A Case for Peace Corps

I believe in Peace Corps and what it stands for at its core: a medium of cultural exchange and teaching. These are, I believe, essential and the most effective methods of development. Considering my opinions of aid, and it’s often negative impact on development, Peace Corps stands out as an ideal model. Its core is structured around teaching, based on the wisdom of teaching a man to fish, wisdom that the entire aid industry seems to have forgotten. Volunteers get paid a local salary and are expected to work with what they have. That means using local resources and as little money as possible to create development. This requires the community to work together, be creative, and create development with their own skills and materials. Ideally, all a volunteer does is pass on knowledge. And it’s highly effective in an isolated environment.

Unfortunately, the environments are not isolated; Malawi is a very crowded aid market, each NGO trying to outdo/out give the other. As a result, they get in their Land Cruisers and drive into the rural villages, where volunteers are, make large promises of buildings, money, materials, and leave to the nearest luxury tourist lodge. They may or may not come back with all these things. If they do, they drop them and leave, never to be heard from again except for a mandatory check-in so they can close out the project. This hurts the work of PCVs, who are actually trying to build an independent and strong community. It discounts our work and hurts Malawi in the long run. If a man is offering free fish and another teaching how to fish, which would you take if you were in poverty? In fact, you might even go up to the teacher and ask: why aren’t you offering free fish? This is the dilemma PCVs face.

This is the long and negative impact of aid. But Peace Corps still perseveres; its aims are much more long-term than all these NGOs. If you look at many politicians in Malawi today, they were, in their youth, taught by a Peace Corps volunteer at their school. Little by little, Peace Corps strives to demonstrate that developing skills in math, English, science, and using local resources and local skills are the ideal mix for sustainable and independent development. Malawi doesn’t need money, it needs exports and industries. And such things will never develop without proper education, which it severely lacks (plenty of UN and NGO built schools, but no good teachers).

After being in Peace Corps, I’m proud to have worked with an organization that holds such ideals. Granted they have their own issues and problems, but overall, I know I didn’t spend two years with an organization that perpetuates and exasperates the problems of Malawi under the guise of saving Malawi. Malawi’s need, and development in general, boils down to teachers and doctors. Not money and not resources or politics. If the population is educated, they can access more information, make educated choices, and independently improve their communities, thus improving the nation. If there are more doctors, then the population can be healthier, have higher life expectancy, and actually invest in their future as opposed to seeing life as a short-term endeavor.