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Brookings Calls for More Peace Corps

This post originally appeared on The New Service blog.

The Building Bridges Coalition—a project of the Brookings Initiative on International Volunteering and Service—asks today that all U.S. citizens “who believe that Peace Corps is an important part of our outreach to the world” sign the petition urging President-Elect Barack Obama to double the number of Volunteers serving through Peace Corps, as well as to support Peace Corps in specific ways.

The petition will be presented to Obama in a little over a week. If you'd like to sign, click here.

According to National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) President Kevin Quigley:

More Peace Corps means having the resources to respond to the more than 20 countries that have requested programs for which Peace Corps has insufficient funds. It also means having the resources to give the many highly qualified Americans who would like to serve overseas the chance to do so.

More Peace Corps does not mean a simple expansion of the numbers of Peace Corps volunteers, although that is part of it.

More Peace Corps may mean revising the Peace Corps model in ways to take better advantage of the significant technological and demographic changes that have occurred in the 46 years since Peace Corps was launched.

More Peace Corps will consider how to make Peace Corps so much more effective at addressing the problems of poverty. This will probably require significant innovation and some risk.

The Building Bridges Coalition works to double the number of volunteers serving internationally by 2010 and includes groups such as Idealist.org and the NPCA (the independent group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers).

One of the Coalition’s policy recommendations is to double the number of Peace Corps Volunteers, something President-Elect Obama also included in his pre-election stance on service. (Their other policy recommendations include the Global Service Fellowship and permanent authorization of Volunteers for Prosperity.)

To learn more, check out http://www.morepeacecorps.org, and read Ten Times the Peace Corps, a paper by Quigley and Brooking’s Lex Rieffel.


Posted by Amy, who also blogs at The New Service.