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NYT Piece Criticizes the Peace Corps

January 9, 2008

by Nate

Our (Rebekah's and my) former country director, Robert Strauss, has an op-ed piece in the New York Times critiquing the Peace Corps on its legions of immature, unqualified college graduates. His main point is actually slightly gentler and more specific than that, which is that the need for mere college graduates in most third-world countries is no longer significant. Rebekah and I were in the agroforestry program in Cameroon from 2004 to 2005 (it's the agriculture program Strauss mentions in his article), and we spoke with him about this subject in our exit interview, where I found him refreshingly sympathetic to our complaints and our reasons for leaving.

Comments

On January 9 at 2'43 PMPermalink, hb wrote:

1

This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries.

Prediction: someone characterizes this article as saying that the Peace Corps has become a glorified Third World travel agency for rich kids.

Is that entirely wrong?

On January 17 at 12'33 PMPermalink, Nate wrote:

2

Well, we should give full credit to the adjective “glorified” if we want to describe it that way. Even if the Peace Corps does little to no good for its host countries (which is my evaluation, based upon experience and testimony from others), its effect on volunteers is significantly greater than mere travel. Peace Corps service forces one to live in village, at an economic level that is much less than that of ex-pats or missionaries. One develops real relationships with average HCNs (host-country nationals) in a way that is not as common for people working at an administrative level.

Though it’s easy for me to forget, adapting to the level of third-world living isn’t instantaneous or easy. When I first arrived, Garoua seemed like an incredibly bleak, poor, ugly city. When I left, it was comforting, beautiful, and familiar. I still miss it. Being forced to live in a way that’s harder than one is ready for at the beginning changes a person. As a result, I think the net effect on PCVs is good for America, in a way that is greater than mere travel would be. It’s important that the PC is all about living amidst poverty, even if PCVs will always have enough money to live comfortably in a way that their neighbors might not.