It’s 2010 and Hilda and Will have involved Americans in improving the world

Their New Year’s 2010 party had coiffured Senators, Heads of State, luminaries, and CEOs from the likes of MSN, Times Warner, Pfizer, Intel, Citicorp, and Wal-Mart.

Now, they wanted to check on one of their non-profit initiatives. From one of their 90” plasma wall monitors, Hilda and Will watched a sandaled American and barefooted-native walk into Kwepea, Togo.

Over decades of health emergencies, only twice had a doctor visited Kwepea. Until now, only a handful of its children had been vaccinated for anything.

Now…all the children are vaccinated. A native doctor and nurse visit each month, and stay for days. Their well water is clean. Two new schoolrooms are being added. Farmers are using several new oxen communally. A fishery is expanding. Two micro loans have grown into dozens. A cooperative of nearby villages are exporting their weavings, sewings, and carvings to Macy’s and German retailer Rewe.

What happened?

Hilda and Will’s foundation grasped the vision in Peoples Lobby citizen-initiated American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals. In 2007, their foundation contributed technical and financial help, so Peoples Lobby’s Education Foundation could educate enough voters to push our government into building a million person, peaceful, productive American World Service Corps.

The result?

Congress passed the AWSC bill. http://www.WorldServiceCorps.us For the last three years, about 140,000 Americans per year volunteered at home or abroad in organizations under the AWSC’s umbrella. With Americans understanding the need to stem the rise in AIDS, poverty, genocides, terrorist recruitment, climate change, and cultural ignorance, America was on the way to having a million AWSC volunteers serving nation and world for a generation.

Some of the governmental and non-governmental organizations under the AWSC umbrella – Peace Corps, Habitat, Doctors Sans Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, -- had helped make Kwepea’s healthy growth personify what was increasingly happening throughout the world’s villages and cities.

That sandaled American and barefooted native were a Peace Corps nurse and native doctor, trained for the last two years by an expanded program built by Doctors Without Borders due to the influx of AWSC’s volunteers.

International Rescue Committee and the Red Cross had started a vaccination program during a malarial outbreak over a year ago. After that, a Peace Corps and Mercy Corps volunteer had moved into the village to help establish a health center, which now was doing more than just vaccinate and educate. Both volunteers were helping villagers and Habitat volunteers build two new schoolrooms from which they would teach health and micro-business development. In a few years, the village would have its own local supply of nurses, health teachers, and potential native doctors.

The improved well, working oxen, reforestation, and several appropriate technology projects that revolved around solar, water, wind, computers, and broadband technologies found ASWC volunteers from Peace Corps, Mercy Corps, OxFam, FINCA, and Habitat relishing their work. Meshing Yankee and native technologies was leapfrogging villagers into health, educational, and economic advances undreamed of a few years earlier.

Will and Hilda had long wanted to shrink the health disparities their travels and travails revealed. They knew the luminaries and CEO’s thoughts. They sensed that to win wars against disease, poverty, and ignorance, their initiatives needed more than the media brilliance of luminaries or the boardroom deals of CEOs. They needed boots on the ground.

Well, maybe not boots… Peoples Lobby’s legislation was putting a million sandals and tennis shoes on dusty trails and alleys for a generation. A few bucks and blisters were networking the strengths of the corporate world with the sandaled insights of caring Americans and natives in need. America’s most cost effective resources – can-do Americans -- were teaching and learning how to fish in the global village.

They smiled, watching their technology download Kwepea into their home.

They knew, however, real world change needed one-on-one uploading, and sandaled yanks and barefooted natives were better than pixels at lifting that load. A million serving Americans were going to improve millions of tomorrow’s worldviews.

On top of that, those admired volunteers were inspiring other nations to implement World Service Corps, another of their foundation’s goals.

Smiling, Hilda said, “Maybe next year we should party in some tennies, get sweaty breathing some African air, and build something elementary, without a keyboard.”

Will, arched an eyebrow, and pointed at his loosened tennis shoes spread before him on his favorite couch.