The world has changed. Should the Peace Corps?

The Peace Corps took Patricia Smith, like nearly a quarter-million volunteers before her, far from home. 

Every morning, she rose early to walk the mile to her job, dodging cars on roads without sidewalks to make it to the public health site where she volunteered. The sun came up earlier in her host community than it did at home in Oregon, which required some adjustments. And sometimes, the culture and rhythms of life in her new environment felt very different from home. But none of that bothered Ms. Smith. In fact, it’s why she joined the Peace Corps to begin with.

The part she wasn’t expecting when she imagined her life of Peace Corps service, though, is where she was most recently assigned – a cavernous convention center in a strip-mall section of New Jersey. Up until August, Ms. Smith spent her days greeting people arriving for COVID-19 vaccinations. She originally worked in Cambodia, but was evacuated, along with every other Peace Corps volunteer in the world, in March 2020. 

Now, she is part of a unique moment in the Peace Corps’ 60-year history. Since the agency was founded in 1961, it has never been without its legions abroad. More than 150 volunteers like Ms. Smith worked in the U.S. on COVID-19 vaccination programs over the summer, and about 250 have provided virtual support for programs in 27 of the agency’s host countries. But for all intents and purposes, the organization is at a standstill – and a crossroads. 

To the organization’s supporters, the Peace Corps has long been a beacon of American idealism, a way for young Americans to see the world and provide assistance to people in the world’s poorest corners while they do it.

To its detractors, meanwhile, the Peace Corps is a dinosaur, a Cold War-era diplomacy project that has outlived its usefulness. The world is a very different place from what it was in 1961, they argue,