On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order that established the Peace Corps, an organization of volunteers that work in countries around the world addressing agricultural, economic, environmental, educational, and medical problems. Presented as an idea to university students in an impromptu speech, Kennedy formed the organization that would send over 240,000 Americans around the world as harbingers of peace and cooperation.
About six months before its official establishment, during his campaign for the presidency, then-Senator John F. Kennedy visited the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He arrived late, at 2 a.m., but with 10,000 students waiting to greet him, Kennedy gave a short, improvised speech on the steps of the Michigan Union. In it he said:
How many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend on the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the efforts must be far greater than we have ever made in the past.”
In March of the next year, after winning the election and becoming president, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924 and established the peace corps, asking his brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver to be its first director. The first group of Peace Corps volunteers left in August 1961, headed to Ghana and Tanganyika (presently Tasmania) to provide service. The service was very popular among recent college graduates, and the program grew to 15,500 volunteers by 1966. Since then, over, 240,000 volunteers have served in 141 countries around the world. Today, around 2,400 volunteers are serving with the Peace Corps.
Learn more here:
- https://www.peacecorps.gov/about/history/founding-moment/#:~:text=Following%20up%20on%20the%20idea,in%20five%20countries%20in%201961.
- https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/peace-corps
- https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-10924
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Peace-Corps
- https://www.peacecorps.gov/peace-corps-week/
