PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

7understood that in order for the organization to be successful, it needed to be free frompolitics.As mentioned above, in the late 1960s, the Peace Corps experienced a tensionbetween volunteers with specific skills and volunteers with general educationalbackgrounds. By the late 1970s, the host countries had assessed the Peace Corps’presence and realized their own needs. This caused them to request volunteers with moreexperience. Sargent Shriver, the first Peace Corps director and mastermind of policyfrom its inception, believed in the power of a volunteer force with generalistbackgrounds. Shriver felt that B.A., liberal arts undergraduates “were more likely to beunsure of their career path and more likely to be attracted to the two-year sabbaticaloffered by the Peace Corps.” 19According to Fritz Fischer, the B.A. generalists “suitedShriver’s image of the lonely frontiersman, forced to rely on nothing but his own guile tosurvive.” 20By the 1970s foreign nations began to understand the role of the Peace Corpsin their countries and the needs of their own countries, which led them to requestspecialists to work on specific problems in their countries.Requests for volunteers with specific qualifications led to new media campaigns,which repositioned the Peace Corps’ recruitment strategies in the 1970s to “attract skilledpeople, not just 22- year-old college grads.” 21 The Administration responded to thisproblem by placing articles in professional publications to reach out to nurses and MBAs,and they advertised in agricultural trade publications for farming experts. 22Bill Novelli,an advertising strategist, used social marketing to recruit these new volunteers. In the1970s, social marketing or advertising with a philanthropic purpose became a commonrecruitment strategy. The Peace Corps was one of the first organizations to give