What Does Peace Corps Do for America?

Perhaps it is Time for a Fourth Peace Corps Goal: To Promote the Benefits of Peace Corps Service for the Individual, the Community, and the Country?

Every Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV)’s experience is unique and challenging. Facing the unknown, learning a language (or two), developing sensitivity to very different cultures, growing new relationships, identifying and completing projects, and overcoming physical difficulties are but a few of the tasks that PCVs face. When they return home, their stories tend to revolve around the experiences they had during their service and the impact they had in the countries they served. But service in the Peace Corps also affects the United States in ways that are equally important to document.

The Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Oral History Archival Project (OHAP) has been collecting the stories of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) through individual interviews since 1997. OHAP currently has over 700 audio recordings of interviews archived in the John F. Kennedy Library, and over 1,000 archived at the Nunn Center for Oral History in the University of Kentucky Libraries.

In their interviews with members of the OHAP team, RPCVs talk about the impact serving in the Peace Corps had on their lives after returning home. Given today’s political climate, the team believed it was important to highlight these impacts and to demonstrate some of the benefits that the Peace Corps has brought to the United States.

At the July 2025 Peace Corps Connect conference, OHAP led an interactive workshop called “Enriching American Communities” to tap into the Peace Corps community at large and encourage the RPCVs attending to emphasize how their service enriched them and their communities after returning home. Following the workshop, OHAP invited all RPCVs to fill out a questionnaire posted on its website, https://peacecorpsoralhistory.org/. The responses were numerous and diverse, but there were many similar insights as well. This article summarizes the themes that emerged from OHAP’s outreach and makes recommendations to the Peace Corps community about highlighting the importance of the Peace Corps to the United States.

Career Development and Choice: Most Peace Corps Volunteers have recently graduated from college and are often unsure about their next step in life. Their Peace Corps experience either clarified a career trajectory or reinforced one they were considering.

• Peace Corps service was the most important influence in my career choices.
• My service sent me down the path of youth development, mentorship, and informal education.
• Returning from overseas only confirmed my resolve to dedicate my life further to a life of public service.
• Peace Corps service was a deliberate attempt to ‘shake things up’ mid-career. It left me reinvigorated and set me on a new and fulfilling path.

Employability: The OHAP team found that RPCV’s reported that employers value the skills developed during Peace Corps, such as dealing with difficult situations, the ability to see things from another’s point of view, the acquisition of a different language(s), the stick-to-itiveness work ethic, and other unique work traits gained through the service.

• While I was young, my PC experience counted enormously from my employer’s point of view.
• My services made me a standout candidate for several jobs because of my experience on multiple continents and the ease of building rapport with multiple stakeholders.
• I believe I got my first teaching job after the Peace Corps because I had been a volunteer; it was an integral part of my resume.

Job Performance: Volunteers pointed to the unique skills gained through service as having helped their job performance at home.

• One way that the Peace Corps enhanced my job performance was the ability to work with individuals with diverse backgrounds and working styles. Learning to collaborate across linguistic and cultural differences helped me develop stronger communication and leadership skills as well as become confident in my ability to do so.
• I have used skills I gained in the Peace Corps in every job I have had since returning, which include communication, community engagement, youth engagement, teaching community organizing, public speaking, relationship-building, grant writing, and evaluation.
• It gave me a sensitivity to what it was like at the end of the delivery system for government services other than those provided by local government.

World View: One interesting theme that OHAP interviewers noticed was that Peace Corps service encouraged volunteers to see the United States and the world through different lenses.

• When I returned, I much more greatly appreciated what we had in the US. I think, if anything, my Peace Corps service made me more caring, altruistic, and progressive, especially in terms of social justice/causes.
• I saw the good that public service could do all around the world, and realized what a unique and special program the US has in Peace Corps. We are blessed with so much here in the US, and I feel it is our duty to give something in return to our world neighbors.
• Serving in the PC allowed me to see the US ‘from the outside,’ that is, understanding the impact of US policies and our image abroad from the perspective of host country nationals.

Giving Back to Their Home Communities: Of no surprise, the team saw the spirit of volunteerism come up frequently in the RPCV’s responses. Specifically, having experienced the positive impact volunteers could make in communities in other countries strengthened their resolve to continue to volunteer in their communities at home.

• This service strengthened my life of volunteer work in my community. I’ve been a regular volunteer with the non-profits in my city, serving on boards of directors, etc. PC helped me better understand how to recruit and retain other volunteers over time.
• A sense of service has been well ingrained in me since my time in the Peace Corps. Since my service, I’ve dedicated my life to fundraising and volunteering for meaningful causes near and dear to my heart.
• This led me to reconsider my role in my community and consider how I could become an engaged and supportive member, and eventually a leader to help improve my neighborhood. This led me to be much more active both in volunteering and for political causes.

Personal Development: Facing and overcoming the many challenges volunteers faced in the Peace Corps gave them more self-confidence, helped them recognize skills they possessed, and led to developing new skills.

• It just generally made me more resourceful, self-sufficient, and stronger, kind of like walking through fire and coming out the other end. It really was a foundational, growing up sort of experience that completely shifted everything in my life.
• I still have the self-confidence I gained as a Peace Corps volunteer. I appreciate simple joys in life, which makes me a happier person in general. I know that building community is also critical, and many of the choices I have made in life reflect that.
• I was able to see the difference between showing how things are ‘supposed to be done’ and exchanging diverse thoughts to find the best solution. These principles enhanced my career, my ability to communicate, and my role as a leader.

As part of the Peace Corps community, we are all aware of the three goals of the Peace Corps:

1. To Assist the Peoples of Interested Countries in Meeting Their Need for Trained Men and Women

2. To Help Promote a Better Understanding of Americans on the Part of the Peoples Served

3. To Help Promote a Better understanding of Other Peoples on the Part of Americans. Perhaps it is time for a fourth goal: To Promote the Benefits of Peace Corps Service for the Individual, the Community, and the Country.

We can realize this fourth goal in much the same way that the third goal is accomplished. RPCVs often give talks at schools, community centers, and other venues to share their stories and educate audiences about the cultures and communities in which they served. As part of those talks, they can include the benefits that they accrued and brought back to their communities. This may require a bit more thinking on the RPCV’s part, but the OHAP team has noticed through the oral history interviews and through the survey responses that it doesn’t take much for RPCVs to come up with their own take on the fourth goal.

The Peace Corps program can include these benefits in its outreach and recruitment efforts. Finally, RPCV’s should assess all the benefits they received from service in the Peace Corps and spread the word to friends, family, and others, so that communities across the country start to understand that the Peace Corps benefits the United States in a myriad of ways.

If you are interested in sharing more about the proposed fourth goal with the Peace Corps Oral History Project, please reach out to us at https://peacecorpsoralhistory.org/ to schedule an interview. Serving in the Peace Corps is life-changing, and we RPCVs love to share that excitement with our friends, families, neighbors, colleagues, and communities. Let’s leverage that into an opportunity to
introduce why Peace Corps matters to our country, too.