Description of Peace Corps Service
St. John Barned-Smith
Republic of Paraguay 2010-2012
After a competitive application process stressing technical skills, motivation, adaptability, and cross-cultural understanding, Peace Corps invited Mr. St. John Barned-Smith to serve as a Rural Health and Sanitation Extension Volunteer in the South American nation of Paraguay.
Pre-service training
Mr. Barned-Smith began an intensive 11-week Pre-Service Training on February 10th, 2010, in Guarambaré, a small agricultural town located 45-minutes south of the capital, Asunción. The training program consisted of preparation in language and technical skills, common area studies, health, and safety and security.
Training program included:
- 157 hours of formal Language training of spoken and written Spanish and Guaraní.
- 98 hours of area studies (the history, economics, and cultural norms of Paraguay as well as personal adjustment, safety and security, and health training).
- 182 hours of technical training including: dental health education, parasite prevention and education, nutrition education and cookstove promotion, HIV/AIDS awareness, reproductive health, latrine construction and garbage pit promotion, protection of water sources, health census design, community mapping, community study techniques, and promotion of health commissions/groups
- In addition, as part of the language and cross-cultural component of the training program, lived with a Paraguayan family for 11 weeks.
Description of Primary Projects/Activities
On April 30th, 2010, Mr. Barned-Smith completed training and was sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He was assigned to Potrero Pucú, a community of ab0ut 40 houses located in the department of Paraguarí, roughly 100 km southeast of Asunción.
A first-time Volunteer, Mr. Barned-Smith served as an ambassador to Potrero Pucú and the area around it. He was the first American to work with the community as a Peace Corps Volunteer in approximately 30 years. In addition to his health and sanitation work, he spent a significant portion of his service teaching his community about the role of Peace Corps and about the United States, as well as sharing Paraguayan culture with Americans. This included making inroads with community leaders and individual families, and also helping expose the site to American culture and prepare it for work with future Peace Corps Volunteers.
After his arrival at site, Mr. Barned-Smith conducted a community-wide health census of Potrero Pucú. The census, which he later shared with the community’s neighbors’ commission, demonstrated that the majority of the adult inhabitants of Potrero Pucú suffered from high blood pressure and similar conditions caused by factors like lack of exercise and poor nutrition and cooking practices. Throughout his service, he worked to address these problems through cooking classes, exercise camps, and the promotion of cookstoves, which made for safer and healthier cooking environments for the community’s women – many of whom cooked on the floor in smoke-filled kitchens.
Mr. Barned-Smith also focused on basic health education with the community’s youth at Potrero Pucú’s grade school and high school, and a grade school in the neighboring village of Pirayuvu. He taught students from kindergarten to 11th grade about a variety of health topics, including dental health, parasite prevention, hygiene, nutrition, and self-esteem and life skills classes. He implemented a tooth-brushing program, and helped the school design, build and cultivate a school vegetable garden. Mr. Barned-Smith also promoted parasite prevention and instructed over 150 elementary school students and teachers during World Hand-Washing Day on the importance of proper hand-washing. He taught students and families how to make homemade soap and construct hand-washing stations.
A central theme in Mr. Barned-Smith’s service was nutrition and physical fitness. He cooked regularly with approximately 15 Paraguayan families, where he emphasized the use of healthier and cheaper ingredients such as soy or home-grown vegetables instead of Paraguayan staples like meat or imported produce. He worked with five families to build gardens or work more effectively in gardens they already had. He also helped promote aqua-farming and other protein sources as alternative.
Apart from his work promoting gardening and healthier food preparation, Mr. Barned-Smith also worked extensively with Paraguayan families to make their cooking environments safer and healthier. Many Paraguayan women cook over open fires. Mr. Barned-Smith promoted the use of brick cookstoves, or fogones, which allowed the women to bake their foods instead of relying on frying as their main style of cooking. The cookstoves also enclosed the fire and lowered the amount of smoke present in the kitchen, thereby helping reduce burns and respiratory infections. During his service, Mr. Barned-Smith constructed (or helped construct) 16 cookstoves.
Mr. Barned-Smith also worked to improve the quality, affordability and efficiency of the cookstoves built by Peace Corps Volunteers and Paraguayans. Mr. Barned-Smith and other volunteers in the department of Paraguarí designed more efficient and economical models of cookstoves, and used a grant from the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas to construct these models in rural Paraguayan towns throughout the department. The cookstove reduced the amount of smoke present during the cooking process, and used (in some cases) 40% less wood than older models. He also helped produce an instruction manual for the design, which was incorporated into Pre-service training.
By the end of his service, 20% of the families in Potrero Pucú were able to cook with more healthy stoves through Mr. Barned-Smith’s efforts. Mr. Barned-Smith also promoted the use of cook stoves in the neighboring community of Pirayuvu. Working with a group of neighborhood women, he created a health committee and supported it in its goal to raise money to build cook stoves in approximately 15 houses throughout the community.
Mr. Barned-Smith worked extensively with Potrero Pucú’s residents to bring running water to the site, only half of which had access to reliable running water. During his time in Potrero Pucú, Mr. Barned-Smith helped lay and repair piping that supplied water to half of the community’s houses. He also supported the commission in fundraising and at its meetings.
Mr. Barned-Smith also hosted a series of sports camps at his community’s school and worked with other volunteers in other sites to teach local youth about American sports and promote physical fitness. In Potrero Pucú approximately 50 Paraguayan youth learned the fundamentals of American football, baseball, and Frisbee in workshops over several months.
In addition to his work in Potrero Pucú, Mr. Barned-Smith assisted in Peace Corps Rural Health and Sanitation Pre- and In-service trainings. During these sessions, he trained incoming volunteers on nutrition, soap making, gardening, and cultural adaption. He hosted trainees at his site four times over the course of his service, focusing on cultural integration, teaching, and nutrition. He also helped win a grant from The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to train approximately 25 Paraguayan youth as HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention outreach workers.
Description of Secondary Activities/Projects
Although officially assigned as a Rural Health and Sanitation Volunteer, Mr. Barned-Smith worked on a variety of secondary projects. Mr. Barned-Smith educated Americans about Paraguayan culture and life through a variety of methods – the most important being his blog, www.sinjininparaguay.blogspot.com. (THAT'S YOU GUYS!) A journalist by training, Mr. Barned-Smith shared stories and photos about his work, the people of his site, his travel experiences, and the challenges and adventures of his service. During his two years in Paraguay, Mr. Barned-Smith’s blog received close to 9,000 visits from 86 different countries. He wrote several articles for stateside newspapers and blogs concerning Paraguay’s history and culture, including The Philadelphia Inquirer. (COMING OUT IN THREE WEEKS...) On a visit home, he also gave presentations on Paraguayan culture and Peace Corps’ mission.
In an effort to promote more sustainable and profitable agriculture, Mr. Barned-Smith hosted a workshop in Potrero Pucú on the cultivation of natural Paraguayan yuyos, or herbs.
Mr. Barned-Smith taught English as a Second Language classes during his service to the community’s teenagers. He used the classes to increase the students’ knowledge of the language and American culture by sharing food and stories from the United States. Mr. Barned-Smith organized activities to raise cultural awareness of the United States with members of the community as well. Outside of the school, he celebrated holidays such as Thanksgiving with foods traditionally consumed by people in the United States.
Mr. Barned-Smith also helped the students of his school construct a World Map. Over the course of several weeks, he taught geography and mapmaking, which culminated in a wall sized map that adorned one of the school’s exterior walls. He also helped paint two other maps in other volunteers’ communities.
Language Skills
Mr. Barned-Smith achieved an Advanced High competency level in Spanish during his service and used Spanish in his work at school, with his colleagues, Paraguayan community contacts, and in daily life. In addition, Mr. Barned-Smith achieved an Advanced Low competency level in Guarani, Paraguay’s indigenous language spoken by more than 90% of the country. As with Spanish, he spoke Guaraní regularly while traveling, teaching, shopping, and communicating with members of his rural community.
Mr. Barned-Smith completed his Peace Corps service in Paraguay on April 15th, 2012.
Awesome, Sinjin! I never added up all the stuff you did before. I hope you're proud of your accomplishments. I am.
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