A Call to Peace - Civic Enterprises

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KEY MOMENTS: PEACE CORPS HISTORY19651966197119791981A coup leads to a civilwar in the DominicanRepublic. U.S. troops invadeand despite great risk topersonal safety, Peace CorpsVolunteers remained behindto aid civilians caught up inthe fighting.Peace Corps reaches itspeak membership, with15,556 Volunteers across47 countries.President Richard Nixon,a Peace Corps detractor,brought the programunder the umbrella of theACTION agency for federalvolunteering.President Jimmy Carter,whose mother had beena nurse in the Peace Corps,restored Peace Corpsautonomy viaexecutive order.President Ronald Reaganappointed Loret MillerRuppe as Director of thePeace Corps. She was thelongest serving director,and maintained a highlevel of popularitythroughout her tenure.One thousand of the first3,000 Volunteers to returnconvene in Washington,D.C. for the Citizensin a Time of ChangeConference—at the call ofPresident Johnson and VicePresident Humphrey.Peace Corps begins tofocus heavily onpromoting small businessdevelopment indeveloping nations.19821987198919962001-20011Congress re-establishesthe Peace Corps as anindependent agency.Peace Corps reachesthe lowest number ofVolunteers since its firstthree years, with 5,219Volunteers.The Berlin Wall falls andthe Peace Corps begins tosend Volunteers to EasternEurope for the first time.The Crisis Corps isestablished forexperienced formerVolunteers to give shorttermrelief in countriesfacing natural disasters.Peace Corps substantiallyramps up its efforts tocombat HIV/AIDS andmalaria, particularly inAfrica, tied to PEPFARand the President’sMalaria Initiative.Safety and SecurityThe issue of safety of Peace Corps Volunteershas recently received increased attention duringCongressional hearings in the Spring of 2011, followingthe tragic murder of Kate Puzey, a Peace CorpsVolunteer in Benin. The details of the Puzey tragedyshined a spotlight on the Peace Corps’ inadequatehandling of the case. Ms. Puzey reported to Peace Corpscountry headquarters that a Peace Corps contractorat the school where Ms. Puzey volunteered wasallegedly molesting female students. After the tragedy,more Peace Corps Volunteers who had been victimsof assault during their service came forward to drawattention to what they saw as Peace Corps’ uneven andinadequate handling of safety issues and a culture theydescribed as “blame the victim.”The Peace Corps promised to take a hard look at itselfand improve its safety and response policies. DirectorAaron Williams pledged to make safety reforms a toppriority and to improve safety training. During histestimony before the House Committee on ForeignAffairs on May 11, 2011, Director Williams outlined thePeace Corps’s reform agenda concerning the safety andsecurity of Peace Corps Volunteers and enumeratedsteps that have been taken and will be taken to ensurecontinued safe and secure experiences for Volunteers.Although most changes and improvements revolvearound the issue of sexual assault victims, Williamsmakes a clear commitment to improving the quality,efficiency, and transparency to bolster the safety of allPeace Corps Volunteers.Bills pending in Congress would codify reforms theagency has put in place such as better staff trainingand protection for whistleblowers, and would requiremore detailed crime statistics and the Peace Corpsand U.S. Department of State to formalize how U.S.Embassy officials respond to crimes against PeaceCorps Volunteers.Although the great majority of RPCVs reported thatthey felt safe in their service and did not express majorconcerns about safety (figure 20). During that time,there has been a gradual increase in the percentage of| 24A CALL TO PEACE SEPTEMBER 2011
women who reported feeling unsafe as the number ofwomen in the Peace Corps rose dramatically from the1960s to the 2000s. Volunteer demographics changedfrom two-thirds male in the 1960s to two-thirds femaletoday. There was an increase in the number of femalePeace Corps Volunteers who report that safety was amajor concern for them (from 2 percent in the 1960s,gradually climbing to 6 percent in the 1980s, and to8 percent in the 2000s). Just 1 to 3 pecent of menthe across five decades report concerns about safetyand security.Nearly all RCPVs (98 percent) would recommend thePeace Corps to their child, grandchild, or close familymember. Although not expressly asked in the contextof safety, it could still be interpreted that if safety fearswere prevalent among RPCVs, they would have secondthoughts about sending their children, grandchildrenor close family members in harm’s way. And whenasked to describe in an open form question the “worstthing” about their Peace Corps experience, 15 percentidentified illness and getting sick, 9 percent said lack ofsupport or leadership from Peace Corps staff, 8 percentmentioned loneliness and isolation, and 6 percent saidmissing friends and family at home or not being able tocommunicate with friends and family. Safety concernswere not mentioned.Notwithstanding these encouraging findings aboutthe safety and security of Peace Corps assignments,vigorous efforts must be undertaken to reduce concernsaround safety and security as much as possible, andany percentage, however low, is cause for concernwhen lives are at risk or Volunteers are in harm’s way.Figure 20: Safety and SecurityUNFINISHED BUSINESSSargent Shriver’s report to the President in February1961 laid a clear foundation for the agency its foundersenvisioned; however, that vision was lost over thesubsequent years. It is our belief that the originalframework is even more relevant today and points theway forward for the agency’s next 50 years, if the PeaceCorps is to continue to grow and evolve to meet itsfull potential.According to the 1961 founding report, the Peace Corps’role was to “reinforce existing private and publicprograms of assistance and development,” as wellas, “to initiate new programs requiring Peace Corpsmanpower.” 12 “The resources, energy, and experienceof our non-governmental institutions, including collegesand universities, foundations, trade unions, businesses,civic groups and religious bodies must be tapped. Thismust be a cooperative venture of the whole Americanpeople.” 13When President Kennedy launched the Peace Corps in1961, he wondered if the skeptics’ prediction of failurewould be its fate. But by August 1962, when he sentoff some 600 Volunteers, the Peace Corps was widelyacclaimed as a success. The Volunteers had shownthey were up to the challenge. After the ceremony onthe South Lawn of the White House, he came back tothe Oval Office in high spirits with his then SpecialAssistant Harris Wofford, who was about to leave tobecome the Peace Corps special representative in Africaand director of the 300-strong Ethiopian program. ThePresident said: “The Peace Corps will be truly seriouswhen 100,000 Americans are serving abroad eachyear–-one million over a decade. Then, we will have amore informed U.S. foreign policy.”12 Shriver, S. (1961). Summary Report to the President on the Peace Corps. Office of the White House Press Secretary.13 Ibid.We recommend that Shriver’s original plan for thePeace Corps to send Volunteers through five channelsshould be reviewed and reconsidered, as one of theways Kennedy’s hope can be fulfilled. The original planforesaw the Peace Corps operating throughfive different channels:1. Through grants to international service programscarried out by private agencies: This would expandexisting voluntary programs and encourage otherprivate organizations to undertake projects as wellas promote variety and experimentation;2. Through agreements with colleges, universities, orother educational institutions: Already in 1960, 57universities had contracts with the InternationalA CALL TO PEACE SEPTEMBER 201125|
Page 1 and 2: A Call to PeacePerspectives of Volu
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction . . .
Page 5: EXECUTIVE SUMMARYTHE PEACE CORPS EX
Page 9 and 10: WAYS FORWARDIn anticipation of the
Page 11 and 12: A CALL TO PEACEThis report is not a
Page 13 and 14: KEY MOMENTS: PEACE CORPS FOUNDINGOC
Page 15 and 16: Those serving in predominantly Musl
Page 17 and 18: Peace Corps to set the goals of the
Page 19 and 20: TODAY, 22 PERCENT OF ALL PEACE CORP
Page 21 and 22: A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCEThe over
Page 23 and 24: Figure 15: Regions by Decade of Ser
Page 25: Confidential. Embargoed until Septe
Page 29 and 30: While RPCVs recognized the need for
Page 31 and 32: Below are core principles and propo
Page 33 and 34: The Peace Corps, Volunteers for Pro
Page 35 and 36: CONCLUSIONThe Peace Corps was a bol
Page 37 and 38: country and how to apply their over
Page 39 and 40: Schwarz, K. (1991). What You Can Do

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