John Chromy (India 3)
Receives Sargent Shriver Award
John Chromy was named recipient of the Sargent Shriver Award for his life-long
dedication to the Peace Corps goals and ideals. Sargent Shriver, himself, presented
the award. Shriver said, "John Chromy embodies the best of the Peace Corps spirit
in his life and in his ideals." Chromy said, "To be recognized for implementing the
ideals of the Peace Corps - helping the people of interested countries in meeting
their need for trained men and women, promoting a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served and promoting a better understanding of other
peoples on the part of Americans - is just overwhelming." Chromy added, "This truly
is a tremendous honor, and to receive this award from Sargent Shriver, one of my
heroes and a true statesman, doubles the honor."
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John works for CHF International, an International Private Voluntary Organization.
CHF focuses on community, habitat and finance to foster self-sufficiency and promote
environmental sustainability. John was recently promoted to CHF Vice President of
External Relations.
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Indians Go Home, but Don't Leave U.S. Behind
By AMY WALDMAN
Published: July 24, 2004
BANGALORE, India - Snigdha Dhar sat in the echoing emptiness of her new home, her
husband off at work, her 7-year-old son prattling on about Pizza Hut. The weather
outside was California balmy. Children rode bicycles on wide smooth streets.
Construction workers toiled on more villas like hers - white paint, red roofs, green
lawns - and the community center's three pools.
Six years ago, Mrs. Dhar and her husband, Subhash, a vice president at Infosys
Technologies, the Indian software giant, migrated like thousands of Indians before
them, to America's Silicon Valley and its suburban good life.
But Silicon Valley is not where their gated housing colony, Palm Meadows, sits. Like
growing numbers of professional Indians who once saw their only hope for good jobs
and good lives in the West, the Dhars have returned home to India.
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Harris Wofford An American Gandhian
"I Favor Living Dangerously..."
By LEA TERHUNE
A colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement, co-organizer of the Peace Corps at the
behest of John F. Kennedy, U.S. senator and now co-chair of America's Promise: Alliance for Youth, Harris Wofford
has devoted his life to citizen service. His primary inspiration? Mahatma Gandhi.
"...Harris Wofford worked with Sargent Shriver to organize the Peace Corps at the request of President Kennedy in
1961. Thanks to B.K. Nehru, then Indian Ambassador to the U.S., who conveyed an invitation to them to visit India,
Shriver and Wofford organized a Peace Corps public relations trip in the Third World. In Of Kennedys and Kings
Wofford wrote "India was the hardest and most critical test of the trip." There he and Shriver toured villages in
rural Punjab and tried to convince leaders that the Peace Corps was not a "neocolonial enterprise." Prime Minister
Nehru's response to Shriver, as recorded by Wofford, was mild: "I am sure young Americans would learn a good deal
in this country and it could be an important experience for them. The government of the Punjab and the minister for
community development apparently want some of your volunteers, and we will be happy to receive a few of
them-perhaps 20 to 25. But I hope you and they will not be too disappointed if the Punjab, when they leave,
is more or less the same as it was before they came." More than 40 years later, sitting at Claridges Hotel in
Delhi, Wofford mused, "By the end of the 1960s the Peace Corps was almost 1,000 strong in India. Nehru had talked
about it being very small, and very valuable for young Americans to learn about India, but the more they worked in
the Punjab and the Green Revolution, the more governments in the states and institutions were asking for Peace
Corps workers." Although Peace Corps volunteers contributed to the Green Revolution, the rise of the swadeshi
movement and a tilt toward the Soviet Union resulted in the Peace Corps being asked to leave India..."
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