Too Many Innocents Ignored

On January 9, 2008, Robert Strauss, former Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director wrote an op-ed article for the NY Times. His article, “Too Many Innocents Abroad,” went into detail about how “young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.” He emphasized the need to shrink the size of the Peace Corps and recruit top-students and older, more experienced volunteers.

The article received responses from hundreds of former and current volunteers, Peace Corps President Ron Tschetter (sp?), National Peace Corps Association President Kevin Quigley, and Chris Dodd, former volunteer and current senator of Connecticut who is working to help Peace Corps receive more attention from the government and the media.

Through the sheer number of responses to this article, Peace Corps Volunteers have, at the very least, exemplified the profound impact the organization has had on their own lives and how it could be improved:

“They are the new ambassadors for peace and ethnic diversity.” -: Allegra K. Troiano

“Peace Corps volunteers generate positive change not because they are more skilled than their local counterparts, but because they … inspire and challenge villagers to solve their critical problems themselves.”

“Sacrifice and friendship are what drive change” - Rajeev Goyal
“We should take a more constructive look at what skill levels can realistically be recruited, and be honest with host countries and with ourselves.” - Carol Benson

This effort, 600 million dollars shy of government propaganda, is coming from a voice that shouldn’t be ignored.

When my roommate read the article aloud in our apartment in Assomada, Cape Verde, we both grabbed our notepads and outlined a response:

This is my response, posted Jan 15 on www.peacecorpsconnect.com:
I’m not sure I understand who Mr Strauss considers to be an “effective development volunteer.” To me, an effective development volunteer is, most importantly, someone who grew up in a developed environment. They understand why roads are important, when you plant seeds you need to water them everyday, not spend more than you make in a business… these are skills Americans grow up with and should not be neglected as the fundamental concept of development work.

To turn Peace Corps into an effective developmental organization, several strategies could dramatically improve productivity:

1. Actively recruit young professionals. Recruit graduates from business, technical and journalism schools to start. Grades don’t matter, only interest. Spending enough time to finish college in a certain subject is enough interest. For example:
a. Businesspeople could train entrepreneurs through micro-finance institutions,
b. Engineers could teach technical skills and help develop energy, water, sanitation, etc, projects,
c. Journalists could promote the efforts of everyone else and document the culture for people at home and the host country.

Take all of their skills and add them together: you end up with a marketing department (journalists), an administration department (businesspeople), an engineering/research department (engineers). You could ad on more departments: IT, Youth, communications, etc. Every school of professions can be applied to a general realm of development work. Apply American business development to underdeveloped economies, financed by the goodwill of government taxes and… well, you’re in business.

2. Connect with other Governmental Development Agencies like USAID and MCC – The fact that there are several development agencies working in the same place, toward the same cause and don’t share information, is dumb.

Peace Corps Volunteers are directly involved with communities and can provide the local knowledge and essential contacts that different programs simply don’t know about. Volunteers should be, from the start of training, aware of local projects going on by other organizations and understand the procedure of project approval.

3. Hype these as job opportunities after Peace Corps – What’s the point of recruiting top-tier graduates and older volunteers if you’re not going to offer them opportunities to advance after their service? Companies offer job security. Right now, (I understand) Peace Corps gives you $6,000 and a thank you letter. If Peace Corps clearly advertises a career path, your number of applicants would increase tenfold.

4. Organization – Washington is developing Wiki’s for every post to use for local information, project ideas and lesson plans. Being able to trade information with other development workers around the world would help people come up with project ideas and understand how to follow through on all elements of a project.

5. Supportive, competent administration – With supportive, competent country directors and administration, volunteers would be prepared and feel inspired to work. This will take time and rely on the patience of young people to change an inept bureaucracy into a respected administration.

6. Publicity – Make volunteers famous for their success. YouTube and bloggers will probably figure this out sometime soon.

a. Reality TV – With scripted TV becoming outdated and reality TV getting boring, what about actual reality TV? Show the need for improvement in a community and the development of projects to show what works, what fails and how volunteers and their community respond. (New media journalists)

b. You can make anything sexy. Make short films with entrepreneurs pitching their idea on Kiva.org (Small Enterprise Development volunteers) for loans and/or post Peace Corps Partnership projects looking for donations during commercial breaks. Do this, and you’ve given people a new reason to sit in front of television.

c. Peace Corps should be open to connect with every revolutionary website on the Internet:
i. Current.tv and Flipvideospotlight - to document projects, culture,
ii. CouchSurfing - to arrange a network of where Peace Corps Vol’s live to locate one another,
iii. One Laptop per Child (IT), get computers in the hands of every person. It is the best teaching tool ever invented,
iv. Amiestreet.com - promote host country musicians and see if people can make a living selling their music online,
v. Google Earth - post everything here for ease of navigation, this is the basis of the physical organization,
vi. Google Sketchup Community, Patents – to share and improve project designs and proposals

Development work is not easy. It involves spending time with people and learning about their way of life. This goes both ways. It not only serves to fulfill the host country’s needs, it strengthens Americans as they learn about culture different from their own.

Peace Corps offers intellectual freedom, impact, fame, pride. It gives you the opportunity to find out what you want to do with your life if you haven’t already lived it.