News-Record.com

Peace Corps director Ronald Tschetter strongly defends his agency in response to a critical assessment in Foreign Policy magazine by Robert Strauss.

Strauss, a former volunteer and country director, makes a case that the Peace Corps, approaching its 50th anniversary, has never figured out what it wants to be when it grows up.

Biting comments: "The reason the Peace Corps is overlooked as a development organization has a lot to do with the youth and inexperience of the majority of its volunteers. Equally important is its unwillingness to decide if it is a development organization or an organization with a mission 'to promote world peace and friendship,' as stipulated by Congress in the Peace Corps Act. It would like to be both, but finds itself falling short on both objectives because it cannot decide which is the more important.

"Many Peace Corps staff and volunteers see development work as a burdensome obligation undertaken only to legitimize the cultural exchange aspects of the agency. But without a focus on economic development and an improvement in standards of living, the Peace Corps is really little more than an extended, government-sponsored semester-abroad program. For applicants, the Peace Corps emphasizes the personal experience, not the volunteer’s development impact. That, of course, is not how the Peace Corps pitches itself to foreign governments, to whom it promises significant technical development assistance — only to provide predominantly recent college graduates who may or may not have any useful skills to offer."

I don't know much beyond the experience of Andrew and a few of his fellow volunteers in Tanzania 2005-07. It seems to me that two-plus years living without electricity, with limited water, lacking transportation and other conveniences can't be compared to a "semester abroad." He didn't have a "development" job unless teaching math to secondary school students for whom a competent, dedicated teacher is a rarity counts as development. It's developing human potential, isn't it?

I don't doubt that some of Strauss' criticisms are valid. The fact is, the Peace Corps doesn't send highly trained, professional development officers overseas. That's why its people are called volunteers and get paid about $5 a day. They live with the locals, like the locals -- a great way to get to know each other.

I suppose there are some goofballs who do a lousy job, some who don't last very long away from the comforts of home, some who make such a bad impression they ought to be sent home on the next plane.

Maybe there's a better formula. It is remarkable, I suppose, that PC gives volunteers, most of them in their 20s, just three months training then sends them to the middle of nowhere with next to no supervision and often no other Americans nearby and expects them to do tough jobs well on behalf of the U.S. government. The notion might even be crazy. But for the right type of American, that's half the attraction.

Any PCVs want to comment on Strauss' assessment?