LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Carol Bellamy : Affirmative Action: From the Peace Corps to UNICEF

The selection of Peace Corps Director Carol Bellamy as the new executive director of UNICEF (the U.N. Children’s Fund) entailed some hard international politicking and bruised some European feelings, but the word along the U.N. corridors these days is that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali chose wisely and well.

The 53-year-old Bellamy is giving up leadership of what is probably the most glamorous development agency in the U.S. government on May 1 to take over what is probably the most glamorous development agency in the U.N. system. With Hollywood stars like the late Audrey Hepburn and Danny Kaye trumpeting its accomplishments, UNICEF, founded soon after the United Nations was created 50 years ago, has achieved a special popularity. Even when people get annoyed at the United Nations for one reason or another, they still cherish UNICEF. Its mission, after all, is to save the children of the world from starvation and disease.

UNICEF (the initials are from its original name, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) had long been led by the late James P. Grant, an American with a missionary-like zeal that endeared him to his staff and the press. After his death in January, Washington proposed that the Secretary-General name Dr. William H. Foege, a former director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

European nations countered with other candidates, including Elizabeth Rehn, former Finnish defense minister, and insisted it was Europe’s turn to run the agency. When Boutros-Ghali announced that he felt it was time for a woman, Rehn appeared close to selection. But the Clinton Administration came up with a new slate of women candidates, including Bellamy. In the end, Boutros-Ghali gave in to U.S. pressure.

Bellamy was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala during the agency’s early years, then took her law degree at New York University. After more than a decade in New York city and state politics, she became a Wall Street investment banker. She did try her hand at politics again but lost a race for New York state comptroller in 1990 and a Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate in 1992.

There has been some Republican muttering about this UNICEF appointment. Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) denounced her for having “an extremist record on abortion-related matters,” and a group of Republicans has written Boutros-Ghali, asking that he not allow UNICEF to divert its attention to family planning.

Bellamy talked about both the Peace Corps and UNICEF last week in a conference room outside her office.

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Question: Let’s talk about your two years as director of the Peace Corps. Do you feel you changed it in any way?

Answer: . . . I would be horrified if I thought we had, because what makes the Peace Corps as vital and strong today as 34 years ago . . . is that its mission, the three goals of the Peace Corps--the first goal of sustainable development . . . and the other two goals of increasing mutual understanding of Americans to other peoples of the world and other peoples of the world to Americans--(are) as relevant today as (they were) 34 years ago. I had no desire to change that.

What one is able to do as the director of the Peace Corps is to say, “With that basic mission, how do you make it respond to the challenges and needs of today?”

So here we are in the mid-’90s heading to the 21st Century: (We should be) taking a look at how things are operated here and trying to set us on a path in terms of use of technology; taking a hard look at our training, our language and cross-cultural training--making sure it’s as relevant today--taking a look at our programming that now includes volunteers working in things like AIDS education and prevention, or business education, or environment and natural resourc- es, not necessarily major programming of 15 or 20 years ago.

The growth of the Peace Corps tends to seek a balance of skilled volunteers and of generalists. What I hope I’ve brought to it is a relevance in meeting the needs of the day--not a changing so much, but making sure it’s as vital and relevant as it can be.

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Q: You were the first director of the Peace Corps who had also been a volunteer. Was that a tremendous advantage?

A: No, I don’t think it was, but I’m very proud to be the first director who was a returned volunteer. I think we’ve had some terrific directors of the Peace Corps who had no past connections with (it) but, like all of us, have learned to love it and still do . . . .

Nevertheless, I hoped that, at least as I visited volunteers in the field, I could bring kind of a simpatico for both the highs and the lows, the joys and the sorrows, the difficult moments, the lonely moments and yet the wonderful exhilarating moments that volunteers experience. I think it’s important to be out there and reach out and touch those volunteers.

I also was committed to continuing to strengthen the bonds and connections and relationships with the returned-volunteer community. There are over 140,000. Peace Corps makes an enormous contribution to America. Whether they’re second-grade teachers or the secretary of health and human services (Donna E. Shalala is a former volunteer), they’re internationalized. It’s very important in the smaller world we live in today.

So I hope I brought my own passion and enthusiasm for Peace Corps coming from my days as a returned volunteer. I don’t think you have to have been a returned volunteer to be the director, but I hope I brought it something a little different.

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Q: How different do you think the Peace Corps of the days of Carol Bellamy, volunteer, were from the days of Carol Bellamy, Peace Corps director?

A: There are differences. Today, we’re about half men, half women. In the early days, we were about two-thirds men, one-third women. Today, we are more structured in our programming. We program in five primary areas--teaching, agriculture, health, business, and environment--although we encourage cross-sectoral programming.

We are in a part of the world that one would never have thought we would be in in those days. We’re in Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union countries, although Africa still has the largest number of volunteers. We have a little bit more diversity in age--8% of our volunteers now are over the age of 50. We’re doing a little better in minority volunteers--this year about 13% of the volunteers. So, in some ways, the profiles are different.

Also, the requests we’re getting in. In the last five or six years, there’s a kind of explosion of requests for volunteers who bring some kind of background in business or some kind of background in environment and natural resources. Some of the kinds of crises in the world today that one never thought of 15 years ago. AIDS. The fact that we have volunteers in AIDS education and prevention. So there are those kinds of changes.

Is the volunteer different today? Well, the American of 1995 is different, so, in some ways, they are. Yet, in some ways, in my view, we are still finding those Americans who bring kind of a motivation, an energy to try and make a difference. No person joins the Peace Corps for one single motivation, but they’re motivated, flexible, energetic and want to make a difference. Whether they’re 76 or 24. Those kind of components, the glass half-full rather than the glass half-empty person. We’ve managed to find that same kind of person in the 34 years we’ve been the Peace Corps. . . .

But there are a couple of things different. I do think volunteers these days, particularly our younger volunteers, probably feel under somewhat more economic strain. When I was in the Peace Corps, that never occurred to me . . . .

But the kind of doer, go-getter, I-can-figure-out-how-to-get-things-done person, somehow we’ve found that strain through all the 34 years . . . .

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Q: In your time at the Peace Corps, either as a volunteer or as the director, do you run into UNICEF people at work?

A: . . . My activities as a Peace Corps volunteer 30 years ago were not in conjunction with UNICEF, but some of the stuff I was working on--like childhood immunizations and childhood nutrition and dehydration and healthy children--are very much related to the work that UNICEF does. So I feel, in some ways, that how I started--as a Peace Corps volunteer . . .--it’s coming back home, both as the Peace Corps director and head of UNICEF. It’s almost closing the loop, in some ways.

I also think, as the director of Peace Corps, the importance has been to think about where are we going in the future? Where are we heading? What does the Peace Corps of the 21st Century look like? I think that’s what one needs to be doing in UNICEF. The success of UNICEF, in many ways, is because it’s identified achievable goals . . . . It’s set some of these goals out of eradicating polio and dealing with vitamin-A deficiency and . . . that’s very important. But looking to the future, one always has to look for what are the next challenges.

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Q: Have you had time yet to form ideas on which way UNICEF will be going in the 21st Century?

A: I haven’t. First, I’m not there yet. I did speak to the UNICEF staff last week, and I basically said I wanted them to know a little bit about me. I told them yes, there was a new director, but I didn’t want them stopping. I said about Jim Grant, how can anybody fill his shoes? I make no pretense of being able to fill his shoes. But UNICEF is doing some terrific, terrific work around the world. I wanted that work to continue . . . .

When you come into an institution new, the . . . most important things you need to do are the same: listen, meet with, learn about, and hear and think about, rather than going in and saying, “This is how we’re going to do things.” I have to go through a process of learning more, having a sense of how things are going, before I would even begin to be so presumptuous as to suggest a modification here or some kind of change there.

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Q: There are news reports about low morale and misuse of funds at UNICEF. Those are things that you probably have not gone into as yet.

A: There is a problem in Kenya (about alleged misuse of funds). I only received a preliminary briefing on it, but that is something that has to be taken care of, and that has to do with the funds issue. I don’t have the specifics on it. On that, in my view, one does not wait; one needs to move on that.

In terms of morale . . . that has a lot more to do with what is natural in any kind of an institution where you’ve lost a leader who has been such an extraordinary leader. This man was a visionary in terms of the world’s children. So there’s uncertainty.

I feel bad, because I feel like my leaving creates some uncertainty here (at the Peace Corps). I think the morale issue is partly related to uncertainty, and so I hope, now that (I have been) appointed executive director (at UNICEF), that at least some of the uncertainty (there will be reduced). Now we’ll see whether I can act in a way that people will think I will carry on the mantle and the franchise of this wonderful organization.

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Q: What about this Republican letter to Boutros-Ghali about not diverting UNICEF programs to family planning?

A: . . . The letter basically said that UNICEF has been concerned about the well-being and development of children and hopefully that will continue. I share those views. UNICEF is not involved in abortion. It is not involved in giving out contraceptives. Whatever my personal views are on that issue, and it’s an issue obviously on which people have different views, I haven’t imposed it here, in Peace Corps. I’ve never imposed my personal views on an organization. It’s clear to me, in fact, that what UNICEF is about is healthy children and children living longer.

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Q: What about politics? Does this end your career in politics?

A: It certainly happily ends anything about politics. The great thing about Peace Corps is that while it’s a government agency, it is the least political of any kind of government agency you can find, so I loved that. I’m delighted to be out of politics and into UNICEF. Delighted, delighted, delighted.