Peace Corps Service to Develop Community Capacity for Sustainability Planning: The Experience of Areguá, Paraguay

This paper examines an effort to develop community capacity to engage in sustainability planning as part of a Peace Corps Municipal Services Development project in Areguá, Paraguay. It sketches the context in which the initiative occurred, outlines relevant academic research on community sustainability planning, and describes the strategies adopted to assist Areguá in securing the critical mass of community capacity necessary to engage in sustainability planning. The paper concludes with an outline of continuing challenges for sustainability in Areguá and a description of means by which those concerns might be addressed.