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| Featured Stories |
GCIV Seeks Statewide Coordinators |
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GCIV currently seeks volunteers located throughout our state who are interested in serving as statewide coordinators. Statewide coordinators will act as the local contact persons for distinguished international guests visiting their area. Responsibilities include identifying and meeting with potential professional resources and dinner hosts in your area, as well as meeting/hosting international visitors and State Department escorts when schedules permit. If you or someone you know would like to serve in this exciting and rewarding capacity, please contact Shellie Stuart. We especially need coordinators in Columbus, Macon, Augusta, Savannah, Albany, Rome and Athens. Please forward this message to any colleagues in those areas who might be interested. Below, you can read about the experiences of Amy Aldrich Bedford, pictured here, who has served as a volunteer coordinator in Pendleton, Oregon.
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Amy Aldrich Bedford stands in the kitchen of her home in Pendleton, OR. For more than 20 years, each International Visitor whom she has hosted has added artwork, quotations, and signatures to this remarkable wall.
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The following article was reprinted from NCIV Network News, a monthly publication of the National Council for International Visitors. See current and archived issues here.
If Walls Could Talk
For Over 20 Years, Amy Aldrich Bedford has Hosted International Visitors in Pendleton, Oregon—and in the process created a unique wall in her kitchen that is “a joy to behold.”
By Amy Barss
The walls in Amy Aldrich Bedford's home may not “talk” of past International Visitors (IVs), but the walls in her kitchen tell us the story of her decades of involvement in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP).
When you enter the kitchen in Mrs. Bedford's home, you immediately notice a beautiful display of artwork, quotations, and signatures painted on her wall. A closer look reveals that the majority of that artwork was left by International Visitors that Mrs. Bedford hosted through the IVLP. These dozens of pictures also represent her deep involvement not only in IVLP, but also in citizen diplomacy.
“Mother started the idea of pictures on a wall in her house in Flagstaff, Arizona, and then continued the idea when she built this house [in Pendleton, Oregon],” her daughter, Jacqueline Bedford Brown, said.
Mrs. Bedford also has visiting friends and relatives paint on the kitchen wall, but the drawings, quotations, and signatures from the many IVLP participants that have passed through her home take up the majority of space.
Mrs. Bedford began serving as a volunteer programmer for the World Affairs Council of Oregon and a host for the IVLP in 1985. Amy’s hometown of Pendleton is located 209 miles from Portland in the northeast portion of the state, with a current population of about 16,400 people.
Mrs. Bedford became involved with the IVLP when Leslie Wheary, Director of the International Visitor Program at the World Affairs Council of Oregon from 1984 to 1996, initiated a statewide outreach program to establish volunteer programmers named “Statewide Coordinators.” Recruiting around the state for volunteer program coordinators began in 1985 and Ms. Wheary said that Mrs. Bedford, co-owner of her family business, the East Oregonian newspaper, was the first to respond “enthusiastically” to the request.
Ms. Wheary traveled to Pendleton to meet with Mrs. Bedford and to explore the possibilities of making Mrs. Bedford the Statewide Coordinator for Pendleton. Ms. Wheary said Mrs. Bedford took her to the East Oregonian office and to the Native American reservation that is just outside of Pendleton. She remembers that Mrs. Bedford explained all that the Pendleton region had to offer to International Visitors.
Ms. Wheary said that Mrs. Bedford subsequently became her best Statewide Coordinator, a role in which Mrs. Bedford officially served for 15 years. She described Mrs. Bedford as “enthusiastic and professional” and said she was willing to put in the hours needed to produce high-quality programs for the Pendleton region. Mrs. Bedford also had the deep interest in foreign affairs required for the job.
“Mother received her interest in foreign visitors from her own mother who was a world traveler from the 1950s to the 1970s,” Ms. Bedford Brown said. “My grandmother wrote about her travels for our newspaper.”
A handful of delegations were sent to Mrs. Bedford each year and she planned their Pendleton itineraries from start to finish. Some were individual Visitors and others came in regional and multi-regional groups.
Ambassador Harriet Isom, now retired from the Foreign Service and living in her hometown of Pendleton, was exposed to Mrs. Bedford’s work while she was the U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon. She now serves as a Board of Advisors member for the World Affairs Council of Oregon and, along with Mrs. Bedford’s daughter, assists with currents IV trips to Pendleton.
“The efforts of Amy Bedford were the best kind of grassroots diplomacy that could be offered,” Ambassador Isom said. “She used her knowledge of the Pendleton community from the family’s years in the newspaper business to arrange interesting schedules and to find home hospitality. I so admire all that she did to promote the International Visitor Leadership Program.”
During home hospitality at Mrs. Bedford’s home, each IV was asked to paint something on the wall. There were no criteria except that each Visitor needed to sign and date the picture. Some Visitors drew something they liked in the United States, while others made drawings representing their home countries.
“Eventually some visitors would recognize the names of people they knew from the paintings on the kitchen wall,” Ms. Bedford Brown said.
Ambassador Isom described how when she was in Cameroon in 1995, she was talking with two Cameroonians who had just returned from their IVLP experience in the United States.
Not knowing that there was a volunteer programmer in Pendleton for the International Visitor Program at the World Affairs Council of Oregon, Ambassador Isom said that she was very surprised when the Cameroonians began talking about her hometown of Pendleton and Amy Aldrich Bedford, whom she had known for years.
“It was such a wonderful moment because the two Cameroonians were positively glowing about the schedule Amy had set up for them to study Native American tribal law and sovereign status,” Ambassador Isom said.
“They also delighted in being asked to her home for a dinner and in painting souvenir artwork on the dinette wall. That art wall, with its tales of visitors from all over the world, is a joy to behold.”
“I can attest to the appreciation of foreign visitors for Amy Bedford’s extraordinary hospitality,” Ambassador Isom said.
Serving as a Statewide Coordinator for Pendleton, Mrs. Bedford made a tremendous contribution to the IVLP. Having a Statewide Coordinator in Pendleton made it possible for the World Affairs Council of Oregon to send Visitors to the region and know that they would be well taken care of. Pendleton offers IVs a different view of Oregon; a feeling of the old west, and a chance to learn about agriculture, Native Americans, the beef industry, and a rural-area newspaper. Mrs. Bedford was key to making these experiences happen.
Twenty years since she began her involvement in the IVLP, Mrs. Bedford still opens her home to International Visitors coming through Pendleton. Last summer, she, along with her daughter and Ambassador Isom, hosted a reception for 25 Foreign Service nationals and a group of IVLP participants. At that reception, a Visitor from Japan noticed a picture on Mrs. Bedford’s kitchen wall from about 15 years ago, signed by his own supervisor. The look of surprise and amazement on the Visitor’s face was priceless. He was amazed to learn that his supervisor had been to the very same kitchen he was now in and shared a similar experience.
Generations of visitors from around the world pass through NCIV community member organizations (CIVs) offices each year. Many of them probably have had acquaintances that have also passed through the same CIVs office. Amy Aldrich Bedford’s kitchen wall has given Visitors the chance to make connections. For all who see the wall, it is clear how many lives Mrs. Bedford has touched. She is a true citizen diplomat and has created a legacy within the IVLP for all of us to admire.
Amy Barss is the International Visitor Leadership Program Manager for the World Affairs Council of Oregon in Portland, OR.
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