2000 Could Be New Frontier for a Newly Expanded Peace Corps

The Peace Corps is so identified as a creature of the John F. Kennedy administration that some Americans are unaware it still exists. Such ignorance is bound to dissipate with President Clinton’s decision to expand the Peace Corps by more than half by 2000, the largest boost in volunteers since the 1960s.

In fact, the Peace Corps has been expanding its territory of service--if not the number of its volunteers--for years. Volunteers now work in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and in many of the nations, including Russia, that once made up the Soviet Union.

South Africa, the newest country on the Peace Corps’ agenda, is preparing to receive its first group of 70 volunteers next week. They will include former President Carter’s grandson, Jason.

Still, Peace Corps Director Mark D. Gearan describes Clinton’s push as “an historic moment,” and it is clear that he and his aides hope to recover some of the magic of the agency’s early days. Back then, the idea of young Americans fanning out across the globe to help the poor made even those Americans still at home feel good about themselves.

The proposal to expand the Peace Corps from 6,610 to 10,000 volunteers over the next two years would require Congress to increase the Peace Corps budget by 21%, to $270 million. Since the president first proposed the expansion in his weekly radio broadcast Saturday, it has provoked no major outcries from Capitol Hill.

It doesn’t hurt that Congress has an in-house Peace Corps lobby: a Democratic senator, three Republican representatives and two Democratic representatives were Peace Corps volunteers, and all six have announced their support of the expansion.

So has Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), who headed the Peace Corps during the George Bush administration. Coverdell now is a key member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the conservative who usually looks askance at what he regards as pet liberal projects.

Helms is not, however, considered an enemy of the Peace Corps.

“He is very close to Coverdell, and usually follows his lead on Peace Corps issues,” a Helms aide said.

Said one Peace Corps official of the Helms-Coverdell axis: “We used to criticize Coverdell when he was director for spending all that time in Georgia looking for votes. Now we’re glad he was elected.”

But the Clinton proposal has raised some eyebrows--primarily among old Peace Corps hands, both volunteers and officials. They remember that some of the agency’s thorniest problems were created by a penchant for thrusting lots of volunteers at undeveloped countries.

One former volunteer called a radio talk show Wednesday to complain to Gearan that her most fearful problem in the Peace Corps was the lack of support from the staff.

The 41-year-old Gearan, who took over the Peace Corps in 1995 after serving as White House communications director, replied that he understood. “The expansion only makes sense if we have the resources attached to it in the budget.”

Charles Peters, editor-in-chief of Washington Monthly, developed a reputation as an anti-expansionist when he headed the Peace Corps’ evaluation office in the 1960s. But he supports the new proposal.

“The thrust to increase it is right,” he said in an interview. “Maybe it will get people thinking about what the point of the Peace Corps should be, and that’s to the good.”

The Peace Corps’ mission, according to the legislation that authorized the agency in 1961, is to help poorer countries meet their need for trained personnel, help people in other countries understand Americans better and foster greater American understanding of foreign cultures.

Peters also believes that volunteers--while working as teachers, health assistants, small-business advisors, agricultural specialists or other development aides--can influence people to try to overcome “the terrible problem of religious and ethnic conflicts in the world.”

Maureen J. Carroll, a volunteer in the Philippines and an evaluation staff member in the 1960s who then returned to the field as the Botswana director in 1991, now directs the Peace Corps’ Africa region. She too supports the new expansion plan.

“After more than 30 years, we do one thing very well,” she said. “We know how to take people, primarily in their 20s without much work experience, train them, get them jobs, put them overseas and bring them back. I don’t think we are going to have many mistakes.”

During the Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, Peace Corps directors Sargent Shriver and Jack Vaughn were in an expansive mood. Some Peace Corps officials talked unrealistically of the Peace Corps as a “towering task” that would have to be undertaken by 30,000, 50,000, even 100,000 volunteers.

These were wild dreams. The Peace Corps reached a high mark of 15,560 volunteers in 1966, and had difficulty finding suitable work for all of them.

When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, he had little enthusiasm for an agency seen as the embodiment of Kennedy’s idealism and call to service. He considered doing away with the agency but was steered away by aide Patrick J. Buchanan.

“Such drastic action would put us crosswise with a number of our friends who have swallowed the propaganda that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Buchanan told Nixon.

Instead, Nixon’s White House adopted a policy of discrediting the Peace Corps by leaking tales of mishaps and then subordinating it under Action, an umbrella agency of government volunteer groups. The number of volunteers declined from 12,130 to 8,040.

Since then, the number of Peace Corps volunteers has hovered between 5,200 and 7,070.

Peace Corps officials were disappointed that Carter, whose mother had served as a Peace Corps volunteer, failed to revive its fortunes when he became president. But they were pleased that during the Ronald Reagan administration, Director Loret Miller Ruppe sheltered the corps from severe budget cuts and encouraged Congress to return its independent status.

Budget constraints limited the number of Peace Corps volunteers throughout the Bush administration and the first Clinton term. Many were surprised by Clinton’s proposal to increase the budget and expand the corps.

Officials point to several important changes in the Peace Corps since the 1960s: Older and more skilled Americans are encouraged to join; all training is carried out in the countries where the volunteers will work; more women than men now join; and ethnic conflicts have forced the Peace Corps to leave such countries as Rwanda and Burundi and to monitor the safety of volunteers more strenuously than before. But statistics also show that the young college graduate--with few technical skills but great flexibility and motivation--is still the mainstay of the Peace Corps. Although 6% of current volunteers are over 50 (the oldest is 78), 79% are in their 20s. Almost all volunteers, 97%, have bachelor’s degrees or beyond.

Since 1961, 150,000 Peace Corps volunteers have served in 132 countries. Volunteers receive no salary for their work. The agency provides a living allowance and a resettlement allowance upon their return.

The roster of former volunteers includes Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, novelist Paul Theroux, Chicago Bears President Michael B. McCaskey, UNICEF executive director and former Peace Corps director Carol Bellamy, and Haverford College President Tom Kessinger. The list also includes eight ambassadors and the mayors of Pittsburgh, Sacramento and Urbana, Ill. Former volunteers in Congress are Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Reps. Sam Farr (D-Carmel), Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio), Thomas E. Petri (R-Wis.), Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.).