Peace Corps is evacuating all volunteers all over the world & Some thoughts on Peace Corps
I am a returned Peace Corps volunteer that served in Niger and Guinea from 2010 to 2012. I am very familiar with evacuations because all 99 volunteers in Peace Corps Niger were evacuated in January 2011 and the program never reopened. It was not a pleasant time and I was one of the lucky few who got a direct transfer to Guinea. Now all volunteers, all over the world are being pulled. This is unprecedented.
Many people don’t know that I actually wrote my Master’s paper (my first Masters) on the Peace Corps. It was called: The Peace Corps: U.S. Soft power and Youth Idealism.
Instead of just giving my thoughts about this evacuation, which can be summed upthrough what I already posted on my Facebook page:
This is terrible. Quite a reaction. This is what I think we thrive and are there for, to help in situations like this. People speak local language, integrated in far to reach communities and volunteers can do so much. As a Returned Peace Corps volunteer that was evacuated let me tell you this hits HARD. Smh what a mess. Ush to all my PCVs all over the world.
I wanted to share some things about the Peace Corps direct from my paper that was finalized in December 2012. I defended my masters in February of 2013 with this work. I am only going to extract things I think are coming up right now and continue it on another post just to round it up. Keep in mind this was an academic paper and there were a lot of citations and other academic lingo. Nothing like a blog post. I’ll list the citations at the end in case anyone wants to take a look. We’ll start with the point of the paper, how the idea of Peace Corps was born and end with the conversation that surrounds Peace Corps right now; how impactful it is and its relevance, as many people fear that this extreme action will lead to the program losing a lot of its funding or be completely wiped out. It has been on the verge of this at different times for decades. Here we go.
The Peace Corps promotes international service and is a small part of a large assortment of public, national, and volunteer services in the United States. A lot has been written about the Peace Corps, but this paper seeks to offer a different perspective than the usual analyses. Instead of a paper that explores volunteer life and their work or the relevance of the agency, or the various scandals that have erupted the last few years, I chose to examine the origins of the agency; why was the Peace Corps created, and what are its functions and purposes? I focus on the Cold War era and on interactions among government officials.
First, I explore how the idea of the Peace Corps was initiated and how that idea was brought to the attention of then Senator John F. Kennedy. I also look at the mission and goal of the agency as developed by Peace Corps leaders and how these affected the evolution of the organization. Throughout, I argue that the Peace Corps has been employed as a U.S. foreign policy tool of soft power…
Second, I look at U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era in order to analyze the way Peace Corps leaders visualized the agency. The Cold War was a very important time in U.S. foreign policy because it was “fought” with multiple means. Agencies like the Peace Corps were vital in showing the international influence of the U.S.
Third, the paper concludes with an assessment of volunteer idealism, how it conflicts with that of Congress and others, how the volunteers’ idealism could be merged with U.S. foreign policy use of soft power as part of the future mission of the agency...
Although many believe that the concept of the Peace Corps was formulated during Kennedy’s presidential campaign to attract young voters, the idea of a volunteer training program originated from several American academics. One of the first proposals for a similar initiative was President Harry Truman’s 1949 Point Four programme, in which he spoke about implementing a range of international, “technical cooperation activities” (Peterson 2011: 229)…
Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was the first to use the term “Peace Corps” when he introduced a bill to establish such an agency in February, 1960; the bill however, was not accepted by Congress. Subsequently, the Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, Milton Shapp, claimed he was responsible for putting the “idea of the Peace Corps in Kennedy’s head” (Meisler 2011:6). Following a visit in 1957 to Indochina, Wisconsin Democrat and congressman, Henry Reuss was the first to propose legislation that “brought the idea to Kennedy’s attention.” Reuss proposed a, “Point Four Youth Corps that would enlist young Americans… for service ‘in far-off places, at a soldier’s pay’” (Wofford 1980: 245–246). Yet, the idea of a Peace Corps was not officially circulated until Kennedy’s 1960 speech at the University of Michigan to more than 5,000 students…
In March 1, 1961, after Kennedy took office, the Peace Corps was established through Executive Order 10924 (Bekoe 2012: 228). The mission of the agency was:
1. “To promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States…to help [them] in meeting their needs for trained manpower, particularly in meeting the basic needs of those living in the poorest areas of such countries.”
2. “To help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served and a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people” (U.S. Code 2007: 806).
Currently, the Peace Corps…mission is:
1. “To help the peoples of countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower,
2. To help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served,
3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people” (Peace Corps website: 2012).
Although rephrased at times, this mission has not been altered legally since the creation of the Peace Corps.
[Continued in Next Part: Peace Corps under different administrations]
Post Script: Since some people needed more context in terms of what I was referring to that many are fearing that this is the end of the Peace Corps, the next post will be how the agency evolved under Republican and Democrat presidents. Then I have made a third post.
References
Bekoe, Ofori E.E. 2012. “The United States Peace Corps as a Facet of United States-Ghana Relations.” Journal of Pan-African Studies, 4 (10): 227–239.
Meisler, Stanley. 2011. When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and its First Fifty Years. N.p.: Beacon.
Peterson, Anne Palmer. 2011. “Academic conceptions of a United States Peace Corps.” History of Education 40 (2): 229–240.
Wofford, Harris. Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties. 1980. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
