION must rely wholly on foundations and corporations for funds. This is sometimes impossible, since ACCION's chief work involves changing community attitudes...
Inevitable, ACCION invites comparison with the within already existing institutions, in diverse setting; she Accionista work exclusively in urban slums and start from scratch to build a community organization. ACCION is more selective, taking only about one in ten applicants as compared to one in three for the Peace Corps. ACCION's attrition rate is also higher--15 per cent to the Peace Corp's 5 per cent. This figure doesn't represent a higher dissatisfaction quotient, however. ACCION prefers to let all those go who can't match its demands for professional minded, dedicated activists. Because the Peace Corps...
...ACCION is older than the Peace Corps--by six months. It was founded in 1960 by Joseph Blatchford, who conceived the idea while on a goodwill tour of South America as the captain of the University of California tennis team. According to Blatchford, he felt the need to start a community development group after Vice President Nixon was attacked in his limousine by mobs in Caracas. Although ACCION has helped reverse the tide of militant anti-Americanism, it is possible that Nixon would be attacked again today if he showed his face in Caracas...
With government funds, lots of favorable publicity, and associations with the Kennedy charisma, the Peace Corps has had an easy time gobbling up most of the activists in this area. But ACCION has been doing some intensive local recruiting of its own. From its East Coast office at 17 Dunster Street in Cambridge, ACCION especially likes to bird-dog prospective Peace Corpsmen...