How to Develop the Peace Corps to Fit a Developing World

Several factors have recently sparked some late personal reflection on the realities and the raison d’être of the Peace Corps. One has been recent conversations I’ve had with volunteer trainees about my year’s experience of being in peace corp. Another is Sthe approaching September’s 40th Anniversary of Peace Corps Bénin.

Further fodder for the fire has been some interesting articles recently written on the Peace Corps. If you find yourself with most Americans thinking that “Gee, it’s nice the Peace Corps exist,” but couldn’t really place your finger on what the Peace Corps does, or is supposed to do, read these. In one, Robert Strauss, former PC Country Director of Cameroon, goes candid on the shortfalls of Peace Corps in his experience. The other "Where to Go Peace Corps," is more of an distanced reporting on the state of Peace Corps.

My own thoughts on Peace Corps are of course subjective to a certain point: I’m in a particular country program, placed in a particular community and work project, have only only been here a year, etc. And at this point I’m pleased with a lot of what I’ve seen of Peace Corps. Nonetheless, I can’t help w/ agreeing with many others about the very real confusion—one might say skitsofrentia—about how Peace Corps purports, markets, and practically sets itself up to be.

This schizophrenia is basically between trying to be an effectual development program on one hand, and in actuality being some type of cultural exchange pragram. The Peace Corps stateside marketing along with the general sentiments of most volunteers will lead you to believe that Peace Corps is mostly valued for the personal experience is gives its participants, and maybe also the warm fuzzies evoked between Americans and their host country nationals. The realities of how Peace Corps is funded, structured, and operated on the ground further leave little opportunity for it to accomplish formidable development work. One problem with this is that many in host country governments and citizens actually suppose or understand Peace Corps to be a development organization dispensing of technical advisors. Another problem is that of legitimacy and longevity: can such a schizophrenic entity continue to exist, looking and being so many things to so many people?

The benefits of cultural exchange, soft diplomacy, and valuable personal experience are not necessarily bad, but in my opinion would be best enjoyed in the context of a Peace Corps program that first and foremost had a clear and coherent development vision, and was structured and operated accordingly.

You can read the linked articles referenced above if you want more polished versions of what people have observed to be wrong. As far as reform goes, I can consider 4 general points that Peace Corps could restructure itself on in order to be a more viable development agency:

1. Professionalizing the program. This first and most important point here involves the way Peace Corps markets and recruits. It needs mature and to some extent experienced volunteers, not 21 year olds looking for an extension to college life or a way to pad their law school application. This means putting higher demands on candidates, and setting higher expectations (and more serious consequences) on them once they’re in. McCain and Obama both have commited themselves to increasing the numbers in the Peace Corps volunteer ranks. Such a development ambition, absent of higher standards and additional funding (discussed below), would be horrible for the program.

2. Providing more resources, training, and support to volunteers. Professionalizing the program doesn’t end with selecting good volunteers. It implies also giving volunteers the things they need to succeed. This can include a lot of things: more technical training (rather than the very “soft” or general technical and cross cultural training we’re often given), with a focus on contextualizing this information to the country and culture and local challanges. Better information and networking systems in things related to project ideas, news of what's happening in the development-domain in a particular host country, and maybe also a feed to development ideas and trends. A more formidable operating/work budget for each volunteer, depending on his or her site and project, would also be a line item in an improved budget. Finally, peace corps volunteers need better accessibility to project funds. Some good projects really do require little or no funding; but many do. All this will take more money for the program. The good news is that Peace Corps volunteers and the program itself is in some sense already thrifty, running on a smaller per-person budget than any other US develepment program. The bad news is that Peace Corps money has been progressively cut in recent years, a trend which at this moment doesn't seem to have much relief in store.

3. Diversifying its programs and projects to fit a diverse world. The Peace Corps is not operating in the same world it was 50 years ago. If it is to be a development program, it needs to increase its involvement in poorer countries and poorer regions. It will also need to diversify its program to fit the diversified needs of a diversified world and even the diversified regions of a country. It must also recognize the variety of volunteers' skills and experiences, and to give them placements and work mandates that match these realities, even if there may be some uncomfortable degree of diversity within the ranks. Various work sites and mandates means leaving flexibility in living and working allowance, training, work mandate, even terms of service. This is already a reality to some extent, but could be worked on more. A volunteer assisting a country's national courts to write a sustainable business pland and living in the country's capital city maybe should not the same living/work allowance and terms of service as a recent college-grad leading school clubs in a rural post.

4. Working harder to create better work partnerships between volunteers and their host-country work partners. Much of a volunteer’s level of success depends on the quality of his or her work site, project, and work partner. Unfortunately, many volunteers have very passive or uninterested work partners who are themselves without a passion or knowledge for what they’re doing, and many volunteers effectively have no work partners at all, leaving them without a crucial resource to understanding and working in their community. This element in some sense depends first on Peace Corp's initiative to professionalize itself and its volunteers, but requires also more professionalism and intentionality on part of the host country.

Having said all that, I I'm still a fan of the Peace Corps, and feel there's alot of potential in the program to be exploited. Whethere this happens, though, is largely a question of Congressional funding, and necessary courage on part of Peace Corps program to define and develop itself.

Stage 2008

I spent the last two weeks in Porto Novo as a Volunteer-Trainer for this year’s training (Stage) of incoming volunteers, endearing known as Stagaires until September’s swearing in. September also happens to be the Peace Corps Benin Program’s 40th Anniversary.

Stage consists of 9 weeks of intensive classroom and self-directed learning geared towards producing skilled, resourceful, and productive volunteers once they begin living and working at their assigned posts. This includes the development of sector-specific technical skills, cultural knowledge, French language competency, and certain “survival skills” (safety and health issues, bike maintenance, even cooking lessons).

One of the best parts of stage is meeting the new trainees. This year’s group is no less interesting than other years. Aside from the many recent college grads, there’s an architect who has worked on an amusement park in Dubai, a former accountant with one of the big 3 firms, an experienced nurse, quite a few from the non-profit fields, and many others from interesting backgrounds and geographies.

Small Business Training…and Hopefully More

While the majority of Bénin’s working-class populations (2/3) are engaged in the agricultural sector, the second largest demographic is engaged in service-sector activities. This service sector also generates just over half of Bénin’s aggregate income.

The service sector itself is composed largely of Artisans (and Artisan Entrepreneurs), a broad economic category which includes mechanics, electricians, metal workers, carpenters, tailors, hairdressers, food and drink producers, potters, artists, and small-scale transformers of various household products.

Among Peace Corps Bénin’s Small Enterprise Development (SED) objectives is the technical training of Artisans/Small Business Owners in business skills which will reinforce their organizational and management capacities, and helping to create linkages between markets that will spawn business growth and development for such small and medium-sized businesses.

Such an objective can include an array of activities for a Peace Corps SED Volunteer. For Artisans who have and/or manage their own shops, I recently began teaching Comptabilité (basic accounting). If successful, these formations (training) will not just teach artisans to “crunch numbers” and augment profit. As crucial as profit margins are to the life of a business, good business and development itself is not just about quantifiable growth and the bottom line. Rather, it is my hope that the analytical rigor that accounting demands will also trigger more analytical planning and problem-solving in other arenas of life. I also hope to use the general discipline of accounting to open up other important “less-quantifiable” topics of discussion, to include corruption and transparency, worker’s/employer’s and children’s rights, conflict-resolution, and the conscientious management of household/personal income and resources.

Aside from accounting, SED Volunteers also have taught formations on Marketing, Business Managament, Personal Finance, Savings and Credit, Time Managament, and other topics of practical interest to entrepreneurs. Additionally—pursuant partly to the demands of Sustainability—many volunteers offer formations to “train-up trainers.” These endeavor to teach business specific skills, offer guidance on teaching, and create a “system” of incentives that will ensure that low-cost technical business training continues when Peace Corps Bénin has left Nikki, and eventually Bénin.

Don't Know Much About...

The Republic of Benin

Benin is a small Francophone West African country wedged between Nigeria and Togo. It is an unfortunate reality that if you don't know much about a particular African country it is probably because that state hasn't had the tumultuous and notorious recent history that it's neighbors might have had and, therefore, doesn't stand much of a chance on the international newspage--such is the [fortunate] case with Benin, I think.

Nevertheless, Benin's history and culture has its share of points of interest. For example, in the days of cross-Atlantic slave trading, Benin was the primary exit-point for slaves captured and gathered from across the African continent to be shipped to the Western Hemisphere. Historically and today the country is the progenitor and primary practitioner of the Voodoo belief system (with over half the population practicing either purely or in syncrestitic forms). During the 1970s and 1980s Benin was commonly known as the "Cuba" of West Africa for its exceptional communist postures and policies. After a stark turn of events in the lates 1980's however, Benin's government was overhauled, its economy was liberalized, and today is considered of the most stable of West African states.

For a more info and a country profile of Benin check out the BBC's or the CIA Factbook's entries. Other informative sites of interest include a Peace Corps Friends of Benin site (a hub for news and other info), Benin's Tourism site (I believe put together in part by Peace Corps Volunteers--includes an exciting welcome anthem), and the U.S. State Department's notes on Benin.

The Peace Corps

When it comes to the Peace Corps, there are a number of associative images floating out there in the popular consciousness: long-haired idealists evading the draft and developing the world with smiles (or perhaps more likely developing their own tastes for local drink, etc.); candidate pools for the CIA's historic recruitment of cold war spies; or, if your imaginative powers are especially fueled by film, maybe you think of Tom Hanks and John Candy bumbling around to build a bridge in a Southeast Asian village (1985's Volunteers).

If you're interesting in augmenting a popular education with some other sources, I'd recommend first checking out the Peace Corps website for the PC's self-spin on history, goals, etc. To get a more candid exposure to what a Volunteer's work and life looks like on the ground, check out the Peace Corps Benin Blog index, which includes updated blogs from current Small Enterprise Development volunteers, some of whom I will probably be working with in Benin.

Economic Development

There's no way that I'm going to be able to sufficiently broach this issue here. But if you're interested in learning more about what has arguably been the most important international social question of the past 60 years, the problem/possibility of "Third World" Economic Development, check out the UN's Millienium Development Project to eradicate poverty (an overly-optimistic project in my opinion but nonetheless noble in its goals and worth looking into for a full-orbed look at some of the goals that international development entails). For the most holistic definition of poverty and development, I'd have to reccomend Bryant Myers's book Walking with the Poor, which is likely to trigger a paradigm shift in any pre-conveived definitions you might have concerning "the poor."
Small Enterprise Development (SED, aka Micro Enterprise Development) is the grass-roots development of small businesses. SED is just one facet and strategy within the whole Development Project, and best describes the type of projects in which I will eventually be engaged in Benin. For a primer on what SED entails, check out an introductory paper put together by the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College.