By 1965, the Government of India had requested the assistance of Peace Corps Volunteers to support the State Ministries of Health and Community Development by providing technical assistance to the Primary Health Centers for the States of Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. In response, a training program was designed to provide the volunteers with the technical competence needed to command the respect of their Indian co-workers, together with a basis for communication and an understanding of the cultural environment in which they would work and live.

A total of 800 hours of study to be completed during a 12-week period was required. Training took place from August 31, 1965 to November 22, 1965 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It consisted of the following topics:

Upon completion of the training, the volunteers arrived in India competent in the areas of public health assistance and rural community action.

First Aid Class 

The India 20A Course of Study

• Technical Studies: Rural Public Health and Nutrition

Instruction in rural public health provided the trainee with a basic body of knowledge and experience enabling the volunteer to act as a catalyst in the development and improvement of an Indian rural area on a self-help basis. Because a full complement of Indian public health personnel, at that time, was rarely found in most primary health centers, the technical studies segment of the training program was broad in scope. The trainee received instruction that enable the trainee to function as a nurse, nutritionist, sanitary engineer, agriculturalist, and as an advisor on family planning.

Although the major portion of the instruction utilized the lecture method in university classrooms, emphasis was also placed on individual instruction, sanitation fieldwork, and health visitations. The trainees also had a two-week field experience on a selected number of American Indian reservations located in Wisconsin where they lived in canvas tents during October of 1965.

• Language

The Hindi Program - The sub-group of India 20A trainees scheduled to work in Madhya Pradesh were taught to speak Hindi. Those trainees scheduled for assignment to Kerala were taught Malayalam.

The Hindi language program provided intensive language instruction that was designed to prepare the trainees:

1. to communicate effectively in Hindi
2. to learn the Devanagari script in order to read printed materials, especially newspapers, and
3. to efficiently use a Hindi dictionary to enable the trainees to increase their proficiency in the language.

Emphasis was placed on informal conversation and everyday communication.

India 20A Peace Corps Trainees at the Stockbridge Munsee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin-November 1967

Behind them is the outhouse that they built as part of their public health training.

The Malayalam Program – Interestingly enough, no organized course materials in the Malayalam language existed before India 20A’s training began. During the summer before the start of training, through a grant from Peace Corps funds, a team of linguists and Indian informants developed the first such course to be implemented.

The objective of the Malayalam language program was to give the trainees control over a few hundred sentences embodying the basic structure of the language, and to provide the trainee with a basic vocabulary, so that the trainee could begin functioning in the language immediately upon arrival in the field. Notes on regional and social variations in the language were presented wherever pertinent in order to give the trainee a head start on the inevitable adjustment to local linguistic norms.

Since no full course in Malayalam for English speakers had existed, the staff produced one with the above goals in mind. A set of graded conversations reflected accepted linguistic norms for Kerala situations and containing, en ensemble, the basic structure of the language.

 Comparative Studies

The comparative studies component of the program presented to the Peace Corps trainees an integrated body of materials drawn from the social sciences that was directly relevant to their assignment in India.  The trainees would be working in a number of different environments and they had to understand each of those if they were to be effective.  These environments ranged from the geographical to the immediate working situation and the ability of the volunteers to work effectively with their Indian co-workers.  The individual volunteer was to be part of the governmental structure and would have contact with different social classes. Thus, the trainee had to be made aware of the pattern of American political, social, and economic development and role of the Peace Corps in the pursuit of the American ideal.  The trainees also had to be made aware of the issues at stake in the cold war and the basis for American foreign policy. The trainee needed to have a working knowledge of Indian history, the complexities of the Indian religious systems, the basis for continuing class differentiation, and the variety of problems that beset all emerging states in the complex world society of that time.

• Communications

Instruction in the communications component served two purposes:

1. to provide focus for the trainee to bring to bear his or her own general technical knowledge on practical situations to be faced in the field, and
2. to demonstrate the socio-cultural differences which a volunteer would face in working in rural India. 

To reach these objectives, the trainees had to undertake examination of their own prejudices and values. The trainees were encouraged to develop an understanding and mature sensitivity to the dynamics of a cross-cultural experience.  The initial phases of the training explored the attitudes of people from different cultural backgrounds in the United States. Time was devoted to discussing elements of communication normally taken for granted in relatively homogeneous cultural situations.  Using this as a basis, the focus shifted to distinct problems of communication in India.

Physical Training and Recreation

The physical training and recreation section included three general areas:

1. physical fitness—knowledge and development of physical fitness for the individual trainees,
2. cultivation of knowledge and skill in a wide area of physical and recreational activities of the United States and also of India, and foundations and philosophies of physical education.
   
3. A strength and endurance test was given at the beginning of the training period and the same test was repeated at the end of the training period. The test consisted of measures of pull-ups, sit-ups, the standing broad jump, and a 600-yard walk-run against time.  Since soccer was an international sport, and a major sport in India, approximately nineteen hours were devoted to an extensive training program on the skills and team play of soccer. An interesting aspect of this training was that all trainees were taught drown-proofing. Each trainee had to demonstrate ability with this skill.

• Psychological and Psychiatric Services

Psychologists in the assessment section operated as the on-site representatives of the Peace Corps Selection Division.  They conducted psychological testing and individual interviews for the purpose of determining the suitability of each trainee for Peace Corps service. Each trainee was assigned to a psychologist who followed his or her progress during the training period.

Roommates During Training

(l-r) Peace Corps Trainees: Gerry Sullivan, Marsha Bickford, Barbara Peterson, Diane Dickerson, Sue Schwartz, Judy Clark

*Adapted from: Course of Study for Peace Corps Training for Rural Public Health and Nutrition in India, Peace Corps Center University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, August 31, 1965 to November 22, 1965

The selection process identified those India 20A trainees who were judged, on the basis of their performance during the 12 week training period, as competent to be Peace Corps Volunteers and serve in India for two years.

During the 1960s the selection process was extremely rigorous. Trainees were constantly monitored and evaluated by their subject area trainers as well as by a team of psychologists and the training director.

On the first day of training (August 31, 1965), the India 20A trainees were gathered in a large lecture hall. After some preliminary orientation information, a psychiatrist from the Peace Corps, Washington office made the following statement: “Look to your left. Look to your right. In three months those people will no longer be part of this group and I am not talking about your neighbor, I am talking about you.”

During the training period, the Peace Corps Selection Board met at the end of each six week period. The Board consisted of the trainers, administrators, and psychologists of the training center. During this meeting  they chose those trainees who would continue with the program. Those not selected to remain as Peace Corps Trainees were told that they had been deselected ("deselected" was a term peculiar to the Peace Corps training process of the early to late-sixties). The deselectees were immediately separated from the group of remaining trainees and placed on transportation to return to their homes. They were gone from the training site before the afternoon was over.

The selection process was a very nerve wracking procedure for the trainees. All were highly motivated and goal directed. The group had bonded quickly. Nobody wanted to be deselected and denied the opportunity to serve in India.

Accordingly, at the end of each six week period tension ran high amongst the volunteers. Even the manner of receiving notification was unknown. At the end of the first six week period, after they returned from a training class, the trainees found envelopes in their mailboxes. Each envelope directed the trainees to go to a specific room in Mitchell Hall where the majority of training classes took place.

Soon a large group congregated in the large lecture hall. These trainees were selected and the tension broke rapidly as the trainees realized that so many of them were present in the same room that they couldn’t be the group that was deselected. Another group found itself in a room with a much smaller group and assumed the worst. But they were wrong. This group had been identified with some minor medical or administrative problems that were easily cleared up. They would also be selected in. The last group went to a room were they were notified that they had been deselected. They were told to pack immediately and were driven to the airport.

At the end of 12 weeks, the selection board met again. This time, envelopes were handed to the trainees as they walked onto the campus from a morning activity and were on their way to Mitchell Hall. As the trainees received the envelopes they walked in a long irregular line, bunched in groups of twos and threes. Tears were in evidence from a number of volunteers, since by this time they recognized the significance of the room numbers to which they had been directed. Good-byes were quickly made. At the start of training, (August 31, 1965) India 20A consisted of 68 trainees. On November 23, 1965, the final day of training 37 Peace Corps Trainees were told that they were now Peace Corps Volunteers and would be on their way to India for two years.

India 20A Volunteers waiting to board the train in New Delhi for travel to their sites Note the large brown bundles. The bundles contained bedding and a medical kit for use over the next two years.

Shown (l to r) are Dick Means, Diane Dickerson, Sue Herring and Penny Pendleton

Dick Means later won a Bronze Star during service with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam. Service in the Peace Corps did not take the place of service in the U.S. Armed Forces.