Building on Existing Infrastructure

It would be great to build a consensus within the UN or the State Department to transform or update the Peace Corp program, but instead of "promoting peace," the mandate would be "social change" or whatever characterization is most compelling.

I totally agree with you, Alanna, that building on existing infrastructure is key; a totally new enterprise is definitely not in the cards at this point, and I certainly didn’t mean to imply that. It would be great to build a consensus within the UN or the State Department to transform or update the Peace Corp program, but instead of "promoting peace," the mandate would be "social change" or whatever characterization is most compelling. But modernizing the Peace Corp would be critical because it represents an earlier time and the image of rejuvenation is useful here. I think you’d also get more volunteers on campuses across the country that way, as well. The UN would have to find different projects from the ones they currently have, but they are constantly doing that and they already have the relationships. There also are many programs — even privately sponsored ones– out there that already operate outside of the UN that can use volunteer help, so it’s more a task of cataloguing and searching, rather than building from ground zero.