A Salute to Citizen Diplomacy - Foreign Policy Association

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programmatic support. Though there is a long tradition of volunteerism in the United States
for the delivery of community services, volunteer organizations typically address local needs,
such as establishing a library or providing fire and ambulance services. Dependence on volunteer-based
citizen groups for such a significant foreign policy initiative was striking.
Two factors contributed to the government’s desire to rely on community-based volunteer
groups to support its international visitor programs. First, the groups gave credibility to a
government-sponsored and -funded program designed to influence foreign leaders. Without
private involvement, international visitors could easily have believed the program to be a
propaganda tool of the U.S. government. However, by using the resources of local volunteer
groups to arrange meetings and hospitality in the community, and by relying on private,
nonprofit national program agencies to coordinate the national programs, the IV Program
clearly became something very different from a propaganda effort. It was the product of a
unique public–private sector partnership.
Second, local volunteers and community groups knew the resources available in their
community in a way that the State Department could not possibly know. As Secretary of
State Dean Rusk pointed out at a COSERV conference in 1965, “[T]he government simply
can’t do what you are doing. We can’t render that kind of individual, sensitive and personalized
service such as you can and do render in your own communities. This voluntary spirit is
of course a keystone in the understanding which other people may have of us.… ”7
Some of the early community groups involved in supporting visitor exchange programs
had been members of national organizations such as the Foreign Policy Association or the
Council on Foreign Relations. The World Affairs Councils of Hartford, Connecticut; Cleveland,
Ohio; and St. Louis, Missouri, are examples of community groups that added exchange
programs to their portfolios. For instance, the World Affairs Council of Hartford was established
in 1924 by a group of educators and business people to promote the discussion of