[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 53 (Wednesday, April 27, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    FORTY YEARS OF WORKING FOR PEACE AND INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 27, 2005

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, this year marks the fortieth anniversary of 
the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. As one 
of the foremost schools for cross-cultural education in the world, its 
record is one trail-blazing effort after another, a whole series of 
initiatives that have transformed both the world, and the way education 
about the world is shaped.
  The SIT, as it is known, was an outgrowth of the Experiment in 
International Living, which originated in 1932 when Donald Watt took 
twenty American teenagers to Europe to live together with teenagers 
from several European nations. Year after year that program grew and 
prospered.
  In the wake of World War Two the Fulbright Program for the 
international exchange of scholars and the establishment of the Peace 
Corps increased this Nation's commitment to the exchange of citizens 
between different countries and cultures. The SIT was founded in order 
to provide training and ultimately advanced degrees to those who wanted 
to work and teach in a global context. It was an early and important 
resource for Peace Corps training--an unsurprising fact, given that 
Sergeant Shriver, the first Director of the Peace Corps, had in 1934 
been a member of one of the earliest Experiment in International Living 
programs. The core of the SIT has remained the same for forty years: 
language training, field-based practice, and a commitment to 
internationalism.
  The School for International Training is not only about technical 
training for international exchange and work. It has a central vision 
and a central mission: world peace. Its motto is, ``Building peace 
through understanding--one person at a time.'' It has lived up to this 
motto by educating individuals to work in a world where human need is 
more important than political borders, religious groupings, ethnic 
identities, or geographical boundaries. It tries to construct a new 
world in which human beings are united rather than divided by working 
together to shape a more equitable and peaceful society.
  Too often our world today is rent by violence or plundered by 
corporations looking only to make a quick profit. Building peace and 
community takes time and steadfast effort. It also takes vision, and a 
deep sense of generosity. The School for International Training--its 
leaders, its teachers, its generation of students--have devoted time, 
effort, vision and generosity in extraordinary measure.
  As it celebrates its first forty years, I, the people of Vermont, and 
the citizens of both the American Nation and the world, wish the School 
for International Training forty more years of success.

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