New Spirit in the Peace Corps

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr.

The best thing Harry Banks did in Kenya was put himself out of a job. A community organizer with a degree in marketing, Banks, 42, joined the Peace Corps in 1982 and left Gary for Nairobi. Last year he was called on to help organize the Kenya Women Finance Trust, the brainchild of a group of local businesswomen who had $50,000 in funds from the Ford Foundation for their project. Banks supervised the hiring of a staff, raised extra funds and set up a six-week bookkeeping course for his loan applicants as well as a procedure for granting loans to small businesses run by women. So far, the trust has lent money--in sums ranging from $130 to $1,300--to a beauty parlor, a restaurant, a garage, a vegetable stand, two tailoring shops and two kiosks. The loans are being repaid on schedule, and the trust is now run by the local staff.

Black and handicapped (he was born with severe scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, and stands only 4 ft. 2 in. tall), Banks defies the stereotype of the naive volunteer who lives in a mud hut and teaches villagers how to dig wells. With his can-do professionalism, he represents a new breed of goal-oriented, well-trained volunteers who are changing the agency. Like their predecessors, however, they are idealists who love a challenge. Says Banks: "In Kenya, every innovative idea, every fantasy and wildest dream I ever had, I've had the opportunity to do, with no supervisor to say, 'No, that's too big a risk.' The Peace Corps gambled on me, and it paid off."

When President Kennedy introduced the Peace Corps in 1961, it was a bold idea that symbolized the New Frontier spirit. Organized "to help foreign countries meet their urgent needs for skilled manpower," the agency was also expected to counter Soviet and Chinese volunteer movements in the Third World. Said Kennedy: "I am convinced that our young men and women, dedicated to freedom, are fully capable of overcoming the efforts of Mr. Khrushchev's missionaries who are dedicated to undermining that freedom."

As the years wore on, the program became undisciplined and unfocused. Many volunteers abroad were angered by U.S. involvement in Viet Nam; some of them had joined the corps to avoid being drafted. They shunned American embassies and agencies and rejected U.S. policy in the countries where they were stationed. Several Latin American nations criticized the volunteers for their political activism against the ruling regimes. Some host countries accused the Peace Corps of being an adjunct to the CIA, a charge that was never proved. In 1971 President Nixon folded the corps into ACTION, an umbrella agency for several federal volunteer organizations. Enrollment sank along with congressional funding as the Peace Corps limped through the '70s.

Though some of Ronald Reagan's lieutenants came to power with hopes of axing the corps altogether, it has evolved over the past four years from a bureaucratic tangle into a streamlined, cost-efficient operation. The agency has adopted a pragmatic approach to promoting long-term self-sufficiency in 60 developing nations. While most of the volunteers 20 years ago were young, liberal-arts-educated generalists, the Peace Corps now attracts specialists in forestry, agriculture, health and engineering. The median age has risen from 23 in the 1960s to 28 today. Volunteers make an average of $215 a month plus expenses during the usual two years of service. The total number of volunteers has remained at about 5,500 since 1981, far below the peak of 15,550 in 1966, but interest in the agency is picking up. Since the Peace Corps announced a drive last month to recruit 600 agricultural specialists to help solve food-production problems in Africa, it has received some 10,000 responses.

Much of the credit for the Peace Corps's rejuvenation must go to Loret Ruppe, 47, a managerial whiz who became director of the agency in 1981. The wife of former six-term Michigan Congressman Philip Ruppe, she jockeyed for the directorship while serving as chairman of the Michigan campaign for George Bush in 1980. After President Reagan appointed her, Ruppe used her formidable Administration connections to fend off proposals to cut about 10% from the Peace Corps budget, which totals $128.6 million for the current fiscal year. She argued that the agency represented the best of American volunteerism, a virtue that Reagan has touted frequently.

To get the organization under control, Ruppe emphasized careful budgeting and planning and strict adherence to Government procurement policies, while spearheading the aggressive recruitment of specialists and better training of generalists. Ruppe has been a tireless booster, visiting 39 of the 60 countries served by the Peace Corps and winning valuable publicity for the agency. "We are career ambassadors around the world," says Ruppe. "We have come a long way from the days when we were called Kennedy's kids. In the '80s we have grown and matured."

While the Peace Corps has retained many of its traditional qualities, the projects--and the people behind them--have become more purposeful. In Sri Lanka, most volunteers are English teachers, but their programs are targeted at native educators rather than large groups of villagers; thus the agency produces trained local teachers to serve local needs. In Fiji, the corps provides tutoring in math, physics and accounting. In Nepal, the agency is looking for an array of new specialists, including urban planners, editors of technical journals and computer experts. But the volunteers there still tough out hardships: they usually live in small quarters with outdoor latrines and no running water or electricity. Says Lane Smith, director of the Peace Corps in Nepal: "We have never had such a crop of quality volunteers understanding their responsibilities and with such a high degree of motivation as we have today."

With reporting by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Maryanne Vollers/Nairobi