its sustainability. and if the journey of 50 years is a test, we are in a great place for the peace corps to do even greater things in the years and generations to come. thank you. >> what a wonderful introduction from a director. i find it is a privilege to say that i have worked for the peace corps, acting having -- after having served as a volunteer in the peace corps. i never imagined i would be someone with the opportunity to do this. i have been a beneficiary of able to establish volunteers throughout this tenure. i have been in 18 countries. let me share what i consider to be one of the great, great success stories of the peace corps. when i go to the country, typically a will meet with the ambassador in the country. often, the embassador or some of the staff are former peace corps volunteers. i will see the government officials, the minister of health, the minister of education. in their early years, they had a positive experience as a peace corps volunteer. i want to talk about what i just saw last week in our very first peace corps country. i had business with our volunteers in education and health and information technology and small business to the element, etc. i will run into the heads of various international ngos doing great work in the field. they also are peace corps alumnus. we have this great net -- this great nexus 50 years later, which is a testimony to president kennedy, and the people who find the best way to find places for these volunteers to serve. i was in gonna last week. , was our first country -- ghana was our first country. 10 months after kennedy spoke, the first group went to ghana. by any stretch of the imagination of government, that is miraculous. [laughter] we have all had experiences with initiatives that did not launch that fast. we have had 50 years of uninterrupted service in ghana. i had a chance to meet with the leadership in government, the private sector, the nonprofits, and society. every man and woman told me they had had a very positive, seminal experience, a life changing experience, with a peace corps volunteer. this is an incredible testimony for what the peace corps has done and the service america has provided in a country like ghana. everywhere you go, you see remarkable americans dedicated to service, who are patient, who are innovate, who are making a difference at the grass-roots level. they are working in the community, side by side. the peace corps volunteer might be the only american these communities will ever have the opportunity to get to know face to face, the true face of america. it is americans working in these places. the volunteers go there. we need to grow because more americans want to serve. as we grow the peace corps, we want to make sure we invest in training, staff, and support for volunteers. we are doing that. fortunately, the peace corps has always enjoyed bipartisan support. we continue to enjoy that support marvelously. i think that one of the things we need to do to build on the legacy of john f. kennedy and the marvelous dynamic leadership of the shriver is that we need to look for ways to expand the peace corps. this year, we moved into indonesia, sierra leone, and columbia -- colombia, three countries that were part of the kennedy-shriver legacy. will continue to expand. the peace corps on the 50th anniversary gives us a tremendous mandate from the american people. i always told my staff and the people i talked to about the 50th anniversary. it is not so much an opportunity for us to pat ourselves on the back and say look how much we gave and how much we received. it is too late to let america celebrate the singular opportunity, this wonderful idea that president kennedy launched 50 years ago, october 15. look at what it has wrought. it is a truly major performance that has affected many. >> i want to ask a couple of questions about the effect of the peace corps, and then i want to pick up on mark's question about the future. let me ask you this question. many of you have spoken, as i did, about the effect of the peace corps on the peace corps volunteers, and on training a country -- trimming a cadre of people who make contributions in other ways. let me ask you to speak more specifically. i would like to start with you, director williams. you came out of the aid community and came to the peace corps from working with usaid. what has the peace corps contributed, positively and negatively, to the development effort in africa, in some of the less developed countries of the world? then i hope others will come in on that question. >> i think the most important thing the peace corps has contributed to the development process, and one thing that is important to the development process -- it is a generation presses. the revolution took place in 1960. we need to reinvest in security worldwide. that is current in terms of development. the peace corps has always worked at the grass-roots level, the community level, in terms of developing capacity, inspiring young people to get an education, to take on leadership responsibility. i think that is the important factor in what the peace corps provides in terms of recipient countries, in terms of how americans can interact on a global basis. that is a bottom-line accomplishment, one of the greatest investments we can hope to achieve. it is developing capacity at the local level. for example, whether we are working in health or education, we are trainer's of people. we are the ones who are trying to make sure we extend the hands of the community working on their priorities, because we have to be invited into a country, and we work our national priorities. to me, that is the most important thing we do. >> the important thing is that the peace corps has to remain relevant. part of that, as the director has alluded to, is that you have to have a willingness to adapt development programs that help the peace corps in a host country. you have to be invited. during my tenure as, there was a program in mexico, which was a first in the history of the peace corps. it required delicate negotiations so the program was acceptable to the host government. it had to be relevant and a little bit out of the box to what the peace corps have traditionally done calling in to countries. this is what the government of mexico and representatives of the government were looking for. you have to be constantly assessing and raquel betting the programs throughout the peaceful world and to assure they are relevant, pertinent, and that it is not only yielding a positive for those countries. frankly, the volunteers in their service have to walk away with a sense of fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment, which in turn creates another recruiter for the peace corps once you come back to the united states and begin to readjust to home life. so i think those are critically important. i think the training component is very, very important, the component of trading in a country to peace corps volunteers. it is very relevant. volunteers want to feel they are well suited, well-trained, well- equipped to do their jobs, so there is a feeling of fulfillment and sustainability when difficult times come. i think any volunteer would tell you this challenges come earlier than lat sometimes. that is very important. i think the relevance. i think in terms of what is negative, i will not name names, but i will simply say that some of the most agonizing episodes of our time, and i am not sure it is negative, but it can be viewed as negative, is when you have to make a decision about pulling out of the country. there are various reasons to pull out of the country. it can be security, emerging conflict, political stability. it can be a painful decision. at the end of the day, it is the director who is responsible to make the decision. particularly in countries where you have countries to find, as the leader of the agencies, you have to clear in your decision making and you have to be willing to articulate to the host country why you have to close, suspend, or modify a program in order to not damage, frankly, the great effort you have built over 10, 20, 30 years that has to be pulled for an anticipated exposure. those exposures have to be booked at very carefully. >> i do not think there is any question the peace corps has been a force for tremendous good, and in terms of development. we are fortunate to have aaron as a director. he has extraordinary experience amongst all the directors. we have all seen it in anecdotes. the challenge though it is in the work of development by its nature. it has a very long time horizon. we are driven by the constant assessment, having quarterly reports, but the metrics used for approving new work. and afterwards, with public money, that is important. but i would put a bit of a marker in the conundrum of the peace corps. that is how you measure it in this way. we all of a story similar to this one. when i went to kenya after the bombings in 1995, i spoke to the minister of education. he said, "the first american i ever met and the best teachers i ever had was my peace corps teacher." i went back to my office and looked him up. he was in south massachusetts. i told him stories on the phone. he said, "i will have to look at the picture. there were 62 kids in my class." here is the development question. when the measure the success of that peace corps volunteer? is it after his 27 months of service? or is it 30 years later, in this random encounter with a peace corps director and a minister of education? this is not to say that we should not assess and measure. course we should. but there is by definition an important matter which should hold on to in terms of the peace corps. that is the personal element or the bonds of friendship. that is one of the key goals in that transference. that is a very good question. >> is the teacher the peace corps teacher? >> i am a big believer in workers up out of a job. >> in a globalized economy in which we work and live, we need to have a better understanding of people across the world, outside of our borders. and it is important that they understand us. i never met a white person until i came to america. and i had no impressions. but i do remember we would hear stories about this all the time. i remember seeing peace corps volunteers. but i never met them. so in this world wide economy which we are now such active participants in, we need to understand how other people think and what their cultural background is, their philosophical outlook. the question is a very important one which i alluded to in my opening remarks. that is peace corps volunteers are very often type eight types. they want to have accomplishments under their belt. they are anxious to get things going. i tell them, "you are a participant, a catalyst, a facilitator in this whole fabric of activity that is going on in the world. you may not be able to see the product of your labor, but i do, at least a larger part did you do." i think that gives a lot of comfort to volunteers. there is not only the geographical expands but the temporal expense of time. you can see what volunteers do. and they do this in very modest one on one achievements, which is really so heartwarming. because that is how volunteers make progress. they reach each part, one heart by one heart. if i may, i will say two other things, one positive and one-. i am always so impressed with how fluent volunteers become in the language of their country. and we have the best course of- speakers from these volunteers, most of whom are young. they pick up the language like that. i went to hungary in 1991. hungarian is a very difficult and which. the volunteers in hungary said there were volunteers there who are amazingly good hungarian speakers. we have now people who can speak another language, who understand the culture. when i went to russia, i was amazed by the can-do attitude that peace corps volunteers in fused to the people that had just emerged from the heavy yoke of totalitarianism, who felt their spirits were crushed. this was 1991. they felt they could not do anything on their own. yet we had this wonderful young people from america who would tell these former russians, ukrainians, albanians -- albania was not a part of the former soviet union, but it was behind the iron curtain. people at the republics of the former soviet union would find they could have control over their lives, that they can start a new business if they wanted to, and that things will come together. i think the can-do attitude is another very wonderful thing. i will say if there is anything negative, it is that sometimes cultures are hard. different cultures are very embedded and very, very complex. and sometimes, you know, we introduce a new element. and i think we need to be careful of unintended consequences when we go into a society and tried to encourage them, inspire them to do all sorts of different things. there might be unintended consequences as well. >> interesting. let me ask if any of you would like to speak to the role of the peace corps in the foreign- policy of the united states. we were always being asked if we were spies. [laughter] we were not, at least as far as i know. [laughter] some of that still goes on, but we were also, as volunteers, kind of been contrasted with the folks in the gated communities of the embassy. that was when i decided i did not want to be a foreign service officer. i wonder if any of you would like to speak to the role that the peace corps plays in the foreign policy of the united states. >> i think we have a wonderful by president obama for americans to serve both internationally and domestically. the peace corps is a response to that call. that is an important part of our foreign policy. i think that various countries seek peace corps volunteers working within their community, shoulder to shoulder, living under the same conditions the average person in those villages live. that gives them a perspective on america that could not gain any other way. this is a tremendous experience. everywhere i travel, we have seen this time and time again. i think the other thing that is important is that peace corps is an independent agency, but our biggest supporters and cheerleaders are the u.s. ambassador around the world. they recognize the balance here -- they recognize the value of peace corps volunteers. they do everything to make sure the have the space to do the great jobs they are doing in all the sectors where we work. and that is really remarkable, i think. when you look at our partnerships with the government, with the nonprofit sector, with the business community, look at the way we develop young leaders in the countries where we surf, and that we give americans a chance to engage and develop leadership skills that will be so important to our nation in this global connection that we all talk about, i think this is an investment that we need to continually build on as we grow. >> the only thing i would add is that i think the genius of the peace corps is that it is not part of our foreign policy apparatus. i think it is brilliant that is separate. i think it is brilliant it is not part of the communities. there is no other reason than security for the volunteers. there is no misunderstanding of that. i think it is brilliant that our volunteers are serving in areas that really do not have geopolitical -- going to ghana and places where our relationships are not of a foreign policy imperative. i think from that genuine, authentic service, going in peace and friendship, comes very good relations around the world. decidedly not an affirmative statement about american foreign policy, western values, any of those things that were really the inspiration for that. >> before we turn over to the audience, i want to ask one more question. i want to discuss the comment you made earlier, mark, about the future of the peace corps. you said we need to be thinking now about how the peace corps should be different in the next decade and the next 50 years. you mentioned having it be bigger and in more countries and so on. but should the peace corps be doing different things? should there be a different emphasis? do you want to pick up on that? i will let everybody else. >> the ps course is the power of an idea, a brilliant idea, a brilliantly executed by secretary shriver. everything about the peace corps is change and renewal, right down to the five-year rule. you can only work for five years. you bring in the new. certainly, i think the energy of the founders, president kennedy and shriver, would say is it right for the next 50 years? is it really 27 months for everyone? isn't it a scandal that we have 10,000 applicants of americans who are wanting to do this? i do not know if they are already to the peace corps volunteers, but we say no to thousands of them. everyone of us went into congress to get more money. that is less money than the military marching band. i like the military marching band. but it is a matter of priorities. we can scale up with volunteers. we can look at the length of service. we can raise greater collaborations and partnerships. the world is different than it was 50 years ago. if anyone would have wanted us to say, "keep mission central," look at different areas, use of technology, it would have been president kennedy and sergeant server. there are a number of different ways we can honor the past and say true to our core mission, budo it in innovative ways with the kind of volunteers we are attracted, the world in which we live, the technology they could use, the length of service they could have, and working to be at the very poor front, after 50 years of service, to bring a broader international service agenda around the world. >> how would you want things to change? >> i have a question for the current director. and this is actually allowed. and these are the kinds of questions that are being discussed, when you are in that position. our volunteers allowed to have cars? no. are they allowed to have scooters'? >> no motorcycles. too dangerous. >> these are some of the things that are being continuously debated. they are the subject of robust debate. you want to facilitate the volunteers ability to get the job done, but do you -- but you do not want to take them so much out of the environment in which they are in that it distinguishes them as somehow being different, and thereby distancing them from the local nationals that they are supposed to work and serve. so i think these questions are very timely. mark, you raised wonderful questions. the tug always is how do you change but still hold dear the common culture and touchdown values which characterize the agency as well as the volunteers. i think the peace corps volunteer culture is one of the strongest of any agency i have seen. most volunteers -- there is a very strong culture. how'd you preserve that and tackle some of the issues like technology? that is a real issue. >> we have obviously given a lot of thought to this recently at the peace corps, because we are looking at how can we support the next generation of peace corps volunteers. how can the next generation of peace corps volunteers be most effective? one of the great advantages we have now and in the future is that we recruit change agents. the people we recruit are highly motivated, very talented. they are the best and the brightest of our colleges and universities, people who have experience who could go back to the peace corps later in their career. we start out with critical raw material. the second thing is that we have a way of looking at the priorities of any given recipient country to determine what their priorities are. they are also more demanding. that is changing in the world of development. they are looking for people with higher skill levels. this is not 1960. when we went to liberi