The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

Peace Corps didn’t cut red tape so much as shred it.” In contrast, when I was country director in Niger, I found Peace Corps man- agement in Washington to be overly cautious, unimaginative and prone to micromanagement. • The agency should focus on countries that are both among the world’s poorest and have adopted the sorts of policies that tend to make development assistance most effective. This would suggest making a large Peace Corps program part of the package offered to those countries selected to receive additional U.S. foreign aid resources under the Millennium Challenge Account. • Recruit greater numbers of older, retired people as Peace Corps Volunteers. (Only 5 percent of current vol- unteers are over 50, and the medi- an age is 25.) These individuals have additional skills to share, but usually require organizational flexibility and accommodation because they are often not a good fit for the jobs and locations of the “typical” 20-something volunteer. • A special effort should be made to spur the re-enlistment of retiring baby boomers who were Peace Corps Volunteers as young people. An expanded, rejuvenated, debureaucratized, strate- gically focused, better inspired and supported Peace Corps could be just as relevant to our contemporary challenges as it was to those of the Cold War era — and just as inspiring to the American people today as it was to me and my young contemporaries in the 1960s. n 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 33 An expanded, rejuvenated Peace Corps could be just as relevant to America’s contemporary challenges as it was to those of the Cold War era.