Dear family and friends,
We’re sorry it has taken us so long to get some new material up on the blog. August was an interesting month for us, with lots of ups and downs, and we haven’t had much time for anything outside the realm of work, household chores, and sleep. So, here’s a quick few thoughts we’ve been having lately. We would love to see some comments from all of you about this post so please give us a shout!
Jess spent this past Thursday in Managua where she had the opportunity to meet with the new world wide director of Peace Corps. His name is Aaron Williams and he was sworn in about a week ago. Director Williams has worked for USAID, a private development research agency called RTI, and a few other interesting places along the way. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic in the 60’s. Sadly, he is only one of two or three directors who have ever actually been a Peace Corps volunteer, so it is exciting to know that he will improve Peace Corps from the mindset of an administrator but also of a volunteer. Jess will write a bit later on about her meeting with Director Williams, but let’s talk a little more about where Peace Corps is and what the future holds.
Peace Corps has about 8,000 volunteers worldwide right now, and surprisingly, that is not its highest enrollment. Earlier, I believe in the 60’s and 70’s, there were more volunteers than there are now. One of the big pushes in Washington D.C. is to expand Peace Corps to double its current size. You might actually remember hearing this from President Obama, who mentioned he would like to see Peace Corps doubled by 2012. Nobody really thinks that’s possible, but the spirit of it all is good.
There are others, including returned Peace Corps volunteers, who actually believe the number of volunteers should be lowered. They believe that by shrinking the size of the agency we can attract more experienced professionals and have a better impact in the places that really need (and want) our help. It’s tough to say what would be best of the agency overall. The last director pushed to increase the number of married couples and retired volunteers. Who knows, maybe that’s why we got a spot in the highly competitive Latin America region. The idea is clear: married couples offer twice the volunteer in the same community and retired volunteers have a career’s worth of knowledge that they can apply to their work. Those two categories, however still make up less that 20% of volunteers, with the majority being single recent college graduates.
For me, it comes down to what we expect from the U.S. Peace Corps. We have had the same three main goals since JFK set up the agency:
1. To offer technical experience in the form of American professionals to developing countries who ask for help.
2. To promote a better understanding of the U.S. and American culture in other countries around the world.
3. To promote a better understanding of other countries and cultures to Americans.
The goals, while maybe surprising to some of you first time readers, aren’t very specific in their purpose. There’s no Peace Corps goal that says, “Volunteers with effectively lower the transmission of HIV / AIDS between sex trade workers and those who solicit services from the sex trade.” In my opinion that’s a relief.
With such a non-specific mandate, however, we do need to set up some guidelines about priorities and resources. Is the goal of Peace Corps to put as many Americans on the ground as possible, trained long hours of sitting on a neighbor’s patio and chatting? Is the main goal to have a select group of development professionals working in the highest levels of program design to improve the way a country is run? Do we want volunteers to have to scrounge for funding (i.e. Jess’s Partnership Project) or do we want to give recent college grads American tax dollars to help third world countries at the volunteers’ discretion?
There are lots of questions above and beyond all this that get to the heart of what Peace Corps is. Somewhere buried behind the health care headlines (geeze louise, people!) you can find the stories about American image around the globe. While wars and industry usually are responsible for our global image there is the potential for Peace Corps, USAID, and other agencies to play a larger role. The bottom line is that someone needs to decide where and how. Maybe our new director is just the guy for the job. We’ll see…
Any thoughts from all of you?
By the way, there will be plenty of cute cat and dog photos in the next post. It's just around the corner, too!
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3 comments:
I think I'd like to hear about what you two think about the Peace Core and its direction, as two who are on the ground doing the work now.
Matt, this is fascinating; I'm definitely looking forward to hearing Jess' thoughts as well.
One of the superballs that's been bouncing around in my skull lately is the idea of the Peace Corps and individual volunteers partnering with non-profit agencies (global or those with the potential to be)on particular problems. Whether it's mission implementation (a la Acumen Fund) or funding (the Peace Corps could do SO MUCH with a microlending program like Kiva), there seems to be so much that could be gained from expanding the kinds of relationships between the Corps and agencies that have been around for awhile amassing expertise.
Reading about your adventures in Somoto and your ponderings about the program and your work at large are incredible -- thank you for sharing your thoughts with us all. I know I'm constantly inspired to revisit the option to volunteer myself.
I am a student of Mrs.Lyttle's and i think your blog is very good. Today we just started learning about Nicaragua and Mrs.Lyttle told us you had this blog. I think you should put more pictures of Yoda, she is very cute(and Astro).
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