The AWC train is pulling into the station, with one more week of anniversaries worth celebrating. On this date 54 years ago, John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps with an executive order on March 1, 1961. It fulfilled a goal he had expressed as a member of Congress a decade earlier, and campaigned on during his run for president in 1960.

The idea was to send recent college graduates into the developing world, helping locals learn basic skills of self-sufficiency and rebutting negative stereotypes of Americans as imperialists. Kennedy’s vision of the Peace Corps as an engine of cultural exchange and international cooperation was also found in his inaugural address. His famous line to Americans – “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” was followed by this remark addressed to all world citizens: “Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

From an honest perspective, the Peace Corps can be seen as a way to address the world’s problems on the cheap. It costs the country relatively little to send young volunteers into villages. (On the flip side, these emissaries have relatively little experience and training, as some critics of the Peace Corps have noted.) The Peace Corps’ 2014 budget of $379 million might sound like a lot, but in truth it represented about 1% of 1% of the government’s annual budget. The Peace Corps hasn’t ended any world problems with that level of resources, but they have contributed efforts to fight malaria in Africa, and assist with health, education, and nutrition efforts worldwide.

In the end, the Peace Corps represents a vision of what the world could be. (This could be seen as covering for a lack of concrete results, and critics have charged the organization with exporting “emotionalism” above all.) Maybe the most important question to ask is whether we’re a better country with a Peace Corps than without one. An author of a critical report about the organization in 1986 concluded "The Peace Corps is the epitome of Kennedy's Camelot mythology. It is a tall order to expect a small program appended to an immense superpower, to make a difference, but it is a goal worth striving for."

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