One of the finest
books written about the history of the Peace Corps is "Keeping Kennedy's
Promise" by C. Payne Lucas and Kevin Lowther. Published in 1978 in a limited
edition, the book is almost impossible to find today.
Although the book
was written almost 25 years ago, the issues that were raised are still as
relevant as the day the book was published. In this issue of Peace Corps Online
we provide an excerpt from the chapter titled "The Numbers Game" which we
believe is extremely important now that the Peace Corps has been given a mandate
to double the number of volunteers in the next five years.
The purpose
of this article is not to discourage the Peace Corps from reaching their goal.
Rather it is to point out that the last time the Peace Corps expanded so
rapidly, there were serious problems. By studying the problems in the last rapid
expansion and knowing the pitfalls, it is our hope that the Peace Corps will
avoid its previous mistakes.
About the Authors
The book was written by C. Payne Lucas and Kevin
Lowther who together had almost 20 years cumulative experience working in the
Peace Corps. C. Payne joined the Peace Corps headquarters staff in 1961 and
served as Peace Corps Director in Togo and Niger before returning to Washington
in 1966 to become Deputy Regional Director for Africa. In 1967, he became
Regional Director for Africa.
Kevin Lowther served as a Volunteer in
Sierra Leone from 1963-65. He then participated in a training program and served
recruitment, assigned to visiting historically black colleges in the South
during the first half of 1966. He joined the Washington staff as a public
information officer in 1966 and the Africa Region in 1967 as Operations Officer
for Southern Africa.
In 1969, Lucas and Lowther were asked by Peace
Corps Director Joe Blatchford to establish a new office to help returned
Volunteers to apply the skills they had developed abroad into relevant
community-based and professional activities at home. In 1971, as they departed
the Peace Corps, Lucas and a group of ex-PC staff and Volunteers established Africare. Lowther became a
newspaper editor for seven years, then joined the Africare staff to open its
first program in Southern Africa. He spent five years in Zambia and came back in
1984 to run Africare's expanding portfolio of eight countries in Southern
Africa.
C. Payne Lucas has been honored by several U.S. presidents as
well as leaders of more than two dozen African nations, receiving decorations
from the national orders of Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Senegal and Zambia, and
the 1984 U.S. Presidential End Hunger Award for Outstanding Individual
Achievement "in the effort to achieve a world without hunger." C Payne Lucas was
recently honored by the Peace Corps with the Franklin H. Williams Award for
outstanding leadership contributions that returned Peace Corps Volunteers of
Color have made in the area of community service.
How the Book was written
Their book provides an
inside look at the Peace Corps and relies on a large body of internal Peace
Corps documents bearing on agency policies, program development, and volunteer
performance. One of the principal sources for the book is the agency's own
extensive evaluations of individual country programs written by the highly
sensitive observers who worked in Charlie Peter's Evaluation Division.
The authors are preparing a second edition to their book which will be
ready for sale at the Peace Corps Fortieth plus one in June. In the meantime,
please read this excerpt from "Keeping Kennedy's Promise"
The Numbers Game
In the heady days of the New
Frontier (and at the height of the Cold War), a large Peace Corps seemed to make
eminently greater sense than a small trial effort. Although many within and
outside the administration counseled caution, the Peace Corps had caught the
nations imagination. It was a natural response to embarrassing American failures
in the foreign assistance field, an antidote to The Ugly American. It asserted
Americans' pride in themselves as a practical as well as peaceful people. It was
a daring stroke in the ideological contest between Western democracy and the
socialist doctrines for the allegiance of the postcolonial world.
Nothing, however, better explains the unmet promise of the Peace Corps
than its initial emphasis on placing large numbers of volunteers in the field.
(Warren) Wiggins himself later conceded that the commitment to mounting a Peace
Corps of major proportions created a momentum of its own that eventually
overwhelmed the agency's ability to develop and manage programs effectively. Too
much was left to the overromanticized adaptability of volunteers and too little
was subject to sound discovery and planning of jobs. Huge programs were
inaugurated before staff could thoroughly scout the unfamiliar terrain of
strange cultures. As a result, hundreds of volunteers marked time in poorly
chosen assignments.
The numbers game, as it came to be called, was an
inherently contradictory process. The Peace Corps first had to find willing host
countries, and frequently it had to court uninterested and suspicious
governments. Later, the preoccupation with building larger and larger programs
contrasted oddly with the agency's abiding belief in the worth of the individual
volunteer; and the well-advertised premium on quality in choosing volunteers was
compromised when necessary to meet continuing commitments to countries hosting
hundreds of volunteers.
Programming was shallow. Inexperience conspired
with a conscious bias among many Peace Corps staff against becoming too like the
technical experts and professional programmers in the foreign aid establishment.
Volunteers in any event were assumed to be competent to find their own program
if necessary. By definition they were highly flexible self-starters who could
adjust to shifting circumstances on the job. To force them into rigidly defined
roles might smother their native American ingenuity. Confident that almost any
right-spirited American could accomplish some good overseas, the Peace Corps was
able in good conscience to sacrifice thousands of volunteers at the altar of
expansion.
Five thousand volunteered during the Peace Corps first
official month-March 1961. Beyond tentative interest in Ghana, Colombia, Chile,
Tanzania, and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, however, there was no
comparable surge of interest abroad. Several governments preferred to study the
new, somewhat mystifying, American initiative cautiously. (Sargent) Shriver and
senior aides left almost immediately to find willing host countries to
accommodate the stampede of applicants. Shriver stimulated many program requests
with his charisma and infectious idealism. A president's handshake and a
minister's quick calculation of his manpower needs and the thing was done.2
Washington staff dashed abroad, responding to any vibration of interest, and
returned to headquarters with skeletal program requests. Job descriptions were
supplied later, but the basic commitments were made at the upper echelon, often
by Peace Corps and host officials who were only vaguely aware of what the
volunteers would be doing or the field conditions they would encounter.
The Philippines seemed an ideal setting for one
of the Peace Corps maiden programs.
There were early and
widespread signs that the "numbers game" was insinuating itself into the Peace
Corps programming process. The first serious embarrassment was the Philippines,
where it soon became obvious that the first volunteer arrivals-teachers'
aides-were not desperately needed. Yet the Peace Corps proceeded with plans to
send hundreds more to serve as teachers aides and to work in something hazily
described as community development.
The Philippines seemed an ideal
setting for one of the Peace Corps maiden programs. The country had experienced
a half century of American stewardship before independence and in a sense shared
a common political heritage with the United States. A sizable commitment of
volunteers to the Philippines seemed only natural. But their early efforts were
largely wasted in ill-defined roles.
In Colombia, the Peace Corps
appeared bent on repeating its difficulties in the Philippines. More than 600
volunteers were planned by the end of 1963, prompting the staff member in charge
of the community development program to lament the emphasis "on how many they
(Washington) can get into the field instead of what they are doing. …Colombia
can't support any more."
Declining morale and poor standards of dress
among volunteers were reported from Ecuador in 1963 by a concerned American
scholar who visited the program. He wrote to Peace Corps/Washington that too
many underemployed volunteers were visibly congregating in the cities: "If you
see clusters of Ecuadoreans standing on one street corner staring without
expression at a cluster of Peace Corpsmen on the opposite corner, as I did on
more than one occasion. . . you cannot help but realize that something is
amiss." He recommended against sending additional volunteers "to populate other
street corners or coffee shops" unless the Peace Corps could find suitable work
for them. "A fast build-up of numbers of Volunteers right now," he warned, "may
make good reading in the United States and may please even some elements of the
Ecuadorean government. But it is a sham and a delusion to 'sell' it as either
necessary or desirable."
One of the first severely critical analyses of
the numbers phenomenon emerged from an evaluation of the Senegal program in
1963. It strongly implied that the rapid growth of the Peace Corps in its first
two years had retarded the ability of staff in Washington and overseas to
program carefully. "Reckless expansion and frantic scrambling initially
necessary to get the agency on its feet seem to have taken on the qualities of
absolute virtue," the report said. "Careful planning, definition of policy,
concern with standards. … [are] censured as creeping bureaucracy an epithet. The
Peace Corps has acquired a certain momentum. This is desirable, but only so long
as we control it. Presently it seems to be controlling us. …We'll do a better
job in the long run if we do a better job now. Volunteers lose their dedication
when they find sloppy and indifferent programming and back-up, and become sloppy
and indifferent themselves."
In a covering note to a similarly
uncomplimentary review of the program in Brazil, Charles Peters, the agency's
director of evaluation, suggested to Shriver in 1963 that the Peace Corps was
"being prostituted by an attempt to play the numbers game with a sick project. …
As an evaluator, you feel you have a duty to raise hell-that … you've got to
make clear to the people in Washington how demoralizing the numbers game can be
when witnessed by unemployed Volunteers." It was a typical comment from the
agency gadfly and conscience, a man who was forever citing the gaps between the
Peace Corps ideals and reality-to little avail.
Shriver was extremely
sensitive to suggestions that the Peace Corps was deliberately fostering a
"numbers game." In August 1963, Peters told the director that he hoped a
critical report on the Liberia program would "deal a deathblow to thinking of
Liberia as a dumping ground for large numbers of marginal PCVs. We played that
game in the Philippines and brought ourselves one hell of a lot of trouble."
The Peace Corps was proceeding on the basis of
America's "historic commitment" to Liberia, it said, and intended to "wedge" a
thousand or more volunteers into Africa "by hook or crook."
The report questioned plans to introduce 150 additional
volunteers in the fall of 1963 to supplement the eighty-two teachers already in
Liberia. The Peace Corps was proceeding on the basis of America's "historic
commitment" to Liberia, it said, and intended to "wedge" a thousand or more
volunteers into Africa "by hook or crook." Liberia, according to the schedule of
projects, was due to escalate shortly to 325 volunteers in a country of just one
million people. "If it was done in the assumption that Liberia is a 'safe' place
for rapid deployment of Volunteers," the report complained, "our quarrel is with
the soundness of Peace Corps expansionist policy."
Shriver tartly denied
that the Peace Corps planned to "wedge" volunteers into Africa, which he doubted
could absorb the 3,000 volunteers mentioned. "We have no such expansionist
policy," he said with finality. Nevertheless, by 1966 there were more than 3,000
volunteers serving in Africa.
Shriver agreed in theory, at least, that a
few volunteers doing excellent work were preferable to many doing average or
mediocre jobs. He was clearly impressed with one evaluators "firm conviction
that the reasoning that pushed us for the numbers at any cost will eventually
eat out the heart of the Peace Corps if it is not stopped. . . . Our basic
strategy for Congress, for public opinion, for host country acceptance and for
recruiting need be nothing more complex than excellence and service. Numbers
have little to do with either."
The White House was calling upon the Peace Corps
to double its size, and President Johnson was contemplating at least 20,000 as
the immediate goal.
Meanwhile, the Peace Corps was growing by
quantum leaps to its peak of about 15,000 volunteers and trainees in 1966. The
White House was calling upon the Peace Corps to double its size, and President
Johnson was contemplating at least 20,000 as the immediate goal. People were
volunteering in record numbers in the mid-1960s but still more were needed to
satisfy the expanding demand.
The initial doubt and skepticism in
foreign minds had quickly given way to substantial acceptance of the Peace Corps
and its volunteers. Thirty countries swelled the list of subscribers in 1962,
exceeding the agency's ability to recruit and train volunteers who matched its
high standards. There simply were not enough qualified volunteers to maintain
existing commitments, much less add to them. As programs grew larger and more
numerous, bitter controversy arose over which regions and countries were to
receive the best applicants.
Jack Vaughn, then regional director for
Latin America, expressed concern to Shriver early in 1963 that Africa and the
Philippines were getting most of the college graduates, thus leaving Latin
America with less-qualified manpower. Peters, meanwhile, urged stricter
selection standards across the board and suggested that the "strong element of
fantasy in our program projections for Latin America will be revealed if we
apply tough standards." In other words, if the Peace Corps truly accepted only
the top applicants, it would be unable to provide the number and caliber of
volunteers promised. Shriver conceded that congressional criticism of the size
of the Philippines program-and the need for volunteers elsewhere-might dictate
postponing new programs there until later in 1963. But he never conceded that
the Peace Corps might be deliberately or unintentionally compromising selection
standards.
Peace Corps selection criteria graded trainees from 5 to 1 in
descending order of excellence. From early 1962 it had been policy to select for
training only applicants classified 5 and 4, although 3s were being taken into
some programs. Wiggins, in fact, decided in the spring of 1962-just as the Peace
Corps was entering its most hectic period of growth-to experiment with 3s. He
personally reviewed a number of applications and agreed with the selection staff
that only a third to a half of the 3s were worth inviting to training.
Wiggins-the architect of expansion-decreed that the Peace Corps should cut back
its programs rather than accept 3s who had not been reviewed jointly by program
staff as well as by selection personnel. This laborious procedure was followed
for a time, but it soon was honored more often in the breach because of
competing pressures on the program staff. As a result, many poorly qualified 3s
slipped into training to help satisfy overseas "demand."
One program in
Central America began floundering badly. Both the program and selection offices
conceded that the volunteers serving there (circa 1963) were a "barrel-scraped
crew." Faced with internal rumblings that the Peace Corps was deliberately
lowering its standards rather than canceling projects or accepting shortfalls,
Shriver rejected advice that the number of 3s selected for training should be
carefully limited and that the Peace Corps awake to its "crisis of quality." He
strongly disagreed that 3s were necessarily weak. Many had performed as well as
the top-rated volunteers. He doubted that limiting selection to 5s would have
any more than marginal effect on the quality of volunteer work.
But Shriver's ideals rested on mere mortals. It was one thing to philosophize that
3s should be given an opportunity to serve because some had performed above
expectation. It was quite another to overlook the widespread consequences of the
Peace Corps concession to benign mediocrity. This became increasingly evident
during the Peace Corps surge of expansion in 1963-1966. The agency was committed
to having 10,000 volunteers in the field by August 1965, and although the
shortage of qualified applicants forced the agency to trim its projections, the
selection machinery actually overfilled some projects. One selection officer
that year admitted making a "farce" of a Latin American country's request: "We
dumped PCVs . . . with hardly a by-your-leave to the country director. We told
young Americans they were vitally needed to fill non-existent jobs."
The numbers complex had firmly insinuated itself in the Peace Corps operational
ethic. Thus the African regional office in Washington could write to its
director in Guinea of "our mutual wish for a big program" while the director
strove hard to save what program he already had. And the Turkey program could
forge ahead in 1966 on a record of four years of non-accomplishment-living
testimony, said one Peace Corps observer, to the Peace Corps "enormous faith in
the magic power of numbers."
A 1965 program document drafted in Washington
spoke of the Turkey project in almost fictional terms
A 1965 program document drafted in Washington spoke of the Turkey project in almost
fictional terms: "The government of Turkey now accepts the Peace Corps fully and
is ready to initiate formative and institutional changes based on the competency
and availability of Volunteers. There is no question that when a program
involves a large number of PC Vs, the leverage for induced change and
improvement increases." The statement was meaningless, of course, except for
what it revealed about the agency's abstract programming and its preoccupation
with scale as a measure of impact. The arrogance of "leverage for induced
change" made an odd contrast with Shriver's stated belief that the size and
impact of a program were not necessarily related.
While the Peace Corps was inflating programs of questionable substance in Turkey and elsewhere, it was
also holding at bay several smaller countries that were requesting relatively
modest projects. Shriver was opposed in principle to spreading the Peace Corps
among too many nations, especially ministates, lest this stretch the abilities
of talented overseas staff-not volunteers-beyond the breaking point. The view
had not yet taken hold, as it would a few years later, that narrower, tightly
planned, and tightly administered projects in smaller countries offered better
hope of genuine impact than did many of the massive, diffuse, and inefficient
programs then in vogue.
After establishing forty-six country programs within the first two years, the Peace Corps added only two nations to its
roster-Kenya and Uganda-in 1964 - 1965. Many small countries were put off, their
requests tabled while the Peace Corps shepherded hundreds of volunteers into
Nigeria, Brazil, Colombia, India, the Philippines, and Thailand to sustain
large, ongoing commitments.
As early as 1962, the bias against smaller countries was challenged within the agency. Many directors in the French
speaking countries of West Africa objected to the stress upon big programs-only
large projects seemed to be entertained in Washington. Shriver sympathized. but
argued that small projects were a poor test of a programs potential and were
costlier to mount.
Three years later, country directors in Africa were
still concerned that imaginative new programs, requiring ten or fifteen
volunteers, were being rejected in Washington in favor of large, established
projects. David Hapgood, one of the agency's most perspicacious evaluators, lent
special force to this refrain when he returned in 1965 greatly impressed by what
he had seen a handful of volunteers accomplishing in Niger, a poor Saharan
nation that the Peace Corps clearly regarded as a marginal program. The Peace
Corps, Hapgood said, was cheating itself by ignoring or shortchanging smaller
countries. Man for man, woman for woman, volunteers had a better opportunity to
achieve tangible results in these less grandiose, more manageable undertakings
than in the larger arenas preferred by the Peace Corps. "The individual
Volunteer is of declining importance as the program expands," Hapgood said with
conviction.
Hapgood criticized the Peace Corps tendency to think big-a
fault that he believed encouraged some host countries to let their imaginations
exceed their capacity to employ large numbers of volunteers effectively. He was
not against bigness per Se; he was worried that the agency's clarity of purpose
and the quality of its programs might suffer in proportion to a project's
obesity.
Shriver disagreed. The entire Peace Corps was "minuscule" in
terms of the overall needs. Even 20,000 volunteers would be pitifully few. To
Hapgood's recommendation that the Peace Corps expand successful programs slowly
at first and build on sound experience, Shriver replied that this risked
allowing good projects to stagnate.
The Peace Corps never did place
20,000 volunteers in the field at one time. But it tried.
