Proposed by John Kennedy on the campaign trail in 1960. The idea of American volunteers scattering around the world to promote democracy and development came to epitomize the sometimes contradictory youthful commitment and liberal initiatives within a Cold-War framework. Organized by Sargent Shriver and Bill Moyers in 1961, the Peace Corps recruited 70,000 volunteers over the next decade. It sent them out after training rather weak in language and skills and strong on theory and physical and psychological training. Once abroad, these Americans found themselves less pioneers and saviors than uneasy participants in negotiations about the future that called into question their own values and identities—especially among minorities and women cast into unfamiliar settings. The Peace-Corps process became cooperative and open rather than developmental; in this way it may have helped shift American awareness of the non-European world towards a more complex global consciousness as Fritz Fischer argues in Making Them Like Us (1998). In later decades, the Peace Corps improved training and selection for useful skills, while operating on a smaller scale, especially under hostile Republican regimes. Its alumni found places in the Carter administration and in academic and policy circles.