Ever tried—ever failed? The short summer of cooperation between CARE and the Peace Corps
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702014564669 |
| Author | Heike Wieters |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Subject Matter | The Lessons of History |
International Journal
2015, Vol. 70(1) 147–158
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702014564669
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The Lessons of History
Ever tried—ever failed?
The short summer of
cooperation between
CARE and the Peace
Corps
Heike Wieters
Humboldt Universita
¨t zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Abstract
This essay focuses on the short period of cooperation between the private humanitar-
ian non-profit organization Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere, Inc. (CARE)
and the new US government volunteer service agency, the Peace Corps, in the early
1960s. It describes CARE’s role as a private midwife to this new governmental player
and traces the reasons for both the rise and the demise of the initially promising public–
private partnership in development aid in Colombia. The essay thus analyzes the con-
ditions that allowed (and ultimately hindered) genuine processes of transfer of expertise
between private and governmental players in a field that was just developing.
Keywords
NGOs, CARE, Peace Corps, public–private partnership, development cooperation,
knowledge transfer, humanitarianism, Colombia
Avant propos
How do we measure success? Most historians abstain from bold judgments about
bygone scenarios. While professionally speaking this is, of course, a smart thing to
do, success and failure remain essential categories when it comes to understanding
historical experience and modern notions of progress.
1
It is important to take the
rationales and standards against which historical players measure success or failure
Corresponding author:
Heike Wieters, Saisir l’Europe, Forschungsgruppe Sozialstaat, Humboldt Universita
¨t zu Berlin, Unter den
Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany.
Email: wieterhx@geschichte.hu-berlin.de
1. Jean-Pierre Boutinet, Anthropologie du projet (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1990), 88; for
a more business history-related approach, see also Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson,
Reimagining Business History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 149.
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