New Demographic Goal for the Peace Corp

The Peace Corp is targeting a new group of people -not the fresh out of college young crowd,- but a much older group:

Today, about five per cent of the Peace Corps’ 8,079 volunteers are 50 or older, many of them serving as teachers. The number of applications from people in that age group has jumped nearly 40 per cent this year. That’s 9.4 per cent of the total number of applicants, the highest percentage in the 47-year history of the corps.

There’s a few reasons for this - the first being more demand. More and more baby boomers are looking to serve as they retire. Second is the fact that elders are respected and revered in many cultures, so older Americans automatically bring a new set of factors.