COURIER ONLINE

THE STANLEY FOUNDATION

Jose Navarro (serving in Paraguay): I fought fire to pay my way through college. I was in a fire in Colorado, and a lot of my friends died.... It was really like the breaking point in my life. I really just said, "Okay, I've always wanted to help people. There may not be a tomorrow. I have to do it now." So right when I finished my degree I went to join the Peace Corps.

I help Paraguayans with soil conservation, resource management. They have 10 percent of their forest left. Until you give small farmers an alternative, the environmental degradation is going to continue. And that's what the Peace Corps is doing. It is really actually the only grassroots extension effort in Paraguay.

Sherry Sposeep (serving in Turkmenistan): I began thinking about the Peace Corps when I was in college, and I was working at a refugee shelter. And I met many people from different countries. I enjoyed helping. I wanted to help them living in the US, but I also felt that I wanted to travel and to be a part of a community and help them in a different way.

Now I teach English to doctors in hospitals. I teach medical English. The second thing I do is work within the community. Currently, I'm working on creating a crisis intervention center with my doctors. So we're working right now to find a place to have this center and find resources in order to have it function.

Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan: While every American I think is proud that we have a Peace Corps, that there are so many of our fellow citizens who are all working in some of the poorest places on the face of the earth to promote peace and friendship and understanding, I think many Americans' understanding of the Peace Corps might just end there. What I think is underrealized, and undervalued perhaps, is the important development work that our volunteers do—the very real, tangible difference that the volunteers make in the lives of people in communities and villages.

When I receive ambassadors and ministers here it's striking to me how many will say, "The first American I ever met was a Peace Corps volunteer," or "My first teacher of English [was a Peace Corps volunteer]." Now they're a minister or ambassador, or in some cases, a head of state. That's a very powerful testament to the difference the Peace Corps has made over 37 years.

There is a very large domestic dividend to the Peace Corps. Volunteers come back; they go into all walks of life in the US. They tend to volunteer more in our communities. There are six members of the Congress, a member of the President's Cabinet, educators, teachers—indeed all of us become better and learn more about the world as a result of Peace Corps volunteers coming back to the US. And in our global economy, in our increasingly multicultural society, that's good for the US.

Keith Porter: Who decides what a Peace Corps volunteer does?

Gearan: The genius of the Peace Corps is that the work of our volunteers and the assignments of our volunteers are decided in the field. We don't decide here in Washington, DC, what's best for Paraguay or what's best for Turkmenistan.

Porter: Development for a long time has been controlled by big organizations like the World Bank. But there's been a backlash now against that big-style development. We see the rise of micro-development, micro-enterprise, micro-credit, but that's where the Peace Corps has been all along.

Gearan: It really shows the genius and the brilliance of the early architects of the Peace Corps—Sargeant Shriver, President Kennedy, Bill Moyers, and others. They really had it right from the start. That it's people-to-people, field-driven, grassroots development. What's clear as you read and learn more about development and what other efforts are doing is that they're coming around to this kind of development. That's what the Peace Corps has done.