Peace Corps' Bang, A Response

Children at a local school perform plays they wrote
highlighting gender norms. The focus and measurements for
the lesson was connected to gender and culture, however,
teambuilding, creativity, and improved comfort speaking
English publicly are all unmeasured and unreported
outcomes as well. 

A week ago, Thomas Hill published the blog "The Peace Corps: A lot of bucks for very little bang?" In his piece, he claimed that Peace Corps, if it continues, should stop being a program of the US government and instead be funded privately. Over the last week, I have dwelled on the words of Mr. Hill. I hesitated to write a response, as I did not want to draw more attention to a post I disagree with and assertions I believe to be unfounded.

His argument is that Peace Corps is nearly twice as expensive per person as Fulbright Fellowships and has not shown itself [historically] to be effective in development efforts. Mr. Hill asserts, "the program’s co
st ($410 million annually) coupled with its inconsistent development track record and the agency’s insistence that it operate independently from U.S. foreign policy should raise questions for Congress about whether an entirely taxpayer-funded model is sustainable and a good use of limited resources."

It is important to note that the 2016 fiscal year budget for Peace Corps, at $410 million, still comprised only 1% of the federal budget for that year. Cutting or changing the funding system for Peace Corps will do nothing to alleviate excess federal spending. It would be the equivalent of trying to decrease the health risks associated with smoking by throwing out two cigarettes from every case smoked. Additionally, Fulbright Fellowship costs are reduced due to direct support from hosting governments and organizations.

The only positive aspect of Peace Corps that Mr. Hill acknowledges lays in cultural exchange. He acknowledges that cultural exchange going both directions is Peace Corps' greatest strength, however, he trivializes the fact that this comprises two-thirds of the mandate of the program as set forth in the Peace Corps Act of 1961.


According to this act of Congress, the role of Peace Corps is threefold. In layman's terms, it is to 1) provide trained persons to help with development as invited by other countries, 2) to share American culture with people in host countries, and 3) to share host country with Americans. These three goals are all equally weighted.

This means that Peace Corps is already accomplishing 66.6% of their agency's mandate simply by placing volunteers in villages and communities around the world. Few government agencies and fewer pieces of legislation can claim that success rate through their existence alone.

But, ignoring this success, as Mr. Hill has done, leads me to my real problem with his piece: assessing Peace Corps' development work.

Mr. Hill asserts that the problem of Peace Corps as a federally funded program lies within its autonomy and a lack of reporting effective development work to Congress. How can a program be successful in development if it does not submit profound impact statements to Congress?

Perhaps, the real question should be broader. How do we actually measure the impact of effective development work? What should we be measuring?

1. The number of projects volunteers help start to improve living conditions in their communities? 
2. The number of people reached at community meetings about health topics? 
3. The number of adolescents who test for HIV at an event? 
4. The number of school children who pass an English exam? 
5. The number of mothers who can list the nutritional benefits of different local foods? 
6. The number of...
7. The number of...
8. The number of...

Fourteen members of MCCC participate in a training and
feasibility study on rearing chickens as a business. They are
gaining critical assessment skills that will help
them to make better decisions about starting
and managing businesses in the future. 

It is easy when looking at federal spending to want to focus only on numbers, facts, and figures. But, when working in development or any social science area, focusing only on numbers ignores efficacy entirely. Thanks to the digital age and increased access to technology, expectations in reporting development work and accomplishments for every dollar spent have risen in the last decade, however, our ability to actually assess and measure change in others is still limited. 

Yes, accountability is important when allocating funding, however, development does not fit into a perfect annual funding cycle. True capacity building does not happen in neat and tidy quarters, no matter how thoroughly one tries to report. How much an organization, community, or individual has been impacted by an activity or project is impossible to truly measure because 1) it does not happen in isolation and 2) the impact continues long past funding cycles and data tracking. Development is a continuum. 

Michael Kleinman recently explored the connection between reporting and efficacy in development through an article written for The Guardian. He points out "there’s no way to limit the variables in play when it comes to, say, improving education or health outcomes, or the attempt to end genocide. The closest approach that we have are randomized control trials, yet proving replicability across countries and time remains a significant – and prohibitively expensive – challenge."

More potent is his acknowledgement that "development is not a science-it is a struggle to try to improve the human condition." We can, in attempting to measure our successes through a variety of methods, get lost in the reality that we can never actually know if our specific development efforts were successful. We have moved onto the next location or challenge before the fruits of our labor can appear.

Young men at a leadership camp
discuss consent in sexual relationships.
Lesotho currently is third in the world for
reported rapes per capita. How can we
measure the long-term outcomes of this
session that served only 100 young men
from one district of Lesotho? 

This is particularly true in Peace Corps. It is-for most, myself excluded-a two year program. This means that in two years, volunteers spend time working with their communities in health, agriculture, education, sanitation, environmental education, and community economic development. Much of this work can only be measured through reports of meetings held and topics covered. The outcomes of this work is only beginning when the volunteer finishes their service. If Mr. Hill wants more effective reports for Congress of the development outcomes reached, then he should instead be pushing for a larger budget to cover a huge expansion in the monitoring and evaluation of the communities, schools, and organizations that work with volunteers continuing long after volunteers have returned home.

Mr. Hill asserts that Peace Corps is not open to self-reflection or assessment. He claims that the agency refused to follow President Trump's executive order requiring all agencies to assess their efficacy and submit a plan for reorganization where needed.  Two months ago, Peace Corps announced a plan to reduce its American workforce by twenty percent to comply with the executive order. In doing this, I fear that the ability of the agency to ensure it is creating up to date training, manuals, and resources for volunteers to use in the field will be reduced, eventually decreasing the technical support for future development work.


Additionally, Mr. Hill concludes his damning of Peace Corps by making the unqualified statement that the program only really benefits those who volunteer. This is categorically false. Throughout my time in Lesotho, I have met countless people with stories of how a volunteer has positively impacted their life. It is not uncommon for a Mosotho who learns I am a Peace Corps Volunteer to jump into an anecdote about how a volunteer they knew helped them changed their life or perspective. Mr. Hill does not note having done any surveys or research in the regions that Peace Corps operates. He, once again, is basing his beliefs on the limited retelling of stories by returned volunteers themselves; individuals who cannot comment on the long term outcomes of their work because they are no longer there to measure it.

A little over a year ago, I analyzed the reports submitted by my cohort of volunteers. Despite a tendency to under-report (only half of the cohort reported), the impact that we were able to measure was impressive. These two posts, PCV Accomplishments by the Numbers and Two Years and Sixteen Volunteers, provide statistics and examples of under ten volunteers' work over two years. Under ten volunteers, who comprise less than 1% of all volunteers to serve in Lesotho over the past fifty years and who total only 0.2% of the number Peace Corps Volunteers sworn into service in 2014.

Peace Corps has also stepped up its own self analysis recently. In 2015, it began a annual Global Counterpart Survey. In this randomized survey, program managers interview a random selection of counterparts as assigned by Washington. According to the 2016 Global Counterpart Survey, 86% of counterparts reported an increase in local capacity as a result of the volunteer's work, particularly in the areas of day-to-day work skills, inspiring other, and suggesting new ways to meet goals. Most counterparts felt that the technical development skills of volunteers were adequate but that volunteers would benefit from stronger integration into their communities and better alignment between the community goals and those of Peace Corps.

I therefore challenge Mr. Hill to reevaluate his negative assessment of Peace Corps' success and its place in the federal budget. By keeping in mind that the development goal of the agency is only one-third of the program as defined by Congress and conducting research based on more than that provided for him in Washington, he will recognize that by operating under the status quo, Peace Corps is accomplishing its mandate. I will concur that Peace Corps would be better served by not accepting the status quo. An expansion of the program's funding and scope would be an excellent thing to consider in the next fiscal year in line with the recommendations provided by the National Peace Corps Association in their Winter 2016 Worldview.

This post was amended on 24 October 2017. The paragraph regarding Peace Corps' Global Counterpart Survey was added. Internet challenges had prevented its inclusion previously.