Hard Corps

The Evolution of Service, One Corps At a Time

A Domestic Version of Peace Corps

In February 2026, Peace Corps announced the launch of its newest program: The Tech Prosperity Corps. This new service opportunity, which aims to facilitate international development and economic growth in Peace Corps host countries through the adoption of artificial intelligence, marks the latest example of Peace Corps’ continuing legacy today. In the decades since Peace Corps’ founding in 1961, its success has sparked a movement of service-based organizations, many of which have incorporated the word “corps” into their name.

The word “corps” itself has long carried associations of shared mission, discipline, and collective identity. Derived from the French word for “body,” the term has historically been used to describe organized groups united around a common purpose, from the diplomatic corps to the United States Marine Corps. In the decades since the Peace Corps’ founding in 1961, that language of service and esprit de corps has inspired a wide range of civic and volunteer organizations to incorporate the word into their own names. Although the Tech Prosperity Corps may be the latest service program inspired by Peace Corps’ service-based mission, it is certainly not the first.

The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program was created as a domestic analog to Peace Corps and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Along with several other service programs, it was later consolidated under a new name, AmeriCorps, when President Bill Clinton signed the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993.

“The AmeriCorps name reflects the idea of a corps of Americans serving their nation’s communities, echoing the tradition and esprit de corps of the Peace Corps in bringing Americans together through service,” said Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi, acting head of AmeriCorps. “When I think about the term ‘corps,’ I think about the moments when people choose to show up for one another. It’s about showing up day after day with people who share your mission and your vision, even when it’s hard. But your individual efforts matter when you’re in a corps, as it’s combined with the effort of others in acts of service.”

Around the same time, AmeriCorps took its modern shape in 1993, and other service-oriented programs began forming in the nonprofit and nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector. One such organization was EarthCorps, which was founded by RPCV Dwight Wilson (Chile 1981, Honduras 1982–83) a decade after his Peace Corps service ended.

CorpsAfrica founder Liz Fanning (opposite) with a group of volunteers on-site in Rwanda, and volunteers from EarthCorps (top left) and AmeriCorps/California Service Corps (top right, bottom left) in action. More than a few national service organizations have been inspired to incorporate the word “corps” into their names. California’s Chief Service Officer Josh Fryday has called Peace Corps the “gold standard” of service organizations.

EarthCorps accomplishes its mission by bringing volunteers to the United States to work alongside other international volunteers on environmental projects in the greater Seattle-Puget Sound area.

“EarthCorps brings together small, multinational teams to do year-round programs that include a wide range of environmental restoration projects,” Wilson said. “‘Corps’ is about collaboration and working on a team with people from around the world to strategize, plan, and fix something. It’s hard work, but it’s something the world needs a whole lot more.”

Likewise, Atlas Corps was created in 2006 by former Peace Corps Associate Director for Global Operations Scott Beale to bring trained professionals to the United States to work and serve in the private sector.

“Atlas Corps’ mission is to develop leaders and strengthen organizations through an overseas fellowship to address critical social issues,” Beale, now CEO of ISC2, a nonprofit association for cybersecurity professionals, said. “Americans have had volunteers overseas for 50 years, but there have been few opportunities for young professionals from the Global South to come volunteer in the United States. So Atlas Corps is almost like a ‘reverse Peace Corps Response,’ where young professionals come from overseas to work in the United States for 12 to 18 months.”

Today, the program has the name Atlas Corps Leadership Institute and is part of the international exchange program Cultural Vistas. In the years since it began, Atlas Corps has brought fellows from over a hundred countries to serve with U.S.-based organizations such as Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Grameen Foundation, the American Red Cross, and Microsoft’s Social Impact Office, among others.

“Peace Corps and AmeriCorps were a direct inspiration for Atlas Corps, because ‘corps’ means there’s a team of people working together in a mission-driven endeavor,” Beale, who also serves on the board of the National Peace Corps Association, said. “Like Peace Corps Volunteers, Atlas Corps Fellows do it for the experience, the ability to give back, and the network they get out of it. Being a part of a corps means you have people who share your values, and the mission will continue even after you finish your term of service.”

“During my service, a young Moroccan woman asked me if she could be a Peace Corps Volunteer, and I had to say, ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s only for Americans,’” Fanning said. “Her question dogged me for 20 years, because young Africans deserve the opportunity to help their own country. The Peace Corps model is the best for international development: living with people for a long period of time, eating what they eat, sleeping where they sleep, learning their language, and becoming part of the community by building trust and friendship. We launched CorpsAfrica on March 1, 2011, the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, as a way of celebrating its incredible success by passing the baton to young Africans.”

Since its start in Morocco in 2011, CorpsAfrica has evolved to place over 1,700 volunteers in 11 countries across the African continent. CorpsAfrica volunteers initially serve a one-year term in their home country, engaging in community-led development to implement small-scale, high-impact projects that are identified by the people.

After their initial year of service, CorpsAfrica volunteers can serve again as an “exchange volunteer” in another African country.

“To me, the word ‘corps’ is about a movement; it means there’s a shared vision and mission that people can get behind,” Fanning said. “Host communities pay for a quarter of the project’s budget (at least 10 percent in cash), because community investment in a project is an important aspect of sustainability. It’s about skin in the game, local ownership, and dignity. CorpsAfrica is contributing to a culture of philanthropy in Africa by building a grassroots, Pan-African youth movement.”

Modern-Day Service at the State Level

Today, traces of this movement also appear in state-run U.S. service programs like the California Service Corps. In addition to overseeing the federally funded AmeriCorps program in California, the California Service Corps manages three other service programs all launched in 2020: College Corps, Climate Action Corps, and Youth Service Corps. Each of these service programs creates opportunities for young professionals and low-income students to access benefits through their service placements, ranging from debt-free pathways to college to professional development and employment opportunities.

“‘Corps’ means being a part of something bigger than yourself,” said Josh Fryday, director of the California Service Corps. “There’s no greater community than when you work toward a common mission with people who come from different backgrounds and perspectives. The result is a common, shared experience that allows you to feel like you’re part of a community for the rest of your life.”

Now the Tech Prosperity Corps is the latest addition to the ‘corps’ movement, advancing international development through service both at home and abroad.

“The through line is that Americans are called to service as part of their DNA,” Tahmasebi, at AmeriCorps, said. “From the founding of the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps to the new initiatives like Tech Prosperity Corps today, we as Americans are optimistic and have a desire to connect with one another. We feel that the sum of our parts is greater than our individual contribution.”

The Peace Corps Model, Exported Around the World

When President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps 65 years ago, he did not invent international volunteer service—Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas had already launched in 1958. But Peace Corps helped popularize the idea of government-backed volunteer service abroad, inspiring countries across the world to create programs of their own.

In the United Kingdom, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is an international development charity that draws volunteers from around the world to serve in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Japan was the first country to launch a government-backed service program, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), in 1965. Since then, 57,000 Volunteers have served in 99 different countries. Germany followed suit in 2008 with its Weltwärts program, a government-funded volunteer program that has sent around 50,000 young Germans to support development projects abroad. One year later, in 2009, South Korea consolidated multiple ministry-run volunteer efforts into World Friends Korea, a government program that is now similar in scale to Peace Corps, with more than 50,000 volunteers deployed to over 30 countries since it began in 1990.

World Friends Korea was launched in 2010

Other countries have created their own service programs, albeit on a smaller scale. Canada’s volunteer tradition dates back to 1971, when the nonprofit Canada World Youth organization created a reciprocal exchange program in which participants go abroad and international counterparts come to Canada. In France, the Service Civique program began in 2010 and enrolls hundreds of thousands of French citizens in national civic service programs both domestically and internationally each year. Then, in 2018, Australia initiated its Australian Volunteers Program, which now works across 25 countries in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, with a focus on skills-based capacity development.

Taken together, these nonprofit and government-backed programs demonstrate how the Peace Corps model of international development through volunteer service has spread across the globe, adapted by countries with different cultures, political systems, and approaches to civic engagement.

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Scott King is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Grenada 2017–20) and the founder and executive director of Regia Multimedia Services.