The Next Peace Corps Mission: Peacebuilding in America
After decades spent fostering peace overseas, RPCVs have an urgent new task: rebuilding civic trust at home.
Americans watch in anguish as our nation sinks deeper into a crisis of politicized contempt and violence. As a people, we share far more common ground than is portrayed by the vitriol of many political leaders and media voices. So how can we reverse America’s plunge into self-destructive division? Global experience shows that societies can heal enmity and violence when ordinary citizens join together to work across divides. Americans are already pursuing thousands of local projects to restore civility in public discourse and manage conflicts peacefully. But we must vastly expand this work of peacebuilding, and the nearly 250,000 Americans who have served as Peace Corps Volunteers are a vital national asset in this undertaking.
The fundamental Peace Corps practice of listening and communicating across cultural divides is now critically needed at home to heal the needless enmities corroding America’s democracy and governance. Former Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson—who served as a Peace Corps teacher in Tanzania in the 1960s—is among the peacebuilding specialists now underscoring the urgency of applying those skills to a new mission of national service at home. “These are not normal times,” Carson wrote recently. “Our democratic institutions have been tarnished and severely damaged. . . . At home and abroad, the core of America’s greatness has always been its quest for a more perfect union, a more expansive and inclusive democracy.”
“How could I possibly help?” is a question countless frustrated Americans are currently asking, including Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs). First, we can all help in one way or another; the modes and pathways for building peace are vast and varied. Second, as a group, we’re already doing part of the work. RPCVs habitually engage in community service at higher rates than the average American, and that simple service can be gently adapted into a potent peacebuilding tool.
More good news: American civil society already has a “peacebuilding infrastructure”—a web of community service groups, religious communities, and nonprofit organizations working at the local, state, and national levels to heal divides. Prominent examples include the nationwide cross-partisan network Braver Angels, which holds dialogues among Republicans, Democrats, and independents to restore civil behavior in politics. Another group, Unify America, helps communities create “civic assemblies” to bridge politicized divisions and build local solutions to challenges in housing, healthcare, or economic development.
“How could I possibly help?” is a question countless frustrated Americans are currently asking, including Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs).
Even if we RPCVs might feel unsure of our ability to step into a peacebuilding role, leaders of this national effort are eager to recruit us for the value they see in our Peace Corps experience. RPCVs are not really new to peacebuilding, said Braver Angels CEO Maury Giles, but rather “practitioners coming home, people who have already spent years listening across difference, building trust before solving problems, and treating service as a discipline rather than a performance.” Dozens of RPCVs already work within Braver Angels and, Giles noted, “we don’t need to teach them courageous citizenship. We need to give them somewhere to keep practicing it.”
A National Peace Corps Association survey of its nationwide affiliate groups found that “roughly two-thirds of respondents are looking for new ways to serve across the U.S., and want the RPCV community to explore new acts of service to reduce divisions and conflict in America,” noted NPCA President Carla Brown. Affiliates including the Alliance for Intercultural Understanding, the Peace Corps Community for Refugees, and Partnering for Peace are among the groups already pursuing peacebuilding goals.
Whatever our personal circumstances, peacebuilding offers ways to help prevent violence and heal our conflict-fractured society. American peacebuilding projects use dozens of methods to help individuals, small communities, and the nation at large restore the social connections, neighborly care, and mutual problem-solving that have been central to America’s 250 years of successful nationhood. We can see U.S. peacebuilding operating in at least three broad modes:
Rebuilding social connections. Sociologist Robert Putnam’s 2000 book, Bowling Alone, documented the weakening of America’s social connections since the mid-20th century—the erosion of civic participation and the community networks, from labor unions to bowling leagues, that underpin democracy. We can rebuild these connections through initiatives like Weave: The Social Fabric Project, created by New York Times columnist David Brooks and the Aspen Institute, or Gather, the online initiative launched by former Peace Corps Directors Carol Spahn and Jody Olsen.
“Direct peacebuilding.” The past decade has seen a flowering of U.S. organizations working directly to heal conflict by sponsoring cross-factional dialogues or projects to solve concrete local problems. Besides Braver Angels and Unify America, there are dozens of such groups, including Common Ground USA, Peace Through Action, and UNITE (founded by Tim Shriver, the son of Peace Corps’ first director). Groups specialize in different domains: religious or interfaith peacebuilding; support for credible, peaceful elections; peace education in schools and universities; violence prevention; and more.
America’s traditional patterns of community service. This work, long part of American life, can be leveraged into indirect but powerful forms of peacebuilding. Any simple service project—to improve local health, housing, schools, parks, or the like—can become a peacebuilding engine. The key step is to energetically recruit people from across politicized divides to serve together, thereby rebuilding eroded trust and cooperation.
This problem-solving approach—joining factions across a divide to solve a shared community problem—is powerful. The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) applied this method in the midst of Libya’s 15-year civil war, for example, to halt fighting in several locales. In the southern city of Sebha, USIP-trained Libyan peacebuilders asked warring factions about pressing community concerns. They found that both sides were worried about weddings—specifically, men’s habit of firing celebratory gunfire skyward, only to accidentally kill and injure residents. The peacebuilders helped forge a cross-factional coalition to curb the practice. That campaign built trust and demonstrated the benefits of cooperation, ultimately creating enough goodwill to allow peace talks to halt the fighting.
Liz Hume leads the Alliance for Peacebuilding, an umbrella organization for hundreds of local, national, and global peacebuilding groups. America “needs peacebuilding now more than ever,” with people—especially young adults—”losing trust in their institutions and in each other to do the right thing,” she said recently. “We need … former Peace Corps Volunteers,” she said, whose commitment and skills can expand peacebuilding nationwide and counter our slide toward violent conflict.
“It’s important to recognize that versions of peacebuilding within and across communities have been going on for years,” said NPCA’s Carla Brown. “To bridge these divides, we have to acknowledge and help address their root causes to strengthen community bonds and our sense of shared purpose.”
Amid what is ultimately an existential crisis for our nation and democracy, each American confronts a choice: We can respond by finding a new way to serve—or we can watch passively, in fear and hopelessness, as others sell fear and extremism that breed violence and undermine our republic and democracy. At the dawn of the 1960s, a generation of young Americans—our parents and grandparents—responded to their own chapter of crisis by instigating the Civil Rights Movement and by pressing John F. Kennedy to implement Peace Corps as an engine of service to our nation and humanity. As Kennedy declared in 1961, “now the trumpet summons us again” to confront the dangers of our own moment. We must each choose our response, “with history the final judge of our deeds.”
Meet the Peacebuilders
Chandra DeNap Whetstine
The One America Movement partners with faith communities across political, racial, and religious divides to counter toxic polarization.
As a Peace Corps Volunteer in China (2006–08), Chandra taught English to university students in Bijie, 1,300 miles southwest of Beijing. She also built a leadership program for women on campus, who then formed their own organization to support survivors of an earthquake. That service led Chandra to a career in development, notably with the U.S. Department of Labor and the Christian interdenominational aid group World Vision. Her work has often supported programs to improve the lives of women and people with disabilities.
Over the past seven years, Chandra has helped to build the One America Movement, a peacebuilding organization that works through religious communities. She now holds a master of divinity degree and serves as the organization’s chief operating officer; in this role, her interweaving of peacebuilding and religious commitment is a choice built on faith and pragmatism.
“The toxic polarization in America is not simply a political crisis, but a spiritual one,” Chandra said in an interview. “We want to embed peacemaking into the fabric of religious life in America. A third of Americans participate in religious congregations, so this is a powerful channel through which to change our society and culture.” Indeed, both peacebuilding research and years of global field experience have underscored the particular power of religious peacebuilding, even amid wars.
The One America Movement works by forming networks of religious leaders—both clergy and laypeople—among the nation’s evangelical Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith communities. So far, the organization’s main hubs are located in mostly small and medium-sized cities in states from Virginia to Mississippi to Oklahoma. As One America expands, Chandra said, it draws in new peacebuilders and religious congregations “by holding monthly public workshops online for anyone who wants to learn about this work and join in.”
“RPCVs who are part of religious communities might simply ask themselves, ‘What does our faith teach us about building peace? If my congregation isn’t taking action in line with that teaching, why not?'” Chandra said in an interview. “America’s crisis of polarization is a spiritual crisis, turning us bitter and hateful. But faith is a powerful response.
We don’t need to teach [RPCVs] courageous citizenship. We need to give them somewhere to keep practicing it – Maury Giles
RPCVs who are interested in living the values of their faith to build peace can connect their faith leaders to our network.” She sees Peace Corps as an introduction to the basics of building peace, and said, “I’m eager to see my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers join this effort.”
Doug Teschner speaking with reporters
Doug Teschner
Doug served as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1971 to 1973, inventorying cedar and cork forests in the mountains of Morocco. After returning to New Hampshire to work in experiential education and community mental health, he served for 12 years in the state House of Representatives. In 1998, he somberly warned his fellow legislators that civility in American public life was dangerously declining and urged them to help demonstrate a better way.
Doug returned to Peace Corps in 2008 as a country director. After Ukraine’s pro-democracy uprising in 2013–14 led to Russia’s invasion of Crimea, Doug was forced to evacuate PCVs. In Guinea, the Ebola epidemic compelled him to manage another evacuation; afterward he stayed on with Peace Corps staff to help battle the outbreak through community education.
All the while, the enmities of American political life were metastasizing. Back home in 2019, Doug crossed paths with an old friend, singer Peter Yarrow of the iconic folk-music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Together, they lamented the rising hostility and violence around politics, “and Peter told me about this organization that brought people together across the divides,” Doug recalled.
That group was Braver Angels, which has become one of America’s most prominent peacebuilding initiatives. Braver Angels gathers Republicans, Democrats, and independents for conversations, with the goal of restoring humane behavior and listening among people who may disagree politically. Doug joined the group and organized workshops designed to rebuild basic respect and cooperation among legislators in the chamber to which he once was elected. “My message to the New Hampshire legislature is that how you treat each other is more important than any legislation you’ll pass,” he said.
Today, Doug volunteers as Braver Angels’ New England regional leader. Last year, along with two other peacebuilders, he published a book titled Beyond the Politics of Contempt an easily absorbed guide that offers any concerned American “practical steps to build positive relationships in divided times.” In the book and on a related Substack site, Doug notes that America’s crippling divisions are driven largely by “conflict entrepreneurs”—in politics, media, and elsewhere—who amass “money, power, and influence by selling enmity” that gridlocks governance and risks violence.
Like many RPCVs, Doug describes Peace Corps as “a life-defining experience for me.” He underscores that the skills we learn in Peace Corps service—respectful, careful listening and cooperation across cultural divides—give RPCVs a head start as effective peacebuilders, a role our country desperately needs all of us to step into now.
James Rupert (Morocco 1980–82) is a former international affairs correspondent for The Washington Post and writer/editor for the U.S. Institute of Peace.
