peace corps as cultural exchange: a rebuttal

Recently a friend of mine, fellow third-year volunteer Jonathan Welle, wrote an essay titled “Peace Corps is Cultural Exchange, not Development” (read it here). While I agree that there are areas where Peace Corps as an institution could improve, I’d like to explain why I strongly disagree with his proposal. For the purposes of this essay, international development is defined as any activity that explicitly raises the standard of living or quality of life of the world’s poor.

First, though, I’d like to underline that any discussion of Peace Corps by people who have lived it is inherently subjective – my opinions are based on my own experiences as a Water and Sanitation volunteer in two regions of Peru from 2008-2011. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to remember that my experience is progressively narrowed by each of those factors. I also came in with good language skills, and was sent to a site with great local support and plenty of work to do – three more significant variables. Here I will do my best to look at the bigger picture, but the truth is it is virtually impossible to categorize the “Peace Corps experience.” The way the institution is set up allows its volunteers a freedom unparalleled amongst development organizations (a group to which, as you might guess, I do ascribe it), and this means that each one gains a unique perspective on Peace Corps, international development, and even America’s role in the world. And not only is this by design, but in fact successful Peace Corps projects happen precisely due to – not in spite of – the adaptability of the program.

Jonathan and I diverge right off the bat, in regards to our views on the training volunteers receive upon arrival in-country. In my experience, new volunteers receive excellent technical, cultural, and language training which thoroughly prepares them for their work – and lives – in site. Our technical training draws on materials and experiences from both our own volunteers and other organizations on the cutting edge of development work; in addition to more traditional strategies, innovative approaches like behavior change studies and incentives-based programs are gaining support within Peace Corps. And in my years here I’ve seen marked improvement in terms of quality opportunities for field-based, hands-on trainings and interactions with current volunteers in the field.

So the argument that pre-service training is somehow inadequate comes to me as a surprise. At least for WatSan projects, three months is more than enough time to learn the basics of the water systems, latrines, solid waste management procedures, and the structure of the institutions we are to work with for two years. This stuff is not rocket science. You may be thinking that that’s all well and good, but grassroots development is about much more than understanding cement-to-sand ratios (or how to write a business plan, or plan a sexual health program, or teach an English class, and so on). But nothing I have seen tells me that a graduate degree in international development would dramatically improve a volunteer’s success.

(One area where Jonathan and I do agree is in regards to language training. This is arguably the most critical factor in a volunteer’s success, and incoming volunteers need to be screened and placed according to language skills. You hear stories of Spanish speakers being sent to the Pacific islands, while Peru receives volunteers every year who have to start from scratch. This is pointless and counterproductive. How seriously would you take someone who showed up in town and started talking to you about washing your hands, but could never remember if the word was “soap” or “soup”? Of course this is not the volunteers’ fault, but it’s a huge detriment to their productivity. I agree that it is difficult to produce quantifiable development results in cases where volunteers struggle to communicate. In posts where more arcane languages are spoken, Peace Corps could pay for pre-deployment language courses. This would not be cheap, but there are many ways we could cut costs on the ground to compensate. Why program directors have to stay in luxury hotels during site visits, for example, is beyond me.)

Secondly, the concern that volunteers are underequipped in site is exaggerated. The notion that luxuries like a personal vehicle or specialized computer software or 24 hour internet or a flush toilet somehow determine the success of a development worker is untrue. Furthermore, easy-to-access discretionary funding breeds dependency in local communities and inefficiency, opportunism and even corruption in development organizations; Peace Corps is smart to be more stringent. Of course this limits our scope, but valuing scale over impact is exactly what many development organizations do wrong.

What the development “industry” lacks is sustainability, and Peace Corps explicitly fills the void by providing a sustained community presence and an intimate understanding of local conditions and needs. Jonathan argues that you can’t change the world in 500 days, and he’s right. He’s also right to point out that the work of a volunteer (and anyone working in this field) requires a healthy dose of humility. But (in Peru at least) the plan is never to send a single volunteer to a site for two years and then pack up and move on. The individual’s time will come to an end, yes. But successful volunteers in supportive communities are replaced. And replaced again. And again. New volunteers conduct follow-up activities and monitor previous projects, thus helping to ensure long term sustainability. It is this very presence and continuity that distinguishes Peace Corps and allows its volunteers to be successful development workers.

Finally, the harshest of Jonathan’s critiques (and he is certainly not the first to voice it) is the claim that volunteers’ ability to do real development work is compromised by Peace Corps’ secondary goals of cultural exchange. I agree that our goals are oddly phrased – Goal One refers to meeting a host country’s need for “trained men and women,” while Goals Two and Three describe the creation of a mutual cultural understanding. As noted, it is often unclear to both those within and outside the organization whether these are ranked according to importance, whether they are all to be allocated equal time and effort, or whether each one is there for the taking or not-taking in an a-la-carte type of arrangement. But to simply throw out anything approaching development in our goals is the wrong idea.

Rather, Peace Corps should clarify its mission by prioritizing sustainable, results-based social and economic development (and by not shying away from the D word), while retaining the secondary goal of cultural exchange. In practice, things largely already function this way; each program has a detailed project plan providing yearly statistical benchmarks for progress on specific objectives and indicators. Measuring program aggregates and not per-volunteer productivity makes sense – it reflects the fact that needs vary drastically from one community to the next, and allows volunteers to address those needs appropriately. Further, there is nothing in our project plans regarding cultural exchange, nor should there be. Those things are largely collateral; they happen through your work, whether you like it or not.

Importantly, existing programs are far from guaranteed – WatSan/Peru will be assessed at its five-year mark in 2013, and future plans will be made according to demonstrated achievements. Peace Corps funding is slashed left and right these days, and low-performing programs (or even entire posts) can be cut. While there is an argument that an independently-supported Peace Corps could be more efficient, it’s not as if Congress blindly throws money at us every year, the way that donors might to an NGO that boasts thousands of latrines constructed but with little or no follow-up. In fact, Peace Corps is anything but immune to the increasing public scrutiny of US government programs.

We do development work. Not all of our projects are successful. Neither are those of anyone else operating in this space. Peace Corps, as any other development organization, benefits greatly from frequent and frank evaluation, and subsequent adaptation to new conditions and changing times. But the idea that serious community development and cultural exchange are mutually exclusive goals is wrong; on the contrary, the cultural element is a huge part of what makes us good at what we do. Peace Corps may very well need some institutional tweaking, as suggested. But it should be with an eye toward establishing its place as a leader in sustainable international development, not by throwing in the towel.