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USA Today on Peace Corps
October 25, 2005 ( politics )
USA Today has an op-ed piece on the need for a makeover for Peace Corps.
While I will certainly agree that the PC programs need some updating and revision, this piece... uh... how does one kindly and professionally say "is smoking crack"?
Laura Vanderkam opens with a great PC-success-story of a volunteer who organized his community to bring piped water in over the course of his assignment, then attacks the cost of this. With 7,700 volunteers serving worldwide, and the PC budget of over 300 Million (less than the cost, I might point out, of one bomber), then each volunteer costs $40k/yr to support. First -- hold on. This number means the same as taking the entire defense budget and dividing it by the number of servicemen and women overseas only, and claiming that that is then the cost to support them per year. The 300M number includes salaries for the PC/W staff, salaries for the staff at each post, insurance, supply, office space rental or purchase for each post HQ, transportation costs, medical supply costs... In other words, this masks the massive administrative and other fixed costs, and claims that each volunteer is only a variable cost, so if we send one less, that's 80k not coming out of the tax payer's burden. I can let you know that my stipend for living and housing expenses, total, was under $500/month, that's 6k/yr. Total per year after you amortize plane tickets and medical supplies that went to me and specific non-fixed program costs might push it to...almost 10k/yr. So this alone undermines her point that an 80k project done by "development professionals" would provide more value to the community rings false.
Further, drop an 80k project (or even a 10k one), and watch how fast it disentegrates. The value add of the PCV is not necessarily what they do, but how they do it. PCVs are trained to focus only on sustainable, community-supported projects that they can organize the community members to take part in and take ownership of. This, ideally of course, leads to the community gaining power over their own destiny and being able to do more self-upliftment projects with less and less outside intervention.
Ms. Vanderkam continues on, nonetheless, and complains that reforming the Peace Corps to focus on sites where the volunteers have more access to technologies such as the Internet would provide better results. True! You can make larger strides with better technology/support infrastructure. But... Where do the people who don't have access to the Internet end up? This is a horrible and short-sighted arguement. According to 2003 numbers, whereas 50% of the world has made or received a phone call (dramatically up due to the cell phone leapfrogging revolution), only about 1% of the world's population has an email account. So by focusing on these, we will ignore huge numbers of people who undoubtedly need more help than ones who already have community access to the Internet (which requires some combination of electricity and phone or cell networks).
Further, every PC HQ in the world has and has had Internet access for quite a while. You can always take a trip into the HQ (might be a long trek, might be 3 hours), and check and send email. Many volunteers have cell phones worldwide (currently mostly bought from savings or their own stipend, perhaps PC should subsidize them), which closes the gap dramatically. And (the list just goes on) PC HQs provide immense resources for most development projects, from schemata on how to build a ventilated pit latrine to reproductive health best-practices to language guides.
She also argues that PC should charge fees to the organizations that it send volunteers to. Often these are community-based organizations with no appreciable budget, already being staffed solely by volunteers. They have to go through training on how to work with PCVs effectively, and provide contacts and support for the volunteer in housing options. This already is a high barrier to entry for many deserving organizations, charging a fee would be reprehensible. Requiring the target of a development project to pay a fee to the developers is not development, it's consulting.
She also suggests volunteer teams. This in fact is done in many cases, it's called "clustering," and has a variety of effects, some good, some bad. It provides a close support network for the volunteers, and often allows for better cross-sector development projects, and more complicated projects. BUT, it reduces their interaction with the local population and often reduces the sustainability of the project. It's being tested already, presuming it hasn't is presuming that all of modern PC is like the 1962 version. It's not.
"Hire volunteers with useful skills" is a direct quote of a suggestion. Let me, for the record, state that you cannot logically speaking hire a volunteer. PC receives applications from volunteers and does its best (which I have to admit is often a mysterious and not wholly logical science) to place them. They do not and cannot just post a job search seeking out experts willing to do development work for 6k a year plus health. Try it yourself, see if you can find 7,700 people.
She finishes her diatribe with a request for accountability. Again, she exposes her lack of research into the realities of the Peace Corps system. Peace Corps reports to congress, and volunteers report in quarterly to their country's PC HQ with an exhaustive account of number of community members affected/trained, projects completed, and so forth. If a volunteer is not performing, they most likely are having a rough time of it, or were one of the ones (you get a few in every batch) who've given up and are partying. In either case, they'll get a review, perhaps get moved to a different assignment, or in extreme cases get sent home.
In the end, does PC have problems? Surely. Are some jobs overly vauge? Yes. Why? Well, there's a push to double the number of volunteers serving -- with only a 1/3rd increase in funding, which means no additional staff to work on finding valid projects for new volunteers. And, in the end, as a volunteer, you have to remember that you're there to help your community -- you forever have a solid mission statement to work with.
Ms. Vanderkam perhaps should do more careful research before launching in on PC. Perhaps she might even take a 2 year sabbatical from her journalism gig and see how the rest of the world really lives. I bet that she'd denounce her own article, and realize that spending two years to organize her community to bring in piped water might provide her the most rewarding shower of her life, realizing that the community will be able to sustain this gift for all their future, and will have an understanding of Americans that goes deeper than what they hear in their news or see on TV.
Maybe, just maybe, providing 7,700 annual experiences to Americans, and 7,700 multiplied by the members of the communities whose lives they affect globally like that is worth the cost of one additional bomber plane per year. Maybe, just maybe mind you, it might reduce the need for bomber planes!
Posted by griffjon at October 25, 2005 12:57 PM
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Comments
Well, not quite $500, but close after you calculated in the "vacation allowance" of $24/month too. Ja was pricey -- housing cost 100-200/month, and food prices were comprable with US prices except on certain produce.
Posted by: GriffJon at October 27, 2005 03:50 PM
Well written. You got $500 a month?!
Moldova 1997-99
Posted by: Moriah at October 27, 2005 02:56 PM
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