#55 - Jason Carter

I'm just curious, what do Americans who don't know anything about what's going on in some of these far off places gain from having young volunteers or having volunteers strike the young overseas?

There's two things, right? The Peace Corps has always had this third goal of coming back and and teaching people about the world.

And I think that's real.

The returned Peace Corps volunteers have inspired a lot of people to do a lot of things and they've come back and done things that are important.

But I think to me, you know, as we have embarked in the last 10 years, on this almost new understanding of how global our community is.

We know that if someone gets sick in central China, it can affect us in the United States, right? We know that this world is one that is now small enough where what's going on around it is going to impact us.

And I think that there's a lot of fear out there.

It's very easy to make enemies.

It's very hard to make friends.

And it's especially hard to make friends across barriers of geography and culture, language.

And the ability to begin the process of breaking those barriers down is how we are going to get to a safer and more secure home right so we're going to get to a vibrant dynamic economy i mean you know you're where we are all right now about to embark on a several decade change um where over the next 50 years the fastest by far growing population in the world is in sub-saharan africa The working age population of the world is going to shift to Sub-Saharan Africa in many, many ways and in other places in South Asia.

And so we are all going to be working alongside, we're going to be working with, among a bunch of different kinds of people.

And the folks like Peace Corps Volunteers who are able and understand the possibilities of building those personal connections are going to be crucially important to us and to the rest of the world, because everyone is going to be seeking out not just digital connection and financial connection, but real human connection.

And as we do that, the people who've done it before are the ones who I think are going to be able to lead that.

Given all of the attention on international development work and what happened with USAID and Doge, I wanted to ask what lessons about development work the Carter Center has learned over the decades that this has been going on.

What are the truths that have sort of emerged?

So that's a huge question, right? It really is.

I think we are now, like it or not, embarking on sort of an international development 2.0 moment, right? And sort of the way I've heard it said is the era of aid is over.

And I think we're really not talking about, quote, aid.

We're not talking about health.

We're talking now about partnership.

We're talking now about what is it that we can do with communities, not what we can do for communities.

And I think that's a huge part of what the Carter Center has always done.

It has always been about partnership at the very local level.

Guinea worm disease will be the second human disease ever eradicated, and it will be eradicated not with any medicine, but it will be eradicated with neighbors talking to each other about how they filter their water.

I'm just curious, what do Americans who don't know anything about what's going on in some of these far off places gain from having young volunteers or having volunteers strike the young overseas?

There's two things, right? The Peace Corps has always had this third goal of coming back and and teaching people about the world.

And I think that's real.

The returned Peace Corps volunteers have inspired a lot of people to do a lot of things and they've come back and done things that are important.

But I think to me, you know, as we have embarked in the last 10 years, on this almost new understanding of how global our community is.

We know that if someone gets sick in central China, it can affect us in the United States, right? We know that this world is one that is now small enough where what's going on around it is going to impact us.

And I think that there's a lot of fear out there.

It's very easy to make enemies.

It's very hard to make friends.

And it's especially hard to make friends across barriers of geography and culture, language.

And the ability to begin the process of breaking those barriers down is how we are going to get to a safer and more secure home right so we're going to get to a vibrant dynamic economy i mean you know you're where we are all right now about to embark on a several decade change um where over the next 50 years the fastest by far growing population in the world is in sub-saharan africa The working age population of the world is going to shift to Sub-Saharan Africa in many, many ways and in other places in South Asia.

And so we are all going to be working alongside, we're going to be working with, among a bunch of different kinds of people.

And the folks like Peace Corps Volunteers who are able and understand the possibilities of building those personal connections are going to be crucially important to us and to the rest of the world, because everyone is going to be seeking out not just digital connection and financial connection, but real human connection.

And as we do that, the people who've done it before are the ones who I think are going to be able to lead that.

Given all of the attention on international development work and what happened with USAID and Doge, I wanted to ask what lessons about development work the Carter Center has learned over the decades that this has been going on.

What are the truths that have sort of emerged?

So that's a huge question, right? It really is.

I think we are now, like it or not, embarking on sort of an international development 2.0 moment, right? And sort of the way I've heard it said is the era of aid is over.

And I think we're really not talking about, quote, aid.

We're not talking about health.

We're talking now about partnership.

We're talking now about what is it that we can do with communities, not what we can do for communities.

And I think that's a huge part of what the Carter Center has always done.

It has always been about partnership at the very local level.

Guinea worm disease will be the second human disease ever eradicated, and it will be eradicated not with any medicine, but it will be eradicated with neighbors talking to each other about how they filter their water.