Tulane students must be critical of No. 1 Peace Corps Volunteer ranking
“The audacity of my arrogance in assuming that this time abroad would do Cameroon any good was apparent on day one.” These are the words of former Peace Corps Volunteer Kelli Donley, who resigned from her post after five months in a move that, by the standards of the Peace Corps, is not the least bit unfounded.
27 percent of those who began their service in 2013 were terminated before completing one year of their two-year service. Of those who were terminated, 63 percent resigned from their position. These numbers are indicative of a set of volunteers who are wholly unprepared for the conditions that their training is supposed to prepare them for.
The fault of this does not lie on the Volunteers, who I believe to be well-intentioned people, even if their efforts are misguided. The fault lies on the Peace Corps itself for failing to create a training program that properly prepares its Volunteers.
As explained on the Peace Corps website, “Pre-service training is conducted by Peace Corps staff — most of whom are locally hired trainers — and current Volunteers.” While there are many of these pre-service training programs throughout the country, the program with the largest producer of Peace Corps Volunteers resides here at Tulane University.
Tulane has long taken pride in its position as the No. 1 producer of Peace Corps Volunteers, displaying it proudly on its many banners across campus. I am not sure, however, if this statistic should truly bring pride to our university. The Peace Corps is a flawed program, not in its intent, but in its execution.
The idea of serving others in developing countries is not at all a bad one. It must be clear, however, that the service is for the citizens of those countries, and not for the Volunteers. Volunteers often travel in order to find a sense of purpose, but they rarely consider what kind of impact they’ll have on their host country. As a result, Volunteers often do more harm than good. This type of work has been colloquially dubbed ‘voluntourism’, and many voluntourists have little to no experience with work in their own country before they go abroad.
Some positions within the Peace Corps do have minimum requirements for previous volunteer work, so they deal with less of this than typical voluntourism organizations, but there are no requirements across the board.
There is a very clear-cut difference between good volunteering and voluntourism, and this lies in the impact left on the communities one volunteers in, whether at home or abroad. Volunteers should leave behind a positive impact that goes beyond the warm fuzzies: some of these communities need established sources of safe drinking water, others need schools, others need help building infrastructure. It is important to remember that if or when you go abroad to volunteer, the people you are working for are no different than you. With much elbow grease put into my research, I have been unable to find any definitive proof that the Peace Corps creates any significant developmental progress in the countries it travels to. There is anecdotal evidence, but, unsurprisingly, almost all of this comes from current or former Peace Corps employees and Volunteers. And what, really, did anyone expect? Most Volunteers are in their early-to-mid 20’s, have little experience in sustained humanitarian work, and are under minimal supervision. The circumstances are not a breeding ground for positive impact.
Tulane’s status as the No. 1 producer of Peace Corps Volunteers fits the mold of Tulane’s attempts to brand itself as a school of service with its service learning program. Like those attempts, the Peace Corps is well-intentioned and in desperate need of a complete structural overhaul if it ever hopes to be what it says it is. As for the people who wish to volunteer abroad, I applaud your values, but I encourage you to look to your own community. When’s the last time you volunteered in your own community to a degree that wasn’t required by Tulane? Before you hop a flight to Myanmar, try catching a cab to the Lower Ninth Ward.
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Pamela • May 18, 2019 at 11:04 am
I was a former PCV. I left after 9 months in country (Ecuador). I was an English teacher. I agree with most points in this article. I left because I thought the whole program was unsustainable. It broke my heart and it was a very difficult decision for me to make. After 20 years of my community receiving PCVs for English teaching, none of my counterparts spoke English fluently enough to be an effective English teacher. This is NOT sustainable. This isn’t how sustainable development works…
This is just ONE experience but it ran rampant all over my host country. I know that other countries serviced by the Peace Corps are in similar situations. We NEED to talk about this if we want ANY hope of Peace Corps becoming a truly sustainable institution.
Kilroy • Sep 28, 2018 at 12:28 pm
“And what, really, did anyone expect? Most Volunteers are in their early-to-mid 20’s, have little experience in sustained humanitarian work, and are under minimal supervision. The circumstances are not a breeding ground for positive impact.”
It is obvious you have no first hand, or even second hand experience with the Peace Corps, its mission, or its goals. You are a charlatan, masquerading as an individual who has insight and acumen on a subject they are both ill-informed and ill-prepared to speak on.
Your “research” is misleading at best and purposefully deceitful at worst.
Why are you cherry picking negative quotes from a 10 year old article that is filled with positive experiences?
Why are you conflating Pre-Service Training that is conducted in countries where volunteers serve, with university programs in America?
Why are you confusing short term medical “voluntourism” with the 2+ years Peace Corps Volunteers serve at their sites?
Your condescending and dismissive tone pays no tribute to the sacrifice and meaningful work done by Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the world.
Sarah • Sep 28, 2018 at 10:56 am
This article is full of inaccuracies…it seems like an article about volunteer programs that used “Peace Corps” without actually knowing anything about it. For starters, pre-servicing training does not occur at Tulane, it occurs for three months IN the country, preparing for your program with Host-country nationals…
Also, to say it’s all 22-year-olds is also a fallacy. I served at 32 with a masters degree, and the average age of my cohort was 35.
Kelli Donley • Sep 28, 2018 at 10:18 am
Always strange to see a quote attributed to you that you didn’t give to this newspaper. I stand by my sentiment, however with a tiny bit of online investigation, you could have emailed me and asked for my current view. I believe this was first published in the New York Times more than 10 years ago.
Joseph Wojciechowski • Sep 28, 2018 at 4:23 am
Hi,
I’m a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in China (RPCV China 22), and I think that this article underlies a couple misconceptions about the PC program as a whole. I understand the ‘Voluntourism’ argument, and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t people in my cohort who had this type of mindset, but they were much fewer and farther between than people who had other goals for joining the Peace Corps. What’s more, it seemed that there was more of a ‘voluntourism’ outlook from people who were signing up for a shorter program than people who joined for a 2+ year commitment.
I can’t say that Pre-Service Training prepared me for everything that I dealt with at site, but our preparation for both eventually teaching English as a second-language and our Chinese language program is far-and-beyond much better than the preparation given to the average foreign english instructor in China. We of course had a large percentage of our cohort Early-Terminate (ET), but there are a whole variety of reasons for this that can’t just be laid at the feet of PST’s failings. Acclimating to a different culture is going to be stressing no matter your background, problems can arise where a volunteer needs to go home (family member getting sick or dying, for example), getting a better career opportunity or grad school opportunity elsewhere during your service, and many others.
Do I have my own problems with PST? Certainly – I think that we could have been taught more Chinese language during the PST, but that is probably because I came in with 4 years of Chinese experience already. Most volunteers did not come in with my language experience, and PST is designed to teach the most basic aspects of survival language – how to order food, how to ask for directions, how to buy train tickets, etc – and not teach a language inside and out. The operating idea is that if you’re a motivated individual you can learn those things on your own at site, and you are offered a stipend to help you fund your own language self-study. You can use this stipend for things like buying language learning apps, paying a tutor, or however you so choose. For what PST purports to do, then, it accomplishes its goal very well. Pretty much every China PCV I met during their service would be able to do things like order food and survive on the street with their Chinese. People were not thrown into site without having a basic knowledge. Furthermore, there’s only so much that can be taught in a 3 month training session, and unless you’re advocating for a Peace Corps budget increase to help fund a better, longer PST for Peace-Corps Trainees, it’s very hard to focus on much more than the basics of their job duties and the basics and survival vocabulary of the local language.
A. H. • Sep 28, 2018 at 1:00 am
““Pre-service training is conducted by Peace Corps staff — most of whom are locally hired trainers — and current Volunteers.” While there are many of these pre-service training programs throughout the country, the program with the largest producer of Peace Corps Volunteers resides here at Tulane University.”
Let me define the terms for you, since your research is so poorly done:
Peace Corps Prep – a college program run by the university to identify students interested in Peace Corps
Staging: a 3 day event in an American city where the cohort of volunteers (Armenia 2017, for example) unites and undergoes a brief orientation
Pre-service training: a 10-12 week intensive training period that involves language, job, and cultural training for volunteers. It is conducted by host country nationals, current volunteers, and others who are brought in for the expertise.
You owe your Tulane community, the Peace Corps community, and good journalism to remove this article and issue a major apology for how judgmental you’ve been on the basis of incorrect evidence and your own ignorance.
Sharon Rebar, MSW Tulane University • Sep 27, 2018 at 9:40 pm
The Peace Corps is a sacrosanct American institution. Seldom do you see it critized. Like any institution it is imperfect. It was interesting to read this criticism. Like any gargantuan bureaucracy it’s slow to change. I only hope it is able to cut loose those countries where Peace Corps has been present for 50 or more years. In one such country the Peace Corps has a plush facility in the capital city and some host country nationals have been employed long enough to retire. The dropout rate of Peace Corps Volunteers is high in that particular country.
Jan • Sep 27, 2018 at 9:37 pm
As a +50 Tulane MPH graduate who will be leaving to serve in the Peace Corps in January, I would suggest you come too. Your article is full of obvious assumptions and ignorance about the program and the volunteers. We actually do volunteer locally and have for years. Come serve…then let’s talk again when we’re both back in the US. Back here with actual knowledge about Peace Corps. Then you will know what you’re talking about. Meanwhile, please stick to judging something you have personal first hand experience with.
RPCV • Sep 27, 2018 at 7:05 pm
You don’t seem to have a clear grasp on what Peace Corps is, yet you critique it (in one of the more vague critiques I’ve read). You seem to think Pre-Service training happens in the United States, for instance, which is very strange.
You also compare Peace Corps to more short term programs and call in volontourism…then you critique volunteers for not having humanitarian experience when PC isn’t a humanitarian organization…
Maybe reach out to the organization or an RPCV and educate yourself a little more before you critique something it appears you don’t understand even on a basic level.
Tyra • Sep 27, 2018 at 6:44 pm
This article is just bad….
Nearly every Peace Corps post requires at least an undergraduate degree. In addition, extensive volunteer experience (typically in a PCV’s own community) is required for any post listing. Volunteers are mandated to undergo three months of training for their specific program and have additional trainings throughout the duration of their service.
Volontourism =/= Peace Corps work. The international development realm is plagued by volontourists that spend their own money to do unsustainable work for a few months and then leave. The focus of many Peace Corps programs is to transfer skills to host-country nationals over the course of 2-3 years. This is so that when PCVs leave, individuals in communities where volunteers served have new expertise that can benefit their line of work and/or people in their community.
In the country I worked in, PCVs, with their counterparts, documented measurable metrics to determine the level of progress being made and had to report this information to staff, who reviewed and assessed the reports. Furthermore, staff made frequent visits to my site to examine my work, its impact, and how the community viewed me/what they wanted of me.
Do some Americans join Peace Corps for the wrong reason? Yes, and unfortunately this is a problem that plagues any organization, even well-respected international bodies. As you’ll find out after you graduate from college, there are ill-willed persons in every line of work and that’s a complicated problem to solve.
Mark Willow • Sep 27, 2018 at 6:00 pm
You make some good points, but the article you cited describes short-term medical trips, like on the length of weeks, not to Peace Corps Volunteers who stay in their sites for 2 years. Yes, some volunteers find that Peace Corps isn’t for them, and they go home, 2 years is a long time. Some of this is due to sexual assaults in the country of service or other medical issues that aren’t their fault. You talk about ‘complete structural overall’, which you don’t define, so I have no idea what you’re trying to describe.
Peace Corps by definition doesn’t go into communities and build schools or roads or provide clean drinking water, maybe decades ago some of that happened, but that would cost many billions of dollars today. The Peace Corps budget is around 400 million dollars a year, volunteers live at the level of the communities that they serve and work for sustainable development. So, no, Peace Corp is NOT voluntourism or short-term medical trips. Peace Corps is about empowering communities to see the opportunities, and yes unrecognized problems, and to help them overcome them.
Yes, volunteers make friendships in the Peace Corps, but you wrote in your article that, “It is important to remember that if or when you go abroad to volunteer, the people you are working for are no different than you.”, which sounds patronizing, much like the whole article. Every person is similar and dissimilar in many dozens of ways, some aspects of a foreign culture such as corporal punishment or child labor volunteers may never get used to, but we found commonalities too. People in the country of service are often living in different circumstances than volunteers and have had fewer opportunities and may have much poorer overall health. You offer a lot of advice, which clearly you believe is important, but it is not very specific. It would be helpful to know how you acquired the experience and knowledge to realize that Peace Corps isn’t working, yet as an independent agency its reports to Congress every year.
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who come home after the 2 years are often very involved in their local communities. Peace Corps also collects metrics on what objectives volunteers are meeting in the field, such as educating x number of women on exclusive breastfeeding, so we do get work done and even work on longterm projects too.
Dave • Sep 27, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Good picture of volunteer vs volunteerism Shea.