Tomorrow, March 1, marks 50 years since President John F. Kennedy signed the Executive Order creating the Peace Corps. So naturally, one would expect some contrarian to rain on the parade. Right on cue, Foreign Policy magazine has published an opinion piece by Charles Kenny asking the question, “does the world still need the Peace Corps?” Being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, I naturally have some thoughts on the matter.
It’s the Sustainability, Stupid!
His primary critique, which he returns to again and again, is that the Peace Corps “can’t seem to move on from the 1960s.” It’s difficult to decipher what Kenny means by this, as he never explains. Is it the fact that many volunteers are still motivated by the idea of service propounded by Kennedy in his Inaugural Address, that we should “ask what we can do for our country”? It’s hard to see how that’s a bad thing. Is it that the Peace Corps has been static over the last 5 decades, refusing to adapt to changing circumstances? If that’s his critique (and again, he never coherently spells out what his critique is), then he is far off the mark. The Peace Corps has undergone vast changes in the last 5 decades....