Global Service Corps was founded in 1993 by Rick Lathrop after gaining a PhD in Human and Organization Development at The Fielding Institute in Santa Barbara, California. At Fielding, Rick became interested in global studies, particularly in the area of sustainable development, and discovered that there were few educational programs available for adults to gain first-hand experience in the field of international development and community service.
In 1993, GSC developed a working relationship with Global Routes, an organization that had been providing international community service summer programs for high school and college students for about ten years. Global Service Corps began to establish volunteer service programs for adults with an emphasis on village-based sustainable development. The first project trip took place in December 1993 in Costa Rica. The GSC program expanded to Kenya in 1994, In 1995, a project was established in Thailand with an emphasis on teaching English and community health. In 2001, it moved its East Africa program to Tanzania with an emphasis on sustainable agriculture and HIV/AIDS prevention education.
In August 1995 GSC became a project of the Earth Island Institute. GSC benefits from the support of the Earth Island network services which include assistance in project administration, accounting, promotion, fund development and computer services. The relationship established with Earth Island Institute acknowledges the inherent connection between sustainable development and environmental concerns.
Read more about Global Service Corps: Projects and Destinations
Famous quotes containing the words global, service and/or corps:
“As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“The gods’ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)