True mutuality is to be achieved best in two-way or even multilateral exchanges of young people. Consideration ought to be given to receiving young people for service in our country as well as sending our youth overseas, and to provide for increasing international participation in the program. Aspects of exploitation and self-interest, often inherent in our very acts of helpfulness, can be reduced by bringing youth from other countries to America to participate in social service projects. The spirit of mutuality, likewise, needs to be expressed in the negotiations establishing projects. The oversea projects of the Peace Youth Corps should grow out of genuine requests of host governments. Preliminary discussions with governments should be made in an atmosphere free from coercion or necessity and should explore the possibilities of mutual cooperation and exchange. No program should be undertaken except as it grows out of clearly defined agreements between the host government and the management of the Youth Corps. Programs overseas should have practical continuity. The cessation of the activities of the Corps must not be the end of project activities. To insure continuity, the projects should be integral to existing institutions and programs. The role of the Peace Youth Corps should be to help people achieve their own objectives rather than to impose new goals on them or to create new institutions which may be too complex or too burdensome for the people to carry on their own. The goal of the Youth Corps should be to help people help themselves in terms of their own aspirations, institutions, and developing resources. 2. ORIENTATION AND TRAINING Training should emphasize proper motives of service so as to remove attitudes of condescension and superiority in the approach of the corpsman. The corpsman must possess or develop a genuine desire to be helpful and a willingness to build mutual trust rather than any desire to dominate or pressure for change. Practical language study should be a part of the training. Appreciation should be developed for the culture, beliefs, and way of life of the people to be served. Whenever practicable, training should be carried on within a physical context similar to that of the project, rather than exclusively in academic institutions or in American establishments abroad. Few potential corpsmen know how the other half of the world lives. The cultural shock that will be experienced initially by some corpsmen might be sufficient to make them permanently ineffective. Therefore, training should include not only orientation in this country but also an early introduction to a different culture in order to provide opportunity for any possible cultural shock before going to the permanent project overseas. The fields of service into which corpsmen will go are often so alien to anything in their own experience that opportunity ought to be given for firsthand observation and practice in a nearby but foreign culture before final acceptance for service overseas. Existing health, education, and welfare projects within continental United States as well as in Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Jamaica might well serve as training locations for periods of 1 or 2 months. This intern experience in an unfamiliar culture would provide a selection and screening device not available in other forms of testing used in the program. 3. INITIAL PROJECTS The initial projects of the Peace Youth Corps should be situated in places: of generally recognized human need in order to more readily sell the American public on the purpose and value of the Corps. The Corps will undoubtedly be attacked by many who now oppose foreign aid, but these critics will find it harder to criticize the program if it is at work alleviating pronounced human suffering. The initial projects should be carefully selected and organized with the possibility of making early, tangible accomplishments in relieving human suffering or solving immediate basic problems. To insure some early successes, the first units should be under the supervision of leaders who have had comparable and successful experiences in oversea programs. Several American voluntary service agencies with service programs overseas have personnel resources that could provide tested leadership for early units of the Corps. Likewise, early units might include, in each, one or two corpsmen who have had comparable experience in oversea service programs. The proposed Youth Corps will be able to expand in direct proportion to its concrete accomplishments. The formation of early projects should be aimed primarily at intensive programs of depth rather than at extensive programs which may be superficial. The success of the Peace Youth Corps will depend not as much on the number of projects nor on the number of American youth involved, as on the solid achieve ments of the program. Growth of the Corps should come through experience and achievement rather than through popular recruitment programs and propaganda media. 4. MOBILE SERVICE TEAMS In addition to the more normative projects in the fields of health, education, agriculture, and welfare, the Peace Youth Corps might include a well-formulated network of mobile service teams, composed both of mature technicians and younger volunteers, which could move with dispatch to any point on the globe to give immediate assistance in disaster situations. Such a plan might require stockpiling of emergency supplies in regional warehouses, and a quick reference for immediately available personnel for emergency service where needed. 5. REMUNERATION OF CORPSMEN Mutuality will be increased in the program to the extent that youth live with the people, and will be decreased to the extent that they are set apart from the people. One determinant of the social distance created will be the salary received by the youth. The sincerity and effectiveness of the program can be increased by providing only maintenance for members of the Youth Corps. Maintenance might include transportation, room, board, clothing, medical care, and a small personal allowance. The cash allowance should not be enough to encourage the corpsman to participate in leisure activities beyond the reach of those with whom he lives and serves. Any additional financial remuneration, if provided, should be retained for the corpsman and paid when he returns home following his service overseas. This additional remuneration might be in the form of scholarship aid for additional professional or technical training. 6. RELATIONSHIP TO SELECTIVE SERVICE Service in the Youth Corps should not be the basis for automatic exemption from the draft. However, acceptance for service in the Youth Corps should provide local draft boards with sufficient reason for temporary draft deferment, and upon completion of 2 or more years of Youth Corps service such service might be considered as fulfillment of Selective Service obligation. These matters, however, depend on a coordination of the Peace Youth Corps and the Selective Service System which can be better achieved through administrative directives than through legislative policy. The Youth Corps should be recognized as an alternative service program for properly certified conscientious objectors. 7. OPERATIONS AND ADMINISTRATION In the early stages of the Corps, there should be provided a full complement of very able supervisory personnel, in residence at projects, between project and host country, and between project and the Corps agency in the United States. The administration and fiscal policies of the Peace Youth Corps should be freed as far as possible from Government bureaucracy in order to work creatively and flexibly. If it is not possible to provide sufficient freedom of operation within Government, then a civilian agency might well be created to administer the program under general directives and financing established by the Government. In conclusion, it is the considered judgment of the Brethren Service Commission that the proposal for a Peace Youth Corps is basically sound and that it will render a significant service abroad in assisting community development programs in health, education, agriculture, and welfare. Motifs of the program must include full recognition of the basic interests of the "little people" of the world as well as the wholesome desires of American youth for service overseas. Careful planning and adequate support can make this program a helpful instrument for peaceful change in many parts of the world. A corps of well trained and properly motivated American youth serving hand in hand with village people, who themselves welcome additional help on their most pressing problems, might well bring a new climate of international good will and cooperation. The program should reflect at every level of involvement such basic concepts as mutual trust, human dignity, shared leadership, and helping people to help themselves. In short, the Youth Corps should reflect the best of our American traditions in community building without the intention of imposing any of our values or institutions upon others. The true measure of success for the Peace Youth Corps will be the degree of its effectiveness in helping people in other lands to achieve their own best values in community development. The Brethren Service Commission expresses its willingness and desire to participate as fully as possible in the proposed Peace Youth Corps and offers its support and facilities as needed in the program. SUGGESTIONS PERTAINING TO THE NATURE AND OPERATION OF THE CORPS Mr. Row. Without repeating that statement today, we would like to reaffirm its relevance for the rapidly emerging Peace Corps. Based on our own deep interest in the declared objectives of the Peace Corps, and growing out of our own experiences in these general types of service activities over several decades, we desire now, with your permission, to offer in somewhat categorical terms, several suggestions on the nature and operation of the Peace Corps. 1. The Peace Corps should never be used as an instrument of the cold war. Yet this temptation will be very great especially when it has its most pronounced successes. The Peace Corps is a creative, challenging, even explosive idea. But it is inappropriate as a warhead, and when so used, it will turn out to be a dud, or even worse, a boomerang upon us as a people. The 2. It follows that the Peace Corps should not be used as a front for partisan world politics, even our own. The Peace Corps will succeed only as it succeeds in meriting the enthusiasm and responsible participation of the people with whom and for whom it serves. potential response will freeze in its tracks the moment people abroad see the Peace Corps as any kind of bait for any kind of trap. Certainly our experiences abroad as a nation these last years ought to sear this danger into our consciousness. 3. The Peace Corps posture should be lodged as fully as possible in international terms and organizations. The Achilles heel of the Peace Corps conceivably might be its nationalistic image abroad. Our own motives seem clear and idealistic to us. Even our friends abroad sometimes see them less favorably. The best guarantee against this charge of selfish motivation will be to internationalize the program in terms of policy, organization, personnel and projects. The United Nations should be involved much more in consultation and programing. 4. The Peace Corps should never cease emphasizing people-topeople values. This means more than lip service; it involves a steady deemphasis upon Government bureaucracy and redtape, both of which seem to be growing at a frightening rate in the present temporary Peace Corps agency. It means maximum use of the private and voluntary services of our Nation in definition of objectives, selection, and management of projects, recruitment and training of corpsmen, and in interpreting the Peace Corps to the American public. It means substantial use of younger and semiskilled volunteers who can live in close, friendly, and helpful contact with simple village people. To that, Mr. Chairman, we would like to add our own strong affirmative judgment to the distinguished Senator Symington for his observations. OPPORTUNITY OFFERED AMERICA AND THE WORLD BY THE PEACE CORPS In conclusion, we believe the Peace Corps offers America and the world an unparalled opportunity to strengthen the tired sinews of peace and brotherhood by joining the hearts, minds, and hands of peoples of many lands in mutual sharing and helpful service to persons and places of great need. The Peace Corps cannot do everything for everybody, everywhere, despite the publicity on it. But it can do something for many people in many places. So let it begin. Let it begin simple enough to be understood by even the least and the remotest. Let it grow by experience, and not projection, and through the hearty acceptance of those whom it offers to serve. And most of all, let it emphasize its peaceful and people-to-people values and keep the necessary but vulnerable government-to-government backstopping in the background. Sirs, we hope you will be led to act favorably on this important legislation. Thank you. PROPOSED PROJECT IN HAITI Senator SPARKMAN. Thank you, Mr. Row. Senator Aiken. Senator AIKEN. I notice, Mr. Row, that the Brethren Service Commission has made a proposed project available to the Peace Corps. What is the nature of the project, and where would it be located? Mr. Row. Well, sir, we have no really-we have not very far gone along with it. Senator AIKEN. I see. Mr. Row. We have proposed a possible cooperative project in Haiti, from which I have just returned, and where I think such a cooperative endeavor would be generally received very favorably there, and I think would be needed in the Caribbean at this time. Senator AIKEN. Have you been stationed in Haiti yourself? Senator AIKEN. Does your Commission have a station in Haiti now? Mr. Row. No; we have some workers there, and have some cooperative relations. I think another man to appear before you today, Dr. Hostetter, represents an agency that has a larger program there, but ours is similar in intent. Senator AIKEN. Do you have someone a few miles outside of Pétionville which is maybe 15 miles from Port-au-Prince? Mr. Row. No. I believe you may refer to the Mennonite Central Committee Volunteers, very similar to our own activities. Senator AIKEN. The reason I am asking is because I visited a mission I would say about 15 miles up in the hills from Port-au-Prince where the people were working 24 hours a day, and doing about onethousandth part of the work that was there to be done, and I was trying to find out if it was your church. Mr. Row. I regret, sir, that is not our project. We have Mr. Snell, who is our representative there, and the project about which we have talked with the Peace Corps agency is located in the very northeast, in the north province, right near the Dominican border, and it would be a hospital, medical service and related activities. Senator AIKEN. I am glad you are considering Haiti. There may not be too much glamor there, but there is a lot of work to be done. Mr. Row. The neediest area in the Western Hemisphere, I think. Senator AIKEN. Yes. Thank you. Senator SPARKMAN. Thank you, Mr. Row. Next is Mrs. Helen Crowley, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Washington, D.C. STATEMENT OF MRS. D. HOMER CROWLEY, MEMBER, NATIONAL BOARD, WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM Mrs. CROWLEY. Mr. Chairman, I am Mrs. D. Homer Crowley, of Baltimore, Md., a member of the national board of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and its referent on UNESCO. The legislative office of our organization is at 110 Maryland Avenue NE., Washington, D.C. I am representing them in support of the Peace Corps bill, S. 2000, introduced by Senator Humphrey, Senators Fulbright and Gore of this committee, as well as seven others. NEED FOR A GREATER UNDERSTANDING AMONG PEOPLES The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has gone on record many times in support of programs planned for the establishment throughout the world of those economic, social, and political conditions which will help to bring peace and freedom to all nations. We believe that an essential preliminary to lasting peace is greater understanding between the peoples of the world through personal contact and firsthand knowledge. When President Kennedy signed the Executive order for the establishment of a pilot project for a Peace Corps, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom approved heartily, for the league felt that such a program should become a vital link in our foreign aid program. Governmental plans for the Peace Corps are an overdue acknowledgement of the success achieved by many peace workers who, through private initiative, for many years have gone abroad to work shoulder to shoulder with people of other cultures. The league believes that the experiences which private organizations have had in this field will be of great value to new workers and are therefore glad that such organizations are being asked to cooperate with the Government in this venture. In his March 1 message, President Kennedy said: Our own effort should only be a first step in a major international effort to increase the welfare of all men and improve understanding among nations. |