On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an Executive Order "establishing a Peace Corps on a temporary basis," and the following September Congress passed the "Peace Corps Act." The concept of the Peace Corps had been mooted in Congress several months before President Kennedy's public espousal of it, but it was his forceful promotion of the idea, and the positive response of the American people, that made the concept a reality. In the fall of 1961, the first Peace Corps Volunteers went abroad.
The excitement generated by men and women - many of them young, but not all - who have volunteered to offer their time, energy, and talents to their brothers in Latin America, Asia, and Africa has caught on. Individual Americans have volunteered by the thousands; organizations such as CARE, the YM and YWCA, the World Health Organization, the Agency for International Development, People-to-People, Food for Peace, and many others have blended some of their programs with the Peace Corps; private businesses and corporations have contributed their experience and know-how; schools and teachers have cooperated in training Peace Corps Volunteers. Moreover, several European countries, and even some of the Peace Corps' own host countries, have set up similar organization - all based on the concept of self-help. For it is this idea, to help people help themselves and to teach - not to perform acts of charity for charity's sake - which distinguishes the Peace Corps and which is its identifying attribute.
The 325 photographs, taken by Peace Corps photographers, and the text and captions in this book reveal many of the stories that have been written into the Peace Corps' experience. The Volunteers are shown in training and at work in the remote plains and mountains, cities and villages of their host countries. There is a panorama of landscape here and of "manscape," too: Bolivian farmers, Peruvian slum dwellers, Chilean ragpickers, Venezuelan children, Afghan mechanics, Pakistani mental patients, Nepalese students, Moroccan housewives, Tunisian construction workers, Sierra Leone road builders, Tanzanian mothers, Togolese fisherman are all parts in the vast montage. Of the Volunteers themselves, episodes of dedication, toil, triumph - and of frustration and failure - are recorded. The pictures were chosen from a file of more than 10,000. The selection from this voluminous file has resulted in a collection of superb photographic art.