These kids are from my lowest-level English class. At the beginning of the year they were bored, disinterested and I thought they hated me.
Today they called me up and wanted to see me to give me a gift: a box of apples in honor of women’s day. They were all smiles, and so sweet. They’re not the same kids as they were in September, and I’m not the same person either.
Yesterday I spent six and a half hours in a round table meeting with all possible community partners of the Linguere High School. It started out extremely well - the student government had put together a great (albeit rather dramatic - can a school really be in agony?) presentation about the problems facing the school and what they would like to do to change things. Then community member after community member came up to pledge their association’s support - the gendarmes are giving 100,000 CFA, the Association for the Development of Women is giving a ton of cement, etc. Then this one man comes up and goes, “Well, this is great and all, but why don’t we just have an NGO build us an entirely new school? That’s what they’re there for.”
He’s partly right. There are plenty of NGOs whose sole mission is school construction. But the attitude of “oh, we could do this ourselves but why bother because an NGO could do it for us” is one of the biggest obstacles that we come across in the Peace Corps. Many NGOs here provide resources of the monetary sort, while we are primarily here to work on capacity-building, and a lot of people have trouble understanding that. Not to mention that when a community has the motivation and capabilities to do a project themselves, I have a huge problem with them taking resources from an NGO that could be building a school for a community that has no resources whatsoever. (All of this rant glossing over the fact that the school is supposed to be a governmental project anyways, but the administrations of both the previous and current presidents have done nothing to fix things.)
Luckily, I think those who are most involved with the project, including Ngouille Sec (pictured above) and her sister Jamma, are pretty set on getting things done themselves. If everything goes well, by next October when classes start up for the fall 2013 semester, the high school will have at least two new classrooms. And that will be very inspiring to see.
Seminars - One of the more rewarding parts of being a Teaching English volunteer. Basically, all the English teachers in the region gather together so we can tell them new strategies to apply in the classroom. Surprisingly, many listen.
Peace Corps in…spaaaaaaaace!
Peace Corps service lead Joe Acaba (Dominican Republic, 1994-96) to become the first Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (and the first person of Puerto Rican heritage) to serve as a NASA astronaut!
Life is calling. How far will YOU go?
Peace Corps Ukraine Group 39 arrived in Ukraine and was welcomed with traditional bread, dipped in salt.
- Peace Corps Education Volunteer Jeramie Heflin
Cashew nursery at the primary school cashew farm - Reality, most of these kids may become farmers or inherit the land of their fathers and mothers. Might as well start easy with some hands on lessons in tree nurseries and grafting. My hope is that the school cashew farm can be a leading example in the village for other farmers. We will see!
This year on Valentine’s Day, a group of Peace Corps Volunteers and community members in Tirana organized a One Billion Rising event aimed at raising awareness about gender-based violence in Albania, where the number of women who are violated or killed continues to increase. It started with a small group of dancers, but the numbers grew as the event continued, with young women and men joining dancing in support of such an important issue. Read more about One Billion Rising here http://onebillionrising.org/
We’ve reached 50,000 followers!
Here’s a little love for all of you from Mary and her students in Guatemala ♥
Peace Corps Community Development Volunteer Elizabeth Ogunwo is working with her host community in Senegal to build working bathrooms at a local primary school and establish a trash removal system in her neighborhood.
Peace Corps Community Development Volunteer Tim McNaught helped develop a medical records database for a humanitarian health clinic in Azerbaijan. Here he is fitting a young patient with new eye glasses.
