The Peace Corps is an independent government agency responsible for promoting peace and friendship throughout the world by way of public service. Volunteers are trained in specific needs and sent to developing countries, in particular, to help people meet their needs for trained manpower. Born out of the idealism of the 1960s, the Peace Corps continues to serve as a rite of passage for many college graduates looking to help others overseas. The altruistic nature of the program has been in danger of being compromised by some in government who have tried to link the Peace Corps with military service commitments or intelligence-gathering operations.
The Peace Corps began as a challenge by President John F. Kennedy to students at the University of Michigan on October 14, 1960. Calling on them to serve their country, he said that giving two years of their lives to work in developing countries would contribute to the building of a free society at home and abroad.
The Peace Corps was made into an independent federal agency shortly thereafter. President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10824 created the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961. Congress authorized the agency on September 22, 1961, by passing the Peace Corps Act.
The law describes the agency as existing “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 qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.” R. Sargent Shriver was appointed the agency’s first director. By the end of the year, 5,000 applicants had taken the first exams, and Peace Corps programs started up in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, St, Lucia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Thailand.
The 1960s saw rapid growth of the Peace Corps. Programs were begun in Afghanistan, Belize, Bolivia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Gabon, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Liberia, Malawi, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Panama, Peru, Senegal, Somali Republic, Sri Lanka, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela. In April 1964, the Peace Corps Partnership Project allowed Americans at home to support and contribute to volunteer projects overseas. By the end of the decade, more than 15,000 volunteers were serving in the field.
Budget constraints in the 1970s caused concern about the future of the Peace Corps, but by December 1974, volunteers were serving in 69 countries. Foreign nationals began to join the Peace Corps as administrators in order to meet the basic needs of their own countries, and by 1973, they comprised more than half of the Peace Corps’ international staff. During this decade, volunteers were culled from professional fields such as medicine, engineering and horticulture and accounted for more than 20% of all volunteers. The median age of volunteers rose as well, with the average age of a volunteer reaching 27. More than 5% of volunteers were also aged 50 or older.
In July 1971, the Nixon administration folded the Peace Corps and several other federal volunteer programs into a new federal volunteer agency called ACTION. But in 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that granted the Peace Corps its autonomy again. By the end of the decade, more than 6,000 volunteers were in the field. Two returned volunteers were elected to the Senate: Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.
The 1980s brought new change to the Peace Corps. In 1981, Congress passed legislation that made the Peace Corps an independent federal agency. In June of that year, the Peace Corps’ 20th anniversary was celebrated in Washington, DC. In 1982, Loret Miller Ruppe, the Peace Corp’s director, launched a program called Competitive Enterprise Development to promote business-oriented programs, including the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the Initiative for Central America, and the African Food Systems Initiative. Although the number of ongoing Peace Corps volunteers fell for the first time in 1982, funding was increased by the middle of the decade.
In 1985, the first Peace Corps Fellows Program was established at Teachers College/Columbia University to recruit, prepare and place returned volunteers as teachers in New York City schools. Nineteen eighty-six saw the agency celebrating its 25th anniversary. Five thousand volunteers gathered at the Washington Mall to take part in a celebration. In 1988, 25 years after President John F. Kennedy’s death, the Kennedy Library held a special Peace Corps remembrance. In 1989, Director Paul D. Coverdell announced the establishment of World Wise Schools, a new program to help students in America’s schools correspond with volunteers serving overseas. More than 550 schools were participating in this program by the end of the decade.
The 1990s saw further changes in the Peace Corps that reflected a changing world. In 1992, the first group of volunteers traveled to the former Soviet Union to work in small business enterprise projects in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Carol Bellamy became the first returned volunteer to be confirmed by the Senate as director of the Peace Corps in 1993. Volunteers were sent to China for the first time to work as English teachers.
In 1995, Director Mark D. Gearan launched Crisis Corps, which allowed returned volunteers to provide short-term assistance during natural disasters and humanitarian crises. The Peace Corps hosted the first Conference on International Volunteerism in 1996, and in September of that year, the Loret Miller Ruppe Memorial Lecture Series was established for distinguished people to speak about issues related to the Peace Corps’ mission of international peace and public service. Volunteers left to serve in South Africa and Jordan for the first time in 1997, and Bangladesh and Mozambique in 1998.
In 1998, Crisis Corps volunteers were sent to serve in Guinea, Bolivia, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea and other countries. In March of that year, six returned Peace Corps volunteers who had served in Congress, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and former Peace Corps Director Paul D. Coverell, testified before the House Committee on International Relationship in support of President Bill Clinton’s initiative to expand the Peace Corps to 10,000 volunteers by 2000.
In June 2000, Director Mark Schneider announced that all 2,400 Peace Corps volunteers serving in 25 African countries would be trained as HIV/AIDS educators, focusing on prevention and care. The year 2003 saw the agency’s new director, Gaddi H. Vasquez, send volunteers to Mexico for the first time. When President Bush signed the US Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act in May of 2003, the Peace Corps committed an additional 1,000 volunteers to fight HIV and AIDS.
The first decade of the new millennium also saw new recruitment campaigns targeted to community colleges and their graduates. In 2004, the Peace Corps and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations signed an agreement to improve food security and the conditions of rural people around the world. Following the Asian tsunami in December 2004, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the Crisis Corps were activated for the first time in the history of the Peace Corps. Their work aided the Federal Emergency Management Agency to bring needed supplies and services. After these disasters, Peace Corps volunteer numbers reached a 30-year high. Currently, 8.079 Americans serve in the Peace Corps
Since passage of the Peace Corps Act in 1961, more than 190,000 volunteers have served in 139 host countries on issues ranging from environmental preservation to the establishment of information technology networks and AIDS education.
Books about the Peace Corps Experience—Peace Corps Writers
The Peace Corps focuses on helping to facilitate basic needs in developing countries, such as access to food, safe drinking water and adequate shelter. Over the years, it also has focused on disaster planning, teaching English, information technology and business development, and HIV/AIDS education. The program’s three main goals are to help people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained workers; promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served; and promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
The Peace Corps works in more than 70 countries around the world. Peace Corps volunteers work with governments, schools, non-profit organizations, non-government organizations, and entrepreneurs in the areas of education, health, business, information technology, agriculture and the environment.
The Peace Corps works by first announcing its availability to foreign governments. These governments then determine areas in which the organization can be involved. The organization then matches the requested assignments to its pool of applicants and sends those volunteers with the appropriate skills to the countries that first made the requests.
There are currently 8,079 volunteers in the Peace Corps. Of these, 59% are female and 41% are male; 93% are single; 17% are classified as “people of color;” the average age is 27 years old; and 95% have at least an undergraduate degree, with 11% having attended graduate school.
National Peace Corps Association
(returned Peace Corps volunteers)
The Peace Corps spent nearly $233.3 million on 1,674 contractors this decade. According to USASpending.gov, the Peace Corps paid for a variety of services, from medical, dental, and veterinary equipment and supplies to furniture in support of its programs.
The top 10 contractors are as follows:
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Northrop Grumman Corporation
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$50,205,290
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Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.
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$26,268,213
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Federal Data Corporation
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$10,122,647
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Oracle Corporation
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$5,750,012
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(Gibraltar) Trustees Ltd.
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$4,640,034
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McKesson Corporation
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$4,364,494
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International Procurement Agency (USA), Inc.
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$4,353,195
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Castillo Velasquez Nancy Severina
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$4,000,000
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Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Inc.
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$3,304,911
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Optimum Management Systems, LLC
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$3,299,328
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Although normally known for its services rendered to the federal government’s aerospace, defense and security agencies, Northrop Grumman supplied several invoices labeled “miscellaneous items” for the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps’ second largest contractor, Affiliated Computer Services, designs and implements business process outsourcing and information technology services.
Early American Volunteer in Nigeria Offends Local Students
Shortly after the Peace Corps was established, a postcard written by a volunteer in Nigeria brought the agency its first taste of controversy. On October 13, 1961, Margery Jane Michelmore described her situation in Nigeria as “squalor and [of] absolutely primitive living conditions.” Her postcard never made it out of the country, and instead local Ibadan University College students demanded the deportation of Michelmore and other volunteers as “international spies.” Several US leaders questioned the new program, and local students protested. Michelmore offered to resign and left the country while the other American volunteers began a hunger strike. After several days, the two sides opened an ongoing dialogue and made peace.
Volunteers Asked to Spy in Bolivia
In February 2008, the Peace Corps Polyglot reported that Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a US Embassy official in Bolivia to spy on Cubans and Venezuelans. The National Peace Corps Association complained that issues of intelligence gathering needed to be kept separate from the public service goals of the Peace Corps, and suggested that doing otherwise jeopardize volunteers’ safety.
Peace Corps’ Connection with Military
In May 2005, the Peace Corps announced that it was expanding a pilot recruiting program that linked Peace Corps service to fulfilling an eight-year military obligation. The original program had been launched in 2003 and had grown out of the Call to Service Act of 2001, which provided enlistment incentives to military recruits for participation in service programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. However, Peace Corps leaders admitted they had not been consulted, and several returned volunteers, among others, became concerned that combining the Peace Corps with the military in this way could introduce dangers to the lives of current volunteers, when suspicions of spying were raised.
Peace Corps Option for Military Recruits Sparks Concerns
(by Allan Cooperman, Washington Post)
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Founded: 1961
Annual Budget: $330.8 million
Employees: 900
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Peace Corps
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Aaron S. Williams, the eighteenth Director of the Peace Corps and only the fourth to have served as a Peace Corps Volunteer, was sworn in on August 25, 2009. Williams takes over an agency in considerable flux. On the one hand, Williams’ predecessor, Ron Tschetter, was criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for politicizing the Corps. On the other hand, during the first half of fiscal year 2009 young Americans, perhaps responding to President Obama’s call for service, applied for Peace Corps service at a 12 percent greater rate over the same period last year. At present, there 7,500 Peace Corps volunteers and more than 200,000 returned volunteers.
Born in Chicago, Williams grew up in a modest home on the south side of Chicago. He earned a B.S. in Geography and Education from Chicago State University, and started his career teaching high school in Chicago. Inspired by President Kennedy’s call to service, he discussed the Peace Corps with a fellow Chicago State alum who had volunteered for the Peace Corps in Jamaica, and decided to join himself. Williams served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970, first in a training program for rural school teachers in the small town of Monte Plata, and extended his service for a third year to work as a professor of teaching methods at the Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santiago. Upon returning to the US, he stayed with the Peace Corps as Coordinator of Minority Recruitment and Project Evaluation Officer in Chicago in 1970 and 1971.
Williams left the Peace Corps to earn an MBA, with an emphasis on international business and marketing, from the University of Wisconsin in 1973. He then worked five years in the corporate sector, first two years at International Multifoods, and then three years at General Mills. He left General Mills in 1978, starting a twenty-two-year career as a Foreign Service officer with USAID, where he designed and managed assistance programs in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including long-term assignments in Honduras, Haiti, Costa Rica, and Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean islands region. Probably the apex of his AID career came as Mission Director in South Africa, where Williams led a billion dollar foreign assistance program during President Nelson Mandela’s historic presidency. Shortly thereafter, in 2000, Williams left USAID to become Executive Vice President at the International Youth Foundation (IYF), a transnational nonprofit that focuses on leveraging corporate donations to assist young people in the developing world. In December 2003, partly to reduce his heavy travel load, William left IYF to become a Vice President for International Business Development with RTI International, a nonprofit research corporation that depends on USAID contracts for about one-third of its revenues. Williams was still with RTI when President Obama nominated him to be Director of the Peace Corps.
Williams is fluent in Spanish and can speak French. He met his wife Rosa, a Dominican high school science teacher studying medicine, during his service as a volunteer in the Dominican Republic. The couple has two sons, Michael and Steven. A Democrat, Williams contributed $7,250 to Democratic causes and candidates between 2004 and 2008, including $4,600 to the presidential campaign of President Obama. He also served on the Obama-Biden transition team.
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Tschetter, Ron
Previous Director
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Ron Tschetter served as the director of the Peace Corps from September 2006 until March 2009. He was the third Peace Corps volunteer to serve as director and the first under a Republican administration.
Tschetter earned a bachelor’s degree from Bethel University in psychology and social studies. He then joined the Peace Corps and served in India beginning in 1966.
After the Peace Corps, Tschetter began his career in 1970 as both a retail and institutional investment executive with Blyth Eastman Dillon Union Securities. He joined Dain Rauscher in 1973 as a broker and spent 28 years there, primarily in management, before he retired. In 2004, Tschetter was named president of D.A. Davidson & Co., an investment firm based in the Northwest. Tschetter served on the Securities Industry Association Sales and Marketing Committee and the New York Stock Exchange Regional Firms Advisory Committee.
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