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At 50, US Peace Corps Still Draws Volunteers

   Jerome Socolovsky  March 01, 2011
   Peace Corps volunteer Alex Gordon

   Peace Corps volunteer Alex Gordon

   Alex  Gordon volunteered in the Peace Corps in the early 1990s. He has
   a box full of keepsakes from the more than two years he spent building
   a rural school in Paraguay.
   âYeah it brings back a whole lot of memories,â he admits.
   Gordon  says  volunteering in the Peace Corps is about more than doing
   good in the world.
   âIt  gives  you  the  confidence  that you can really do anything,â he
   explains.
   Like  volunteering again. Two decades, Gordon is rejoining for another
   stint and this time he will go to Liberia.
   President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961. He told new
   volunteers  on  the  South  Lawn  of  the  White  House that Americaâs
   reputation in the countries they were going to would depend to a large
   extent on them.
   âAnd  if you can impress them with your commitment, to freedom, to the
   advancement  of  the  interests of people everywhere, to your pride in
   your  country  and  its  best  traditions, and what it stands for, the
   influence may be far-reaching,â Kennedy said.
   Since  then, more than 200,000 volunteers have worked in countries all
   over the world.
   One of those was Aaron Williams, who is now the Peace Corps director.
   âEverywhere I go, Jerome, I find that the leadership met a Peace Corps
   volunteer  many, many years ago and that had a really positive impact,
   a   transformative  experience  in  their  lives  -  prime  ministers,
   presidents,  cabinet  officials,  leaders  of  large  companies in the
   countries where we serve,â Williams notes.
   Peace  Corps supporters say it furthers Americaâs foreign policy goals
   at  an  infinitesimal  cost  compared to the U.S. military budget. But
   President  Barack  Obama has not kept a campaign promise to double the
   organization's  size  and  Congress  is  proposing tens of millions of
   dollars in cuts.
   Still  new  volunteers  keep signing up. Supriyah Shah is a student at
   George  Washington  University  where  she  works  in  local community
   service while waiting for her posting.
   She  says recent American media reports about the rape and murder of a
   volunteer in West Africa donât scare her.
   âItâs kind of dangerous to be a woman anywhere,â she says.
   Supriyah's  friend  Matt  Francolino is also a new volunteer. He spent
   last  summer  living much like he will in the Peace Corps - in a rural
   village in West Africa, with no electricity or running water.
   âIt  was  the  best two months of my entire life!" he exclaims. "And I
   wondered  to myself how is that possible? I didnât have my cell phone,
   no  computer  access, and I realized there were so many more important
   things that I was looking for in life.â
   Volunteers  say living with families in those villages is part of what
   makes the Peace Corp different from other humanitarian organizations -
   and  say  they  take away at least as much from the experience as they
   give.

   PeaceCorps Timeline 

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   [2]Peace Corps 50th Anniversary 1961 - 2011 on Dipity.

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