Country Data

Peace Corps Country Director: James “Jaime” Kuklinski
Peace Corps Staff: 2 USDH, 4 FSN, 35 HCN PSC

Program Overview

Forty-eight years ago the government of El Salvador requested Peace Corps Volunteers. Twenty Volunteers arrived in April of 1962. By 1977, approximately 150 Peace Corps Volunteers annually were working in El Salvador in fourteen programs. In 1980 after two attacks against the Peace Corps office and vehicles, operations were suspended. Approximately 13 years later, Peace Corps returned to El Salvador in April of 1993.

Peace Corps El Salvador (PCES) currently has a total of 131 Volunteers working in four sectors: sustainable agriculture & environmental education, rural health & sanitation, community organization & economic development and youth development. The PCES post is also known for being the "go to" post for many recent Peace Corps pilot programs and initiatives: safety and security mapping, in-house training, migration to a modern computing platform, improved financial management system, deployment of PC safety and security officers, etc.

The Peace Corps offices are located in Colonia de San Francisco, a secure suburb of southern San Salvador with easy access to public transportation and Volunteer accommodations. A training center is operated year round in San Vicente, a department capital 1.5 hours east of San Salvador. The offices maintain the traditional modest separation between Peace Corps (a "people to people" program) and the policy-making agencies of the US Embassy while still affording both entities the opportunity for mutual support and involvement.

Primary Program Activitie

Peace Corps El Salvador operates programs in four areas arrived at through negotiations between the US and Salvadoran governments and outlined in the current Country Agreement:

Sustainable Agriculture/Environmental Education: The goals of this project are to increase the use of sustainable agricultural practices (soil conservation, diversified agricultural production, reduced input farming, rural enterprise development and marketing, etc.) and to promote environmentally sound practices as well as environmental awareness among students, educators and community members. The project was redesigned in FY08 to emphasize agro-business among farmers.

Rural Health and Sanitation: The goals of this project focus on health education prevention on the community, family and individual level.  Community interventions include training health committees in first aid and vector prevention, trash management, improving nutrition and increasing access to a diverse diet.  Additional areas included Women’s health education initiatives like early detection measures and child/maternal health,  STI prevention and reproductive health.  Currently, the overall project is undergoing a review and the HIV/AIDS section is being expanded to include not only youth and women but now adult men as well.

Community Organization and Economic Development: The project goals are to promote a more empowered, educated and active citizenry, to strengthen local organizations in management skills, and to improve economic opportunities for youth, women and individual entrepreneurs through business skills development. These goals encourage a more participatory and popular consultative development process.  The focused on gender equality, attention to the poorest municipalities and the strengthening of economic opportunities for historically relegated groups, are some of the government initiatives that this project addresses.  Civil society organizations are the beneficiaries of technical assistance to facilitate the community development process and to build up skills and abilities for them to take advantage of economic opportunities.

Youth Development: This project’s goals are four: Prepare youth for the challenges of adult life through life skills education and promoting healthy living; Provide Salvadoran youth with the tools necessary to successfully navigate the work force; Improve community educators' knowledge and skills in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language and Information Technology; And support and train the over-arching community network in stronger, more effective service to youth.