Hon. Sam Farr: Let’s give peace a permanent space in Washington, D.C.

Dear Supporters,

When I was in Congress, they called me “Mr. Peace Corps” for my consistent advocacy on behalf of the agency that inspired me to 44 years of service in elected office. 

My two years in a poor barrio in Medellin, Colombia taught me how to listen to the needs of the people living around me to find real solutions to the problems felt by people in poverty everywhere. I learned that if someone has a safe place to sleep, access to education, and quality health care, then they have a chance in this world, and that philosophy has animated my lifelong commitment to service here in the U.S.

The Peace Corps is a powerful idea that remains as bold as it was almost 65 years ago, and that boldness deserves a place among the monuments and memorials that decorate the landscape in Washington, D.C. Like me, tens of thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers learned how to hear, from listening in a foreign language and from observing, from a place of total immersion, how to fix things abroad that also needed fixing back home. Our nation is stronger for it.

Peace Corps Park is a ray of sunshine in a divided world, representing our belief that idealism gets results. Please join me in ensuring the Park becomes a reality at a time when we need to advocate loudly for our values. “Yes we can!” 

John F. Kennedy believed that telling the Peace Corps story back home was a lifetime commitment. I’m sure if he were alive now he’d still be saying, “Ask not what the Peace Corps Commemorative Park can do for you, but what you can do for the Park”. 

So, in my role as a Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation board director, I am now asking our community of supporters to help us raise the remaining amount needed to put shovels in the ground and to be part of the team that made this permanent symbol of peace and partnership in our nation’s capital a reality.

Thank you. Give peace a chance.

Sam Farr
Board Director, Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Colombia (1964-66)
U.S. Congress, D-Carmel, California (1993-2017)