There are both good and bad to the Peace Corps system. I don't mean it is inherently bad, I mean bad in the sense that it shows how dependent we are on the largesse of others, it points up the failure of our education system, and also creates dependency. Good side, well many Sajhaites have already written about that above. I agree with it all. True, that they are leaving is an indication of the worsening situations in Nepal. I have known only a handful of pc friends (one of whom is my boss right now). But, frankly I have seen a number of countries do well without PC volunteers. Eg. India, Bhutan. Also somebody wrote in the Nation weekly (in Letters to the Editor section) pointing this out, which somehow stuck me. The gist of the letter was: Peace corps is fine and all, but it should not go on forever. The gradual phase out plan has to be there also. Somehow, to even initiate this phase out plan, the Nepali government needs to take up the slack, invest in targeted human development and harvest enough homegrown teachers for the country's education sector. Certainly peace corps has contributed to harvesting home grown teachers. But the irony is all this largesse allows our govt to neglect or cop out of rural education sector altogether. Which became clear to me through my hikes in and around the valley rim. Oh just visiting the Chhapakharka school, sorely under-funded, above Sundari jal made me realize that. It is likely that the inhabitants there will be relocated (with or without compensation), and the school closed, since it falls in the Shivapuri National Park. Investing in rural education in remote place would, I assume, prepare teachers (some at least) in the next generation exactly where they are needed the most. But this is not happening, which is why I am saddened that the Peace Corps are leaving now, leaving certain pockets of the rural education sector in a limbo. As per the letter in Nation Weekly, in Bhutan, there are no peace corps, no Jesuit volunteers, all English teachers are homegrown. All students learn in English from grade 1 onward and are on average better speaker and writer of English than Nepali. Literacy is up, gender gap narrowed, national pride is up because of self-sufficiency in the primary/secondary education sector. True and sad that the idea of self-sufficiency is underestimated in today's Nepal (as is indicated by the letters from the Sajhaites above) because everybody loves philanthropy (not all of which have good motives) these days. Well, if America is involved, well it can't be wrong, right? Well you can have peace corps, jesuit volunteers, youth ambassadors, christian missionaries and a host of others in Nepal teaching our primary/secondary school children, or you can have properly educated home-grown Nepali teachers teaching our students, if you get the policies and implementation right. Bhutan, being Bhutan, is however following a different model. It is doing without peace corps and indian teachers in primary and high schools with flying colors, showing it can be done because the government is aggressively taking the lead. In our case, govt has copped out of everything save for bribes, corruption, and obediently following the dictates of India, and other countries, and the power that be that hand-picked them. Bhutan is clever in one respect: although it is dependent on foreign aid, it typically uses its own home-grown human resources to utilise the foreign aid. In the case of Nepal, well you have peace corps, missionaries, youth ambassador and VSOs come riding on the aid. Having said enough, I leave it up to you to decide which country, whether Bhutan or Nepal, is following a better model and, therefore, setting a better example. I myself am still debating this.