Launched in 2002, Chinese Youth Volunteer Overseas Service Program dispatches outstanding Chinese young volunteers to host countries to carry out long-term volunteer service within a specified time through the way of open recruitment, voluntary registration, centralized selection. Overseas volunteer service can promote direct understanding with people of the recipient countries and gain their trust, which consolidate and enhance the friendship between the states. It will make great effect in facilitating the establishment of the image that China is one of the responsible global powers.
Since Chinese youth volunteer action started late and its experience is still in the accumulation, many fields need to be further strengthened and improved such as the system construction, operation mode and funding, etc. As a mature and excellent volunteer project, American Peace Corps not only has systematic training mechanisms, vertical management mechanism, but has the perfect resettlement mechanism, which makes the Peace Corps attractive among American young people. Therefore, Chinese overseas volunteer service program can learn from the Peace Corps’ successful experience, combining with Chinese present actual situation to create a path of youth volunteer action with Chinese characteristics.
This article is pided into five parts. The first part introduces the related information, the content of activities, function expansion and achievements of the Peace Corps. The second part involves the emergence and development of Chinese Youth Volunteer Overseas service Program. The third part discusses the enlightenment of American. The fourth part points out the possible problems that China should pay attention to. The last part is the conclusion.
2. American Peace Corps
Kennedy believed that the ideal connection is the connection between the people and the people. The governments rise and fall, whereas the eternal friendship and impression between the people will be perpetual(蒋灏2005).He hoped that the United States can guide the independence movement of the Third World countries in the United States way, so that the values of the United States can be disseminated and strengthened so as to achieve the purpose of curbing the expansion of communism and gain an age in the contest for the Third World countries against the Soviet Union.
2.1 A brief introduction to the Peace Corps
The Peace Corps was born in the Kennedy administration of the 1960s and was the product of the Cold War. After the Second World War, the world situation has undergone tremendous changes. The United States and the Soviet Union have lost their common enemies, so the potential contradictions between the two countries have increasingly sharpen. The original intention of establishing the Peace Corps was to take advantage of the overall economic and cultural superiority of the United States to compete with the Soviet Union. American culture and values were exported to the emerging developing countries through the Peace Corps, which would help bring the third-world countries into the western coalition led by America.
In the 1950s, the image of the United States had been greatly damaged in the world because of its domestic racial discrimination, the policy of Eisenhower's rigid anti-national war, and the inferior quality and misconduct of American diplomats. The United States hoped to prove its value in countries around the world, especially in developing countries that are unfriendly and even hostile to the United States through the influence of the Peace Corps.
The Peace Corps is an organization engaged in international volunteer work, mainly sending volunteers mainly consisting American youth who have completed formal university education and possess enough knowledge and skills to the villages and cities of developing countries. They have dealings with people of middle and lower classes in the developing countries, engaging in teaching, agriculture and community development, health care and other works. They provide technical assistance for the local people in face to face and hand by hand way to help them improve their educational level, promote the development of agriculture, health care and community and improve the living condition of grass-root class. 和平队对中国青年志愿者海外服务计划的启示研究(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_24823.html