Interview with Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams
FrontLines - May 2010
New Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams, a former senior official at USAID, sat down on April 7 in his Washington headquarters office
with FrontLines editor Ben Barber to discuss his plans for the future and the USAID-Peace Corps relationship.
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Aaron Williams
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Q: What are your priorities as
director of the Peace Corps?
What would you like to accomplish
in the next few years?
WILLIAMS: Well, this is a
wonderful time for the Peace
Corps. The president has
issued a call to service to
Americans, and the Peace
Corps is a part of that. He’s
asked us to build the Peace
Corps.
And Americans are
responding. Applications are
up. We’ve got 15,000 applications
for about 4,000 positions,
so we have the demand.
Americans want to serve. And
Congress has been very supportive.
We have strong,
bipartisan support on the Hill.
I have three areas that I’m
focusing on as my priorities.
First of all, we’re going to
expand the number of countries
where we currently operate.
We just announced this
past year we are returning to
Sierra Leone and Indonesia.
And almost every week, I
have either meetings or letters
from our ambassadors in various
countries, or the ambassadors
of host countries, asking
us to either enter for the
first time or expand our programs
in the country or reenter
a country.
And there are many countries
where we expand existing
programs such as TOEFL [Test
of English as a Foreign Language];
education, which
remains our number-one sector;
and health, including HIV/
AIDS and malaria awareness
and prevention.
ICT [information and communications
technology] is
also growing; and small business
development and agricultural
development are other
key sectors.
Q: How many volunteers do
you have today?
WILLIAMS: 7700.
Q: Wasn’t it once up as high as
15,000?
WILLIAMS: That’s right. In
the Kennedy/Shriver era. We’d
like to attain that if we continue
to receive resources.
Growth is my first priority.
The second is innovation. The
Peace Corps is about to celebrate
our 50th anniversary in 2011. I
now have the chance to take a
look at all of our operations
across the board—in headquarters,
in the field—to see how we
can innovate, reform, improve
our processes and our operations.
Q: What are the main goals of
the Peace Corps?
WILLIAMS: Our goals are:
number one, provide Americans
to countries that want trained
personnel to assist them in
development projects; two, give
the people of those countries a
better understanding of America,
to see the true face of America,
shoulder to shoulder, side by
side, working with them at the
grassroots and community level;
and three, to bring that rich, varied
experience back home to
America and enrich our society
and give Americans a broader
perspective on the world.
We’ve got about 200,000
alumni—returned Peace Corps
volunteers—who are leaders in
every sector in America. We
have six returned Peace Corps
volunteers in the Congress. We
have many returned Peace Corps
volunteers who are staff in the
Congress. We have leaders in
government, in public health,
higher education, and business.
There’s a chance to really
engage with that community.
Q: Do many Peace Corps volunteers
lean towards a development
career at USAID or at
other agencies?
WILLIAMS: That’s a great
question. After I was sworn in, I
went to see the Peace Corps in
action, right now in 2010, in the
Dominican Republic, Nicaragua,
South Africa, and Thailand.
Many of the senior officials at
the embassy are returned Peace
Corps volunteers.
And in the USAID mission,
many, many people are former
Peace Corps volunteers or staff.
Then, when you talk to the host
governments, many of the ministers
have been positively impacted
by Peace Corps volunteers in the
past, at a very early age in some
cases; teachers that they encountered,
or mentors, coaches, et
cetera. So they have a very positive
view of the Peace Corps.
Then, when you go out to the
field and look at projects in any
given country and you look at
the leading NGOs—World
Vision, Care, Catholic Relief
Services, Save the Children,
Mercy Corps—many of their
project leaders are returned
Peace Corps volunteers.
Q: What do you look for in volunteers—
what age group, expertise?
Generalists or farmers and
engineers?
WILLIAMS: Enthusiasm and a
willingness to serve. That’s at
the top of my list. Age has no
bearing on it whatsoever. Our
oldest volunteer is 85 years old.
She’s a health care worker in
rural Morocco.
The vast majority tends to be
in their mid to late 20s—generalists,
liberal arts graduates.
That’s still the backbone of the
Peace Corps. We also want the
engineers, the health care specialists. But we take a liberal
arts graduate and we train them
for health projects or to teach
English as a second language or
to work in the ICT areas. We
also train in 250 languages.
Q: Do volunteers still go out to
the villages for long stays?
WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah. Often,
they live in remote areas.
Q: I recall that some years ago
they often stayed in the capital
cities.
WILLIAMS: Well, I think that
that model probably was not
unusual in the ’60s and the ’70s.
But now volunteers work all
over the country, and they really
focus on grassroots, village- and
community-level work. We
want our volunteers to be in the
field, shoulder to shoulder with
people working on projects that
are going to become sustainable
at the village level. Now, there
are some advisors in secondary
cities and capitals, but Peace
Corps volunteers work primarily
at the grassroots/village level. If
you look at our HIV/AIDS programs,
our malaria programs,
that’s where you’ll find a lot of
our volunteers in those sectors,
working in towns and villages.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit
about your own Peace Corps
experience?
WILLIAMS: I served in the
Dominican Republic from ’67 to
’70. I was a teacher trainer my
first two years. I worked in a
program that provided a high
school education to rural schoolteachers.
The average one had a
sixth-grade education.
I rode on horseback and
walked and rode a motorcycle to
visit them and I lived with them
in the villages where they lived
during the week. So I spent the
week out in the countryside with
them and then I spent the weekends
teaching. These teachers
were probably 20 years older
than I was. I was only 20 at the
time. They gave up their weekends
and their entire summer for
two years to enroll and be trained
in this course. This was a tremendous
sacrifice for them and their
families. And it was a marvelous
experience for me. I had a chance
to work with some very dedicated
people, and I like to think I
made a contribution to improving
their lives and the lives of children
they taught.
After two years, I was asked
to go to the Catholic university
in the Dominican Republic—the
first private university in the
nation—to create a teaching program
for their senior students in
the education department.
Q: You didn’t have a graduate
degree in teaching?
WILLIAMS: No. The Peace
Corps gave me the opportunity
to research American teacher
training programs and I created a
course for the university working
with the faculty there. Pretty
amazing to get that kind of
leadership opportunity at 22
years of age.
And I was very fortunate
because I met my wife in the
Dominican Republic, which
changed my life forever. Eventually,
after I got my master’s
degree in business, I chose to
join USAID and had a marvelous
22-year career there.
Q: How do you see the
USAID and the Peace Corps
relationship in Washington and
the field?
WILLIAMS: It is absolutely a
wonderful relationship. Everywhere
I go in the world, I visit
with the USAID mission directors,
many of whom are my
former colleagues and friends,
and we have a very strong
partnership between our Peace
Corps country directors and
the USAID mission.
And this is all encouraged
and supported by all of the
ambassadors where we have
Peace Corps programs. A lot of
these folks are former Peace
Corps volunteers. We are looking
for ways to strengthen and
broaden that relationship.
I have had some preliminary
talks with [USAID]
Administrator [Rajiv] Shah
about ways that we can
strengthen and build the Peace
Corps/USAID relationship.
We’re part of the interagency
Global Health Initiative
he’s leading and we interact
with USAID on PEPFAR
[President’s Emergency Plan
for AIDS Relief] and the Food
Security Initiative. We also
receive significant funds from
USAID’s special project assistance
grants supporting grassroots
projects.
Q: How do you see the young
people today? Do you think
that there’s a rebirth of selfless
international effort to improve
the world?
WILLIAMS: I think you really
captured it in that expression: a
selfless interest in improving
the world. We see that wherever
we go, volunteers who are doing
just absolutely marvelous things
at the grassroots level, working
shoulder to shoulder with people
in the developing world to make
a difference in their lives.
And, of course, what you
receive as a Peace Corps volunteer
is enormous. I mean, as I
did in my own personal
experience in the Peace Corps,
it changed my life forever, put
me on the path to something I’d
never even envisioned before
growing up in Chicago, and so
it happens every day to thousands
of Americans around the
world.
And I guess the last thing I
would say is that from my
standpoint, as you can imagine,
to be asked by the president to
serve as the new director of the
Peace Corps, for me as a
returned Peace Corps volunteer,
to come back to an organization
that has done so much for me in
my life is pretty extraordinary,
and it’s a privilege to serve at the
Peace Corps. .
★
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