The Idea That Wouldn’t Die
Let’s face it: Peace Corps has seen better days. In the past year, six programs have announced closures or canceled cohorts, including South Africa, Mozambique, and Ethiopia—a host country since 1962—and dozens of staff positions have been cut both at headquarters and abroad. The agency, once firmly independent, has seen the State Department and Congress pledge closer oversight. Recruitment is down, with more than half (55 percent) of available Volunteer placements going unfilled, compared with just 6 percent in 2019. But before we declare the end of JFK’s bold experiment, consider another truth in this 65-year story: Peace Corps has...
Hard Corps
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....
Peace Corps Returns to Syunik
When 30 American volunteers were sworn into the U.S. Peace Corps in Yerevan on May 21st, one detail stood out above the rest: for the first time in six years, some of them would be deployed to Syunik—Armenia's southernmost region, bordering both Azerbaijan and Iran, and long at the center of one of the post-Soviet world's most protracted territorial disputes. Before the ceremony ended, they sang the Armenian national anthem alongside the crowd; a small but telling sign of the months they'd already spent immersing themselves in a language and a culture, most Americans know little about. The last Peace...
“Bigger Than Peace Corps”
California Service Corps is the largest state-based service program in the United States, and the program is on track to place more than 10,000 volunteers across the state in 2025. Indeed, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom proudly calls the program “bigger than the Peace Corps,” a comparison Josh Fryday, chief service officer of California Service Corps, says stems from the inspiration Peace Corps provides as the “gold standard” of American service opportunities. WorldView’s Robert Nolan recently spoke with Fryday about the program, how it might be replicated in other states, and what federal funding cuts to AmeriCorps, which makes up part...
Show Up, Stand Up
Dear Peace Corps Community, This issue of WorldView arrives at a worrisome time. As I write, Peace Corps and the values it promotes are under threat like never before, with Peace Corps just the latest government agency to suffer substantial cuts at the behest of the current administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. So far, this has resulted in a roughly 40% reduction in Peace Corps staff at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and up to a 25% reduction in local staff at some Peace Corps country offices, which is especially troubling. These cuts are currently underway. The...
Domestic Dividend: Part III
From its Cold War–era founding, Peace Corps has always carried national security implications. When President John F. Kennedy created the agency through an executive order in 1961, he directed its initial funding to come from the Mutual Security Act of 1954, a post–World War II law that provided economic and military assistance to developing nations. Peace Corps was formalized into law a few months later, and now more than 240,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in over 60 countries as a key pillar of United States national security. “U.S. national security has historically rested on a three-legged stool: defense, diplomacy...
The University Pipeline
At the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA), we proudly celebrate institutions that uphold the Peace Corps legacy of service, global citizenship, and intercultural understanding. The 2025 rankings for Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities, released by the Peace Corps, reflect the enduring commitment of these academic institutions to cultivating global leaders who are equipped to make a difference in communities around the world. Topping this year’s list is the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with 46 Badgers currently serving in 30 countries. A steadfast supporter of the Peace Corps mission, UW–Madison holds the No. 2 all-time spot with 3,074 alumni having served since...
Through Service, Comes Peace
Dharamsala is a bustling market town in the western Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Nestled deep in the Himalayan foothills along the northern section of the India-China border, it became the home of the Tibetan government-in-exile when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959. These days, the Tsuglagkhang Complex, in Dharamsala’s McLeod Ganj neighborhood, is like a tiny piece of Tibet—with an active monastery, a museum, and, of course, the Dalai Lama’s residence. Nirav Shah (Zambia 2013–15) has long been fascinated with the Dalai Lama and the Nobel Prize winner’s philosophy, so when he realized he had 53 days of...