https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/10/29/whats-wrong-with-the-peace-corps/
The American Interest
What’s Wrong with the Peace Corps? Ryan Rommann
“I am a Peace Corps Volunteer.” Like 98 percent of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, I was proud to declare this and believe my two-year service was worthwhile. I grew professionally and personally, and I did some good. But the program is broken in many ways.
More than 210,000 Americans have served as volunteers in 139 countries since the program’s founding in 1961. John F. Kennedy envisioned the Peace Corps as a call to service for qualified Americans to venture abroad and help developing countries. It represented an idealized world of humanitarianism in a time of Cold War tensions and racial segregation. Today, more than a half century later, neither the sentiment nor the program has changed. If the program is to improve and meet its admirable ambitions, we must rigorously evaluate, adapt and abandon some of the core beliefs animating the program.