Word: cvsf
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...sloppy in the selection and training of its volunteers. In Washington the defense is that it is a deliberate policy of the corps to choose all-around, adaptable types instead of specialists. If that is so, then the Peace Corps' fundamental error was in signing the contract with the CVSF. The CVSF expected experts and did not get many. The few specialists who came to Brazil were let down by the CVSF. The Peace Corps stood to lose every way, and did. Because they were promised jobs in their "field," the corpsmen were unprepared to find other work. Instead...
Only 15 per cent of the Brazil volunteers are still working with the CVSF. The rest are engaged in independent projects like those in Lapa. This is ushering in sweeping changes in Peace Corps policy...
...Corps is shying away from contracts calling for experts like the one with the CVSF. Moreover, the volunteers are not longer labelled by the Peace Corps as "experts" in a specific field. They are supposed to be prepared to do almost anything. Instead of working with CVSF counterparts separated from village life, they are now following the Lapa example of working through the townspeople. Not only are they doing better work, they are drawing closer to Brazilian village society...
What the Brazilian case has shown, above all, is that the Peace Corps profect cannot be run as another kid program. The Corps administrators should have realized that the CVSF contract was putting the Brazil project into a Four Point guise that would inevitably lead to trouble. The project is finally turning out well because the administrators and volunteers are trying a more modest approach. The "helping-out-around-the-village" role of the Brazil volunteers may not sound impressive but it is effective. A favorable sign is that the requests being sent to the Rio Peace Corps office...
...technique is bound to be more popular among the townspeople. With the CVSF, the volunteers worked and lived apart from the village. Association with the federal agency could only bring upon the Peace Corps the mistrust which the town folk feel toward a political organization and its paid technicians, who come to work on specific projects and hurry off as soon as they are finished...