One might also ask why there is approximately one volunteer sent to Tonga for every 3,800 Tongans but only one sent to Tanzania for every 245,000 Tanzanians. Or what the logic is of having one volunteer for every 2.5 million Mexicans when tens of thousands of Americans live in Mexico, millions of Mexicans live in the United States, and the two countries are among each others’ largest trading partners. The reason, in many cases, is that someone simply decided on a number and no one asked if it made much sense. Of course, closing a program in one country and transferring its resources to another requires explanation and large expenses, and is often resisted by the State Department and by zealous, vocal former volunteers who hate to see programs in their countries shut down.

Some will argue that wherever there are poor people the Peace Corps has a role. But with the Peace Corps’ 8,000 volunteers spread out across more than 70 countries, giving each one such a small presence guarantees that no one can say with any authority if the agency is making a difference or not.

Says who? Since its founding in 1961, the Peace Corps has probably sent more development workers overseas, now upward of 190,000, than any other organization. But if the Peace Corps is a development organization, then it’s a bit like the late, bug-eyed comedian Rodney Dangerfield who, no matter what happened, claimed, “I don’t get no respect.”

Indeed, if the Peace Corps were as successful at development as its literature and many volunteers and staff members attest, one would expect other organizations and scholars to cite it as a model. Yet pick up any of the recently popular books on development by Paul Collier, William Easterly, or Jeffrey Sachs, and you won’t find a single reference to the Peace Corps. Tony Blair’s 464-page Commission for Africa report? Not a word. “Beyond Assistance,” the 215-page report of the HELP Commission on foreign-assistance reform? Just three passing mentions.

The reason the Peace Corps is overlooked as a development organization has a lot to do with the youth and inexperience of the majority of its volunteers. Equally important is its unwillingness to decide if it is a development organization or an organization with a mission “to promote world peace and friendship,” as stipulated by Congress in the Peace Corps Act. It would like to be both, but finds itself falling short on both objectives because it cannot decide which is the more important.

Many Peace Corps staff and volunteers see development work as a burdensome obligation undertaken only to legitimize the cultural exchange aspects of the agency. But without a focus on economic development and an improvement in standards of living, the Peace Corps is really little more than an extended, government-sponsored semester-abroad program. For applicants, the Peace Corps emphasizes the personal experience, not the volunteer’s development impact. That, of course, is not how the Peace Corps pitches itself to foreign governments, to whom it promises significant technical development assistance—only to provide predominantly recent college graduates who may or may not have any useful skills to offer.

The real problem is that the Peace Corps has never done a serious job of evaluating its impact. If it is a world peace and friendship organization designed to “help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served,” then, as a start, it ought to ask the peoples served if they even know which country Peace Corps volunteers come from. If it’s a development agency, then it needs to undertake rigorous measures to assess its impact. Currently, it does neither but rather relies on biannual surveys in which volunteers comment on whether they think they are making a difference. It’s a bit like asking a bunch of doctors how they think they are doing without ever talking to the patients—or even checking to see if they are still alive.

Not always. People everywhere almost always get a kick out of hearing a foreigner speaking—or trying to speak—their language. In small villages around the world, a foreigner who can use local parables correctly or dance the sacred traditional dance, or who appears content to sit around the village circle for hours on end, is a curiosity, an amusement. Lifelong attachments can and do grow. In Cameroon, dozens, if not hundreds of times, I was asked what had become of so and so, a volunteer who had served 30 or even 40 years earlier. I loved that many people had such fond memories of volunteers. For better or worse, people often loved “their” volunteers as much for the volunteer’s willingness to buy rounds of drinks as for any concrete thing he or she might have achieved.