My fellow Eritrea I Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Nick VonKlock sent me the following letter, which was published in the Wall Street Journal (and on its Web site) today:
"I am a retired American diplomat and have spent some time in the Third World and have questioned the value of money spent to help the needy... While stationed in our embassy in the Philippines, I had some contact with the Peace Corps there. The group had about 65 volunteers, each paid about $10,000 a year, in addition to 69 local-hire full-time employees and one full-time career American. The typical Peace Corps volunteer served two years, but was in country only about 20 months and typically spent four to six months learning the local language and ways. The volunteers were productive for only about 14 months. But even their tiny salary (by U.S. standards) of about $20,000 for two years would have hired equally qualified, locally educated workers for five years... My view of the Peace Corps is that it is really just a U.S. government program for paid vacations in the Third World. --Peter Rice, Sarasota, Fla."
As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I find this sentiment extremely disheartening, especially as it's coming from a former U.S. diplomat.
I should acknowledge up front the observation Mr. Rice makes that the money spent on the Peace Corps could also do a lot of good if it was put into local organizations in the third world, and that it would perhaps go even farther if it funded in-country employees as opposed to U.S. citizens. I think that's a good point. However, my assertion is that the U.S. has a compelling interest to invest in both things -- direct aid (for example, through USAID and the UN) to assist in-country work, and additional expenditures to support the Peace Corps.
The reason why is that the benefit of the Peace Corps is not purely the work done by the volunteers on the ground (though my estimation of the value of that work clearly exceeds Mr. Rice's assessment.) Peace Corps volunteers only do work requested by their host countries, so their tasks and placement are not set by some domestic beltway bureacracy. Volunteers live and work in the same communities and at the same standard of living as their host country nationals, which is often quite different than the "paid vacation" standard asserted in Mr. Rice's letter.
Peace Corps volunteers act as citizen diplomats for the United States around the world. The relationships built by volunteers help to cement what Joseph Nye refers to as our "soft power." Plus, the first hand knowledge volunteers acquire in their service is brought back to the United States, where it enriches our culture here at home as well.
There are many prominent leaders, in both the public and private sectors, who served as volunteers. This is what Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami and former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Clinton, had to say about her service:
"...for students that want to become world citizens there is no better experience. It gives you an experience at a very young age about other cultures, whether you are going on into medicine or law or anything, especially before you go to grad school or move on to your career. You have to have a sense of adventure. You have to be ready to try something new, open to new ideas. Let me put it this way-when I ran a graduate program in Columbia [University] in political science, we accepted almost everyone who was in the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps is for people who really want to see the world from the bottom up... {the Peace Corps} made me a world citizen, a more international person. It makes me more sensitive to the people around me. It was a fabulous experience. It's still the best professional decision that I ever made. I was better as a Peace Corps volunteer than at any other point in my life."
The Peace Corps annual budget is something like $250 million dollars. That supports the service of approximately 6000 new volunteers each year around the world, and each volunteer serves for two or more years. I made about half the amount ($5000) Mr. Rice specifies during each of the two years I was in Eritrea. I could have made ten times that if I'd held some mid-level job here in the federal government for those two years. Would that have been a better investment of taxpayer dollars?
I admit that the exercise of "the money could be better spent this way" creates false dichotomies. For instance, when compared with the trillions of dollars we spend on defense each year it seems difficult to say that the quarter of a billion dollars we spend on Peace Corps is a waste of money. It's about one stealth bomber ($2b) for eight fully funded years of the Peace Corps. But that's a facile way to frame the argument -- we need to invest in defense, and we need to invest in citizen diplomacy. Creating false either/or situations gets us no closer to clarity.
Fortunately (from my perspective) the Peace Corps has become a part of our social fabric, and as such it's difficult to dislodge it. Both Nixon and Reagan tried in various ways to scale back the program but it came back stronger after each attempt. It is likely that the Peace Corps will survive and grow for decades to come, and that's a very good thing.