The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

gained both direction and dedication. As they were leaving at the end of their service, all of them told me the experience was profoundly positive and life-shaping. Most of these Niger Peace Corps Volunteers went on to careers focus- ed on public service of some kind. Many entered teaching, social work or the medical profession. Some went into the Foreign Service or other government careers. Large numbers found jobs with international humanitarian organizations such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children, etc. The Peace Corps is not only about two years of volunteer work abroad. It very often serves as basic training and a launching pad for a lifetime of public service. The Development Issue The most fundamental and persis- tent criticism of the Peace Corps revolves around its role as a develop- ment organization. It is often seen as having little impact on poverty and other host-country problems it claims to address. It is undeniable that the most efficient way to drill wells, for example, is to hire a professional well-drilling team — not to send out Peace Corps Volunteers to organize projects in villages where wells are needed. The Peace Corps has never been the most cost-effec- tive instrument for building infrastructure projects. And it never will be. Moreover, it’s correct that Peace Corps personnel are unlikely to have more than a marginal effect on macroeconomic statistics, such as per capita GDP, or social indicators, such as lit- eracy and child mortality rates. To change such metrics in any but the tiniest of coun- tries would require volunteers in numbers that would not be realistically feasible or acceptable to host countries. But such criticism is irrelevant and mis- leading, because it is based on a funda- mental misunderstanding of the Peace Corps’ nature and its reason for being, as well as an incomplete concept of what constitutes “development.” To try to turn the agency into a socioeconomic develop- ment organization, a sort of village-level USAID, is to doom it to failure. The Peace Corps is not a development F O C U S 30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 Most of the volunteers I worked with in Niger went on to public service careers. Top: Peace Corps Volunteers Ana Ferera (left) and Jen Rice (right) with neighborhood children. Bottom: Amanda Goetz with village women prepar- ing for a wedding. Photos by James Bullington