Peace Corps volunteer Mary Owen teaches a class of young Filipino women. Owen returned a year early from her stint as an educational events organizer and sometime teacher in the Philippines because she “felt like I’m kind of done here.” Photo: Mary Owen

Vincent Wickes has been recruiting Peace Corps volunteers in and around New York City for so long he's got it down to a science of sorts.

"The question is, will they make a good volunteer? Not, where should they be placed?" he said. "We look for the scarce skills, the hardest skills to find in recruitment efforts, because we know we're going to get a lot of applicants with general skills."

That's good, too, because the New York native likely has a lot of hiring ahead of him - Peace Corps supporters and prominent politicians are hoping to double the number of volunteers within the next couple years.

Established in 1961, the Peace Corps was borne of President John F. Kennedy's desire to employ young, idealistic Americans as tools to change the world for the better. Kennedy envisioned sending out 100,000 volunteers every year, and the number zipped to 15,000 by 1966. Then realpolitik intruded: The Vietnam War reversed that growth spurt, beginning a 16-year decline that led to a nadir of 4,600 volunteers in 1982.

A slow climb that began under President Ronald Reagan and matured under President George W. Bush has resulted in a slightly more robust Peace Corps today. The 2007 total of 8,079 volunteers is the agency's highest in nearly four decades. Still, after 47 years, returned volunteers total less than 200,000, a profound disappointment considering Kennedy's original goal of a million volunteers in the program's first decade.

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, who served as a volunteer in the Dominican Republic, is spearheading legislative efforts to expand the Peace Corps. The National Peace Corps Association's "More Peace Corps" campaign, with a primary goal of doubling the program, is hosting events in cities across the country in summer 2008. Both top presidential contenders - Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona - support a Peace Corps expansion.

Getting in

Becoming a volunteer begins with the application, which requires a backgrounder, resume, school transcripts and several recommendations. Recruiters from Peace Corps' 11 regional offices review these submissions and immediately filter out the unacceptable applicants.

"We're looking for individuals that first and foremost are interested in helping other people, and wanting to volunteer and wanting to participate in cross-cultural opportunities," Wickes said. Last year his office immediately scrapped more than 560 of 1,500 applications, for reasons that are somewhat vague.

"We look at motivation," Wickes said. "There are signs that tell us what the applicant is looking for."

The remaining applications are passed on to the recruiters who pore over an application's every detail to determine whether a candidate should be interviewed.

"There's this perception that it's really competitive," said Mary Owen, who served a year in the Philippines. "I personally don't think it's too selective - it comes down to what they need and what they need is very loose."

Placement

Those up to snuff are soon contacted and an interview is set up in which the applicant selects three placement preferences, in terms of global region and job type.

"The system isn't that well-defined," said Kara Tierney, who served in Burkina Faso from 2005 to 2007.

Tierney said she was given minimal information, but knows of another volunteer who was shown detailed descriptions of all available jobs and asked to choose her favorite.

"I had no idea what I was choosing between," she recalled. "Two descriptions sounded exactly alike."

Wickes explains.

"An important communication from recruiter to applicant is flexibility," Wickes said. "We do ask for preference or exclusion, but with clear understanding that we might not be able to accommodate that.

After the interview begins a long wait. It can take up to nine months from submitting an application to receiving an official Peace Corps volunteer invitation - and up to a year before shipping out. Tierney was eventually dispatched to Burkina Faso to teach math and science although she lacked teaching experience or training.

"I think they saw science in my background and made a decision," she said. "Asia was not in my top three, but the Philippines was filling slots when I wanted to go. The problem is I'm half Filipino; I'd been there and had family there."

The Peace Corps avoids sending Americans to their ancestral countries because two of the program's three goals involve cross-cultural exchange. When the recruiting director later learned of the mistake, Owen says he told her, "'We don't do that.'" Still, it was to the Philippines she was sent.

For older volunteers the experience is entirely different. Nam Lamore was 35 when he submitted his application.

"I had three separate sessions with the recruiter," he recalled. "We spent a lot of time talking about where I should be placed."

Because of a diverse job history and a wide array of skills there were a number of viable options for Lamore.

"We finally went with business," he said. Lamore was placed in Morocco.

Training

After two days of orientation in the United States, volunteers are sent to their assigned countries for 10-12 weeks of training to hone language, cross-cultural and technical skills. During this time volunteers live with a host family, often near their eventual work site, as part of the full immersion in local culture.

"This is a very challenging time for volunteers as we are teaching them to fully integrate into a culture for a 27-month experience," Peace Corps Director Ronald Tschetter said in an e-mail.

During training many volunteers meet the people they will be working with and identify potential work areas. Though the training is intense, many volunteers give the programs high marks.

"The training in Morocco is amazing," said Lamore. "It's complete immersion, including culture, and language, six days a week for eight hours a day."

Tierney had never taught and knew nothing of Burkina Faso. Yet upon arrival she was able to adjust quickly because of a very helpful teaching advisor who prepared lesson plans and provided lots of useful instruction. Training input from volunteers who had been teaching in Burkina for a year also helped.

"They could relate to us well, and knew what we were going through; they gave us a lot of great tips," said Tierney. "They taught us how to teach, but also had local culture and did some role playing."

For Owen, the new training model in the Philippines was problematic.

"For us they were only doing culture and language training," she said. Volunteers went on community walks to assess locals' needs and build programs around those needs.

"A lot of these kids were just totally bored out of their mind, and we were just lost," she said. "Under this model, volunteers had a lot of difficulty being useful."

In the field

Deputy Director Jody Olsen likes to point out that Peace Corps workers volunteers aren't secluded in a sealed environment like many diplomats and development workers. They do not live in fancy apartments with servants, ride in air-conditioned SUVs, and earn fat salaries. Instead, they are hosted by local families or live among locals.

One of Peace Corps' great strengths has always been its consistently outstanding medical care. Management gives the health and safety of volunteers the highest priority and complaints about inadequate treatment are rare. Medical teams visit field sites every six months. And whenever injured or seriously ill, volunteers are quickly transported to a regional medical facility, major city or even the United States.

The Peace Corps' most recent survey of returned volunteers indicates that 94 percent found the experience rewarding, 85 percent would join knowing what they know after the experience, and 84 percent would recommend the experience to friends. Tierney found a new career - she's now working to be a teacher. Although Owen felt the program could be more ambitious, she called it "the best program at widening the minds of Americans."

Tschetter reflected on his time served in India, some 40 years ago.

"Part of the job of the volunteer is to blend into the community and share America with them," he said. "It's the conversations and sense of belonging to a community that I found meant the most in my own service as a volunteer."

Fast facts
Name: U.S. Peace Corps
Established: 1961
Mission: Help developing countries meet the need for trained men and women, and promote understanding between Americans and other peoples.
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
Budget: $330 milion (2008)
Focus: 36 percent education, 21 percent health
Presence: 74 countries
Volunteers: 200,000 so far, including 8,000 in field
Volunteers characteristics: average age is 27, the oldest is 81, 93 percent are single, 95 percent hold undergraduate degrees