Cafeteros Invite RPCVS to Serve Again

Mary Ray (ETV 1966-68), specialist in English as
a Second Language in the Fairfax County, VA,
school district, is traveling to Medellín, Caldas and
Bogotá this summer to help set up the first pilot
program for a team of former PCVs to serve again.
She will be accompanied in Caldas by Merrily
Beyreuther (UCD l964-66), a management consultant
specializing in program design and development.

The two women will meet with Federation
of Coffee Growers (Cafeteros) officials as well as
school officials in Caldas to plan the stays of former
volunteers for three weeks. The RPCVs (fondly
known as los ancianos) will assist Colombian elementary
teachers assigned to teach English whose
actual knowledge of English and how to teach it is
mostly at a beginning level. The ancianos will also
explore possible ETV projects. The Cafeteros will
provide housing and a stipend while volunteers are
in Caldas.

Over a dozen volunteers responded (many including
their spouses) to the article in our April
newsletter asking for former Colombia volunteers
with decent Spanish skills to contact Maureen Orth
about the possibility of returning to Colombia.
Maureen, who traveled to Colombia last February
to contact Colombian officials about such a program,
returned in June to Medellín to announce its
formation in an address to the Cafeteros’ 80th Anniversary
Convention. She received an enthusiastic
response and the offer from to house the volunteers
at the Federation’s 10-acre, landscaped center in
Caldas, about 20 minutes outside of Manizales. The
centro includes a ski lift to a butterfly sanctuary and
a nearby woods filled with hundreds of species of
orchids.

Mary Ray will also travel to Medellín to speak
about future programs with Michael Cooper, head
of Centro Colombo-Americano, and Medellin education
officials. She will spend two days at Escuela
Marina Orth, built with Cafeteros help while Orth
was a PCV. The public school, in a rural vereda
above Medellin, is now being developed to become
the first public bilingual school in Colombia.

For more information, e-mail Maureen at
morth@k12Wired.com.