The Peace Corps turns 45 this month, and congressional alumni of the venerable service organization could not be happier to celebrate its birthday.

The lawmakers who have transitioned from the Peace Corps to the Capitol recall their years living abroad as community builders with nostalgic fondness and deep, abiding respect for the program. Whether Republican or Democratic, the five House members and one senator who count themselves as RPCVs — that’s returned Peace Corps volunteers, for the uninitiated — share an unbreakable bond.

“All of us, without exception, are deeply grateful for the experience,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who spent the turbulent times of 1966-’68 in the Dominican Republic helping out on rural infrastructure programs. “Many of us consider serving in Congress to be an extension of serving in the Peace Corps … making people’s lives better.”

In a Washington that can seem warped by cynicism and self-interest, where some lawmakers are willing to travel abroad only on a nonprofit’s dime, the open and internationalist mentality of the RPCV lawmakers stands out. Forging a simple life on foreign soil for two years, they said, imbued them with enough inner strength to weather any partisan battle.

Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) spent his two-year term organizing indigent people living in the Medellin barrios in Colombia, encountering desperate conditions and picking up Spanish along the way. Among his fellow volunteers was journalist Maureen Orth, now married to NBC News’ Tim Russert.

“The Peace Corps makes you an incredibly good listener because you’ve got to listen for language, but not only listen to what they’re saying,” Farr said. “It’s looking around at how they’re living. You develop a better understanding of diversities of lifestyles and viewpoints.”

Farr recalled the hard-fought highs and crushing lows of his years in Colombia as equally important in shaping his outlook as an adult. Just before he left the country, a local politician showed up to witness the opening of a new schoolhouse that he and other volunteers had helped the citizens build with no help from their government. The politico, Farr remembered, had the audacity to take credit for the entire project.

“I was wondering if anyone was going to say anything or if this was just the class structure, that local people didn’t take on politicians,” Farr said. When Farr had nearly lost hope, “a little old lady took [the politician] on, shook her finger at him, told him how it was all put together by the villagers, brick by brick, and that all the times they had asked for government help, he had never come by.”

Tragedy also colored Farr’s Peace Corps experience. His mother died while he was overseas, and his 17-year-old sister, Nancy, died shortly afterward while visiting him in Colombia. When Nancy was thrown from a horse during a day in the countryside, far from modern medical facilities to treat her head injuries, the Colombian doctors could not save her.

Despite his sorrow, Farr learned a lifelong lesson: “Your family is your tribe, and you try to hold it together, which is a great value that’s being lost in America,” he said.

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) also lived in Latin America during the 1960s, but joined the Peace Corps for personal reasons.

“I knew I had to grow up, learn more about myself, understand my own worth and what I could contribute,” Honda said. “I knew I had to get out of the country, and I thought, ‘Well, service is a good way.’”

Honda spent his childhood coping with poverty in America, confined to an internment camp with his family alongside many innocent Japanese-Americans caught in the cruel swath of World War II. Serving in El Salvador gave Honda a new perspective that would later draw him to politics.

“I grew up poor. I was sent to a camp. I know what governments can do,” Honda said. “But having been in the Peace Corps, I can see a big contrast, what our country promises to our constituents. If we can hold true to those promises, we have a country that’s worth coming [to] here.”

Newly elected President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961 as a way to harness the energy and knowledge of a generation hungry to begin a meaningful dialogue with other nations.

Peace Corps volunteers often return to America inspired to pursue careers in government or community development, but Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) already knew his life’s path when he traveled to the Fiji Islands with wife Betsy in 1968.

“I always knew I wanted to go into public service,” Shays said. He and his wife joined the Peace Corps soon after their wedding, starting out as teachers but doubling up their workload by helping 10,000 women on the Pacific island nation start a cooperative to sell handicrafts.

The wives of Fiji’s king and prime minister ran the cooperative, Shays said, “so I had a wonderful opportunity to interact with two very capable and strong women.”

The future campaign-finance reformer made crucial changes to the women’s business model, quadrupling the price of handmade items that were slow to sell to Fiji’s flocks of Western tourists.

“They felt a little guilty at first,” Shays said. “I said, ‘If you were middlemen, I’d feel guilty, but this [profit] all goes back to the women in the network. We were just bringing in a basic marketing skill that every American knows.”

Shays’s situation is common for Peace Corps volunteers, as the program works to adapt to the changing needs of its applicants. Business-related projects can be more popular than the arduous infrastructure-building tasks that early volunteers tended to engage in. Rep. James Walsh (R-N.Y.), for instance, served in Nepal as an agricultural extension worker between 1970 and 1972.

Perhaps the greatest test for the Peace Corps will be maintaining its identity as a bastion of American goodwill during the turbulent Iraq war. A Bush administration bid to allow military recruits the option of joining the Peace Corps for part of their mandatory service sparked congressional concern and was ultimately blocked by a group of like-minded lawmakers.

Honda has another priority for the Peace Corps: following through on President Bush’s 2002 call for a doubling of volunteers in the program. Congress never appropriated money to help boost recruitment, and the White House has not renewed its push, but Honda has not given up.

“The president said he wanted to double the volunteers, and I want to be a part of that challenge,” Honda said.