The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

the Peace Corps, double its volun- teers over the next five years, and ask it to join a new effort to encour- age development, education and opportunity in the Islamic world.” Nearly seven years later, the organization is indeed larger: There are now roughly 8,000 Peace Corps Volunteers, compared with slightly more than 6,600 in 2002. Yet that number is still only half what it was in the mid-1960s, and is unlikely to grow in the near term. (A total of 190,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries since President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961.) And few observers believe the agency has been renewed. Instead of becoming a more integral part of America’s effort to win friends in the Islamic world, as Bush once urged, the Peace Corps has struggled to over- come a succession of setbacks, ranging from a perceived lack of security for its volunteers to allegations of politi- cization. The agency’s volunteers and career staff have perse- vered with the idealism that has always kept the Peace Corps’ reputation strong, but the organization continues to suffer from a lack of resources and from gridlock over the best way to revitalize its mission for the 21st century. The Bush administration, it would seem, is content to leave the hard decisions to its successors. The Peace Corps’ current director, Ronald A. Tschetter, a volunteer in India in the 1960s, says the administration opposes legislation by fellow 1960s-era volunteer Christopher J. Dodd, now a Democratic senator from Connecticut, that would authorize a doubling of Peace Corps funding by Fiscal Year 2011. At the same time, a July 22 letter Tschetter sent to Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., a member of the House Appropriations Committee that funds the program, warns that budget shortfalls are forc- ing the agency to consolidate regional recruitment offices and pare other costs. Neither has the Peace Corps become a key player in outreach to the Islamic world. Volunteers serve in 15 predominantly Muslim countries, including Jordan and Morocco, Tschetter told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year — but most of those are in sub- Saharan Africa. While a wide debate is raging among former volunteers and staff over how, or whether, the Peace Corps should expand or refine its mission, Tschetter argues for stick- ing to the original goal of helping other countries with trained person- nel, promoting a better understand- ing of Americans by foreigners and vice versa. “One of the reasons the Peace Corps is thriving today is because we have kept true to the mission as set forth by President Kennedy back in 1961,” he said in a statement provided to the Foreign Service Journal. John McCain and Barack Obama are both strong sup- porters of the agency: Obama has pledged to double its size by 2011, while McCain has not committed to a spe- cific increase but has repeatedly praised the concept of national service, calling for a push to recruit volunteers for the Peace Corps and other organizations. Stay the Course? Though Tschetter doesn’t see the need for any radical change in the way the Peace Corps operates, he has taken steps to expand outreach to older Americans as a way of increasing the pool of potential volunteers and taking advantage of the additional work experience of the Baby Boom generation. The numbers of such vol- unteers are growing at a rapid clip, though as of this summer they remained a tiny percentage of the overall 8,079 volunteers. Tschetter has also established an Office of Strategic Information, Research and Planning to better evaluate the organization’s work. It is piloting evaluations of Peace Corps programs in the field this year while seeking feed- back from host countries and communities served. When queried about existing metrics, though, Tschetter cited survey data — the proclaimed satisfac- tion of volunteers and host communities — rather than results evaluating, for example, how well students taught English by Peace Corps Volunteers had improved their F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 Shawn Zeller, a regular contributor to the Journal , is a senior staff writer for Congressional Quarterly. “One of the reasons the Peace Corps is thriving today is because we have kept true to the mission as set forth by Pres. Kennedy back in 1961.” — Peace Corps Director Ronald A. Tschetter