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Peace Corps in a Bottom-Up and
Troubled Era
By Yossef Ben-Meir
Considering the economic and political challenges facing the United
States and the world today, and given the lessons learned in foreign
assistance since it began after World War II with the Marshall Plan,
now is the time that the Peace Corps should amend the role that its
volunteers play in international development.
The Peace Corps, founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy,
currently supports more than 8,000 American volunteers who live with
local communities in 74 emerging countries around the world, where
they promote community development and international friendship.
In the current issue of WorldView magazine, a publication of the
National Peace Corps Association (NPCA), President-elect Barack
Obama states his support for doubling the number of volunteers to
16,000 by 2011. He also recognizes great opportunities that might
have been realized for the United States and other countries around
the world had President Kennedy’s vision of a corps of 100,000
volunteers been fulfilled. The NPCA recently spearheaded a campaign
to double the Peace Corps’ size and move closer to Kennedy’s
expansion goal.
Now is the moment to at least double the current number of Peace
Corps volunteers. Peace Corps can easily be part of the new economic
stimulus package being fashioned to address America’s quickly rising
unemployment. Volunteers are U.S. federal government employees and
receive a modest living stipend and health care coverage.
The spreading economic crisis is challenging the stability of
developing nations and putting them in greater need of international
assistance. Volunteers serve among the most disadvantaged and
vulnerable communities and contribute to the local economy as they
live and work.
There is nearly universal agreement that the United States needs
urgently to rebuild its image in the world. Volunteers, as good
neighbors and in their dedication to meeting human needs, contribute
to public diplomacy and to goodwill among nations.
Foreign governments also understand, today more than ever, the
promise of bottom-up development to decrease poverty, and the
potential contribution volunteers can make to its processes. But
achieving this potential will remain elusive until the primary role
of volunteers in development is transformed to what they are
optimally suited to do: act as third-party facilitators to help
organize inclusive community meetings, and apply participatory
planning activities that help groups prioritize and implement
socio-economic and environmental initiatives.
There has been a paradigm shift in the field of international
development since the Peace Corps began. By the 1990s, the vast
majority of international and domestic, public and civil
organizations dedicated to socio-economic development and improving
the natural environment came to require the participation of local
communities (the beneficiaries) in determining and managing
projects. Today globalization is also empowering localities with
more information, better communication, and more control to promote
the change they want to see. The Peace Corps has shown to be a
forerunner of this gradual shift toward community-driven development
and away from top-down decision-making and control.
The global proliferation of bottom-up development strategies is due
to their efficacy, including the sense of ownership local
communities come to feel toward initiatives because they reflect
their own interests, which in turn encourages project sustainability
and the attainment of development goals.
It is often perceived as ironic, however, that for new self-reliant
development projects to be implemented, third-parties outside the
benefitting communities are needed to spearhead local development
planning meetings in rural villages and neighborhoods. Outsiders do
not have a personal vested interest in the community initiatives,
other than to help ensure that they are inclusive of marginalized
groups and they reflect the interests of the community as a whole.
For this reason, outside facilitators of community development are
more often better positioned than local individuals, at least
initially, to help work through conflicts and draw in government and
civil groups to partner with communities to advance development.
Peace Corps volunteers are ideally positioned to fill this essential
third-party role. They are regularly assigned to host-government
ministries to help advance social service plans related to health,
education, natural resource management, and economic development.
Volunteers live in communities targeted to benefit from development,
and therefore are natural links between government agencies and
local communities. Their overall mission to promote international
understanding and their tenure of two years elicits trust, enabling
them to catalyze participation in development. Whether they are
assigned to teach English or promote public health, help develop
small businesses or agricultural opportunities, they are able to
organize community meetings driven by what local people want.
Too often, the training of volunteers emphasizes the transference of
technical skills, which many evaluations suggest they are ill-suited
to deliver (usually due to limited prior professional experience)
and are, moreover, likely to already exist in-country. For example,
farmers in developing countries hardly need to acquire skills
related to animal husbandry, but they can utilize Peace Corps
volunteers to bring together people to discuss their own challenges
and opportunities, and create plans of action to achieve their own
self-identified important goals.
The Peace Corps goals of cultural exchange and international
development are most effectively achieved when volunteers are
trained to elicit and respond to the deep interests of communities
and community members’ own visions of change. It is on this basis
that President Kennedy’s and NPCA’s ideal expansion to 100,000
volunteers is well justified.
Yossef Ben-Meir is a former Peace Corps volunteer and program
director in Morocco. He is president of the High Atlas Foundation, a
nonprofit organization founded by former Peace Corps volunteers who
served in Morocco and dedicated to community development in that
country.
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