Dodd Introduces Landmark Bill to Expand and Reform The Peace Corps - Part 1

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of its Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps and Global Narcotics Affairs, introduced today the Peace Corps Improvement and Expansion Act of 2009. Senator Dodd is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, who served in the Dominican Republic.

The bill combines a reform and growth strategy for the Peace Corps. The bill increases funding in order to achieve the goal of doubling the size of a reformed, streamlined and more effective Peace Corps. It requires the Peace Corps to engage in a strategic assessment of all aspects of its current operations, from volunteer recruiting, training and management, to the distribution of volunteers throughout the world. Based on this assessment, the Peace Corps is required to create a one-year and five-year strategic plan in order to reform, modernize and grow the agency. For 48 years, the Peace Corps has stood as a uniquely American institution, said Dodd. What other great nation would send its youth abroad, not to extend its power, not to intimidate its adversaries, not to kill and be killed, but to build, to dig, to teach, to empower and to ask nothing in return? And for 48 years, those young men and women hundreds of thousands of them, myself included have returned stronger, wiser, and inspired prepared to live uniquely American lives of service and accomplishment. For half a century, the Peace Corps has shaped not just these American lives, but the identity of all Americans: who we are as a people, and what we hope to achieve in the world. It is my hope that with the passage of the legislation, we can ensure that the Peace Corps continues in this great tradition while meeting the challenges of the 21st Century.

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