According to senior staff at Peace Corps El Salvador (PCES), the U.S. Peace Corps is tightening its belt worldwide in anticipation of a tough budget year for U.S. development agencies in 2011.
An email sent to all Peace Corps El Salvador volunteers last week detailed some of the changes that will be happening here in El Salvador and worldwide as a result.
According to the email, Peace Corps worldwide is scaling back its previously planned expansion by half. The organisation will still be trying to increase the number of volunteers by 1,000 per year, from the current 8,500 to 9,500. But as recently as October, Peace Corps officials had been planning for an increase of 2,000 per year. (see: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1629). This modest growth is likely to disappoint many who had hoped that with President Obama's tenure the Peace Corps would gain strength and standing as an international development agency.
Furthermore, Peace Corps staff have been instructed to cut the number of in-country projects. In El Salvador, this means that the Environmental Education program (my project) will be "absorbed" by the Community/Economic Development project. Currently Peace Corps El Salvador has four operational project areas: Youth Development, Environmental Education/Sustainable Agriculture, Rural Health, and Community/Economic Development. The Sustainable Agriculture component will be effectively eliminated by this move.
According to the email, El Salvador is not the only country in which Peace Corps is de-emphasising agriculture. "Across Central America, Agricultural Projects may be downsized or discontinued," it reads.
What will this mean for volunteers' sustainable development work in El Salvador and similar countries? Peace Corps El Salvador staff insist that it will "attempt to preserve programmatic goals", so it is possible that simply combining PCES projects into two larger ones will cause a few headaches for staff but maintain as a major goal the promotion of sustainable development and environmental education.
But it seems likely that specific emphasis within PCES on agriculture/environmental issues will decrease. As an example, out of our trainee group of 15, which entered in July 2010, nearly all of us had educational/work backgrounds in environmental, agriculture, or science fields. Agriculture and environmental issues were also the (at least putative) focus of half of our training. I worry that, with 'absorption' by the Community Development program, there will be far fewer incoming trainees with science/agricultural backgrounds, thus decreasing the likelihood that they will undertake these types of projects as volunteers. This in a country where the majority of people work in agriculture, and the vast majority of poor people work and live in rural areas and rely on farming for their food security.
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