Ever tried—ever failed? The short summer of cooperation between CARE and the Peace Corps

Abstract

This essay focuses on the short period of cooperation between the private humanitarian 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 conditions that allowed (and ultimately hindered) genuine processes of transfer of expertise between private and governmental players in a field that was just developing.