Peace Corps has changed with the times

It will be 50 years ago on Tuesday that President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps, he said, to show the world a different kind of American.

Two years later, Floyd Sandford signed up.

It would be his first experience abroad (“I had been to Canada. Once,” the Coe College emeritus biology professor told me when we met last week.)

Call it a cliche, but life was simpler back then.

“Back in the '60s, most people's perception of an ‘American' was someone in the military or someone in an embassy working for some developmental agency - some bureaucrat,” he said.

“The Peace Corps wanted to show the people of the world that Americans were just regular people, too.”

Thanks to global media, today's “American” is more likely to look like Justin Bieber or the cast of Jersey Shore.

And digitally fueled, cross-cultural fusion means that even in Nigeria - where Sandford taught high school science for the Corps - the kids wear their jeans half down their backsides, just like the homegrown hip-hop artists they idolize.

The Corps is no longer the only way for young (or old) idealists to immerse themselves in global issues.

Even the upcoming anniversary celebration has been complicated - by the death of founder Sargent Shriver and by allegations the program mishandled some volunteers' reports of sexual assault.

Program leaders say they have new sexual assault prevention trainings and response procedures. Still, it's yet another reminder that things today are anything but simple.

Things change.

But so has the Corps - adding technology, business and environmental programs to the original teaching and public works. Nearly 8,700 volunteers serve today. More retired people are joining up than ever before.

And decades after their service, former volunteers like Sandford remain passionate advocates of the experience.

Like a lot of Corps alum I've met, Sandford's not too shy to sing the program's praises to anyone who will listen.

In fact, he'll be talking about it at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Marion Public Library. Some other Peace Corps alumni will speak at 7 p.m. at the library in Iowa City.

Although I suspect that they'll be hard pressed to tell you everything they learned from their experiences in the Peace Corps. Sandford struggled for words when I asked, and he replied: “It totally changed my perspectives on life, my priorities.” I've heard recent volunteers say the same thing.

I guess not everything has changed.

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