Peace Corps Volunteer Simon Williams is working with his Ukrainian village to build a community athletic field and create a soccer league for the local school. Williams, who played baseball professionally with the St. Louis Cardinals organization, says the current athletic field at the village school is inadequate. 

“The school sits on top of a hill and the field that they have is the size of half a basketball court, which is not sufficient for most physical education activities,” he explains. “Having been active in athletics my whole life, and knowing how soccer-crazy all these kids are, it would be great to see them have an adequate place to play.

“The plan is to make this a very hands-on project,” says the University of Maine graduate, who was Captain of the UMaine baseball team. “The village and its people have very little money but are excited to be a part of building a soccer field for the school.”

Williams has been working as a Youth Development volunteer since 2011, teaching English to students in a Kindergarten through 11th grade school. “We are playing stick-ball and the kids love it. I cut down a broom handle, bought a tennis ball and made the bases out of rocks and they are beginning to grasp the basics. The students always try for a home run, which is hilarious. I like their hustle,” he adds.

In order to receive funding through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, a community must make a 25 percent contribution to the total project cost and outline success indicators for the individual projects. This helps ensure community ownership and a greater chance of long-term sustainability.

One hundred percent of each tax-deductible PCPP donation goes toward a development project. Support Williams’ project in Ukraine

(Source: details for https)

World Water Day - Did you know?  

Fetching water is part of the gender inequality. Check out these statistics from the United Nations Water for Life initiative: 

• In rural Benin, girls ages 6-14 spend an average of one hour a day collecting water compared with 25 minutes for their brothers.
• In Malawi, there are large variations in the amount of time allocated for water collection based on seasonal factors, but women consistently spend four to five times longer than men on this task.
• In Tanzania, a survey found school attendance to be 12 per cent higher for girls in homes located 15 minutes or less from a water source than in homes one hour or more away. Attendance rates for boys appeared to be far less affected by distance from water sources.
• In 12% of households children carry the main responsibility for collecting water, with girls under 15 years of age being twice as likely to carry this responsibility as boys under the age of 15 years.
• Research in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that women and girls in low-income countries spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water—the equivalent of a year’s worth of labour by the entire Work force in France.
• In Africa, 90% of the work of gathering water and wood, for the household and for food preparation, is done by women. Providing access to clean water close to the home can dramatically reduce women’s workloads, and free up time for other economic activities. For their daughters, this time can be used to attend school.

(Source: un.org)