Peace Corps: The Third Rail of U.S. Global Development Assistance

By Yossef Ben-Meir

(This article presents a case for now vastly expanding the United States Peace Corps in light of threatened cuts to it and the dismantling of U.S. foreign aid departments)

Whereas there has been broad consensus that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is in need of reform, there is also an even wider and more deeply held belief that the value of Peace Corps ― begun in 1961 ― is incalculable relative to its incredibly modest cost. American citizens’ experiences of living and working with local communities around the world forges innovative, mission-driven individuals in all sectors of society, enhancing the United States and its allies.

At about one percent of the cost of USAID, the Peace Corps not only upscales American people’s skills at typically formative junctures of their professional lives, but earns the partnership of individuals, families, and communities in more than 140 friendly countries. President Kennedy’s vision for the Peace Corps was to annually place 50,000 American volunteers at project sites, approximately seven times the number of those currently serving.

Increasing the Peace Corps’ budget from its current level of approximately $300 million to a fully funded $2.5 billion (less than 10 percent of USAID’s latest annual budget), could fulfill the 50,000-volunteer potential. At this moment of radical change (the end of federal agencies and departments and their associated layoffs), the impact upon Americans and U.S. international partners of increasing the Peace Corps budget would not only generate jobs for U.S. citizens, primarily youth, but also bridge a spectrum of relationships at minimal cost.

A fair concern about the Peace Corps over its years has been its struggle to recruit people from all economic backgrounds; many people who have not had the opportunity to gain higher education have important practical skills that can be applied toward the betterment of society. Increasing the program from 7,000 to 50,000 volunteers while broadening its access to those who may not have considered this professional avenue in the areas of agriculture, mechanics, teaching, health care, and more, could offset recent layoffs by creating jobs in the interior of the United States.

Moving to 50,000 Peace Corps Volunteers is the low-cost palliative needed to address the untenable situation of a high-cost international development complex removed from direct people-to-people experiences and the resulting insufficient impact. Also, the Peace Corps benefits the American volunteers as much or even more than the local people and communities with whom they engage all around the world because their capacities are strengthened by doing. Volunteers’ responsiveness to locally determined priorities not only achieves the sincere goodwill generated during the two-year Peace Corps service, but creates a frame of reference for them of what is entailed in economic growth, forming a basis for their future outsized achievements in all helpful walks of life.

Serious cuts to the Peace Corps will likely unleash the ire of the well-organized former volunteers (nearly 250,000) in all of the 50 states, with inter-state networks based on the countries and periods they served. The Peace Corps is therefore a third rail of United States global development assistance with now a wide array of consequences before us. For the cost, there is every good reason to immediately expand it to its original intention at a bargain that is rarely, if ever, found among government programs.

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a sociologist and former Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Morocco from 1993 to 1995.