Colleen Lord, age 15, of Chester, Pa., for her question:
WHEN DID THE PEACE CORPS START?
The Peace Corps is an organization of American men and women who work to raise living standards of people in developing nations. Congress created the Peace Corps in 1961 as a United States government agency. In 1971, the Peace Corps became part of ACTION, a new agency that combined several volunteer programs.
The idea of an army to work for peace was more than 50 years old when President John Kennedy set up the Peace Corps. An American philosopher named William James first suggested the idea in a speech in Boston in 1904.
James developed his idea more fully in a pamphlet that was published in 1910. He suggested forming a youth peace army to handle important but dangerous civilian projects.
During World War II and in the years following, many private groups thought about setting up internal work camps. They followed the example of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization which started its first international projects in 1917.
In January, 1960, Rep. Henry Reuss (D Wis.) and Sen. Richard Neuberger (D Ore.) asked Congress to study the possibilities of a youth corps program. Later that year, Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D Minn.) asked Congress to create a Peace Corps. Kennedy then used the proposal as a campaign issue in the 1960 presidential election.
On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy set up the Peace Corps. Later that year, Congress made the agency permanent.
The first volunteers trained at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1961. Sargent Shriver was the first director of the Peace Corps. He served until January, 1966.
In the early 1970s, about 7,500 Peace Corps volunteers and trainees were serving in 60 countries. The United States also supported the efforts of other nations to set up similar organizations.
Agencies similar to the Peace Corps have been set up by Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany.
The corps in foreign countries vary in name, size, length of service and in other ways. But all of them, like the Peace Corps, enlist volunteers from among their citizens to serve in other countries.
Several nations also have national volunteer corps that work within their own countries. In some cases, national corpsmen work in cooperation with United States Peace Corps volunteers.
The Peace Corps sends men and women into a country only at that country's request.
To qualify for service in the Peace Corps, a person must be a United States citizen and at least 18 years old. The Corps has no upper age limit.