Peace Corp Essay

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It is necessary for the United States to support the Peace Corp financially. The Peace Corp supports many different countries that have been poverty-stricken. According to the Peace Corp, “In 1961, the first Peace Corp volunteers accepted assignments to serve in six countries. Since then, nearly 210,000+ men and women have served in 139 countries” (Coverdell). Most people know that the Peace Corp does many good things and makes an impact on many different people in different countries. Most people don’t realize all of the good things that the Peace Corp does for the volunteers. Volunteers get many benefits, travel to and from the countries they will be serving, spending money while they are serving and many get their students loans forgiven. …show more content…

According to Seymour M. Hersh in his book The Dark Side of Camelot, “In early 1964 Frank Mankiewicz, then working for the Peace Corp, was ordered by his superiors to discuss the pending War on Poverty with the attorney general, who had championed the legislation. “I must say,” Mankiewicz told me in a 1994 interview, “I have never been as appalled at the sight of a human being since seeing a concentration camp as a nineteen-year-old infantryman. He was so wasted, like he disappeared into his shirt” (Hersh, 455). President Kennedy told the Soviet Union that there were “hundreds of men and women, scientists, physicists, teachers, engineers, doctors and nurses… prepared to spend their lives abroad in the service of world communism.” According to Christopher Mathews in his book, Kennedy and Nixon, “To improve the third world in its daily life, he created the Peace Corp” (Mathews, 194). Before president Kennedy was voted into office, the United States did not have a program like the Peace Corp. Just a few days after President Kennedy took office, he asked his brother in law, R. Sargent Shriver, to lead a Peace Corp force. He led the group and that then quickly molded the organization of the Peace Corp. After about a month of debate among members, Shriver outlined a seven-step program for entering the Peace …show more content…

Shriver was asked by President Kennedy to lead the organization and he reluctantly agreed to do so. On Shriver’s first trip abroad as a director, he received invitations from leaders in India, Ghana, and Burma to send Peace Corp volunteers into their country. The first countries to participate with the organization were Tanganyika and Ghana. The Peace Corp was approved as a permanent federal agency within the state department by congress. Kennedy signed the legislation on September 22, 1961 and the Peace Corp was made an independent

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