eo 10924 (12. 269)

Established on this day by executive order from John F Kennedy and authorised by the US congress later in September, the Peace Corps is an independent agency of the federal government that trains volunteers and deploys them to local communities around the world to assist developing countries in health and environmental programmes, education, empowering women and the marginalised and making resilient polities that enshrine American values of democracy, free markets and entrepre-neurship, respecting local customs and norms by embedding participants with a command of the prevailing language and living under the same general conditions as their outreach group. Pitched as missionaries of democracy to provide technical advice and assistance, the Corps dispatched some nine hundred volunteers to fifty-two partner countries in its first year, Kennedy committed to its formation in the final days of his presidential campaign—realising the potential to genuinely help people in post-colonial Asia and Africa and counter stereotypes of US imperialism and hegemony—against his opponent Nixon who called the proposal a magnet for draft dodgers and a “cult of escapism.”