March 13, 2005: Headlines: COS - El Salvador: Knox Village Soup: When Ben Jenkins started his Peace Corps service in a rural mountain area in Northeast El Salvador in 2001 he didn't know about old feuds between neighbors
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March 13, 2005: Headlines: COS - El Salvador: Knox Village Soup: When Ben Jenkins started his Peace Corps service in a rural mountain area in Northeast El Salvador in 2001 he didn't know about old feuds between neighbors
When Ben Jenkins started his Peace Corps service in a rural mountain area in Northeast El Salvador in 2001 he didn't know about old feuds between neighbors
When Ben Jenkins started his Peace Corps service in a rural mountain area in Northeast El Salvador in 2001 he didn't know about old feuds between neighbors
Peace Corps: Changing lives around the world, and at home
By Christine Parrish
WALDO COUNTY (March 13, 2005): When Prospect native Ben Jenkins started his Peace Corps service in a rural mountain area in Northeast El Salvador in 2001 he didn't know about old feuds between neighbors. Fortunately for him, many local people had never seen an American in the flesh and their curiosity got the better of them.
"I was so clueless," said Jenkins, whose initial goal was to improve agriculture on the steep deforested slopes where the poor soil was being washed away. "I didn't speak Spanish very well and I would just blunder through these complicated conversations. In a way, it kind of helped. For a while I was the local exhibit and people would say 'Let's see what he'll say today.' Then, they would have to talk to people they usually wouldn't talk to just to make sense of what I was trying to say."
It was a mutual education: Jenkins realized he could not be effective promoting soil conservation if basic needs such as clean drinking water and medicine were not available. In turn, the villagers realized Jenkins had some good ideas.
Flexibility is something Peace Corps looks for when recruiting volunteers and Jenkins fit the bill. He did help with farming and soil conservation but his larger goal turned out to be helping set up community planning boards of men and women from diverse groups and training them to move forward after he left.
[Excerpt]
"I went to El Salvador with lots of ideas about agriculture," said Jenkins, who found those ideas were barely relevant to people who had not yet found a way to work together and have a voice that could be heard.
"After two years, not long before I left, we started working on a big project: getting a road in to allow for better marketing," Jenkins said, adding that the road was an essential step toward a better standard of living. "They needed to apply for a USAID road grant. I taught them how to write the grant, but then I was gone."
Jenkins wondered if the planning board would hold together after he left.
The town faltered in applying for a second Peace Corps volunteer to continue Jenkins' work, but last week Jenkins realized that his work there had made a difference. The town finished the USAID grant, which Jenkins knows took hundreds of steps that could have been missteps along the way in a town where few people know how to read or write. And they applied for another Peace Corps volunteer. Neither are easy to get; there are far more requests than money or volunteers.
They got both.
"It means the planning board is working," Jenkins said, clearly encouraged by the news. "They're doing it."
When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
 | The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in over 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related reference material in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can use the Main Index to find hundreds of stories about RPCVs who have your same interests, who served in your Country of Service, or who serve in your state. |
 | RPCVs in Congress ask colleagues to support PC RPCVs Sam Farr, Chris Shays, Thomas Petri, James Walsh, and Mike Honda have asked their colleagues in Congress to add their names to a letter they have written to the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, asking for full funding of $345 M for the Peace Corps in 2006. As a follow-on to Peace Corps week, please read the letter and call your Representative in Congress and ask him or her to add their name to the letter. |
 | March 1: National Day of Action Tuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went. |
 | Coates Redmon, Peace Corps Chronicler Coates Redmon, a staffer in Sargent Shriver's Peace Corps, died February 22 in Washington, DC. Her book "Come as You Are" is considered to be one of the finest (and most entertaining) recountings of the birth of the Peace Corps and how it was literally thrown together in a matter of weeks. If you want to know what it felt like to be young and idealistic in the 1960's, get an out-of-print copy. We honor her memory. |
 | Make a call for the Peace Corps PCOL is a strong supporter of the NPCA's National Day of Action and encourages every RPCV to spend ten minutes on Tuesday, March 1 making a call to your Representatives and ask them to support President Bush's budget proposal of $345 Million to expand the Peace Corps. Take our Poll: Click here to take our poll. We'll send out a reminder and have more details early next week. |
 | Peace Corps Calendar: Tempest in a Teapot? Bulgarian writer Ognyan Georgiev has written a story which has made the front page of the newspaper "Telegraf" criticizing the photo selection for his country in the 2005 "Peace Corps Calendar" published by RPCVs of Madison, Wisconsin. RPCV Betsy Sergeant Snow, who submitted the photograph for the calendar, has published her reply. Read the stories and leave your comments. |
 | WWII participants became RPCVs Read about two RPCVs who participated in World War II in very different ways long before there was a Peace Corps. Retired Rear Adm. Francis J. Thomas (RPCV Fiji), a decorated hero of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 100. Mary Smeltzer (RPCV Botswana), 89, followed her Japanese students into WWII internment camps. We honor both RPCVs for their service. |
 | Bush's FY06 Budget for the Peace Corps The White House is proposing $345 Million for the Peace Corps for FY06 - a $27.7 Million (8.7%) increase that would allow at least two new posts and maintain the existing number of volunteers at approximately 7,700. Bush's 2002 proposal to double the Peace Corps to 14,000 volunteers appears to have been forgotten. The proposed budget still needs to be approved by Congress. |
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Story Source: Knox Village Soup
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