My 6th graders after building the garden 
5th graders
The other 3 kids in this group didn't show up, so these 3 made the bed by themselves. Needless to say, they were fairly tired by the end.
Another group after their bed was complete.
Picking out the seeds
Workin' hard
Mark and I in Amanda's latrine
Just Jacob
I felt it was necessary to demonstrate how to open the compost box at the bottom of the latrine. Mark felt it was necessary to take a picture.
Amanda and me
Showin' off...Cuerpo de paz=Peace CorpsIt’s starting to get really hot here. It hasn’t rained since before Christmas and for the past couple weeks it’s been in the 90’s every day. Luckily, I live next to a giant watershed and our town still has water coming out of the faucet. However, almost every other region of the country is in some stage of a drought. I think Clint Black’s “Summer’s Coming” is a pretty good title for this post. However, instead of having summer break here, I’m starting to work more than ever down here.
I’ll start out by giving you guys a quick update on my pila project. About 2 weeks ago I turned in a grant requesting funding from Peace Corps for my project. I got a call from our country director the other day, and we talked for a long time about the sustainability of what I’m doing. She told me that in all likelihood Peace Corps would be able to provide the funds. However, I need to make a few changes to the design of the project first to make sure the beneficiaries understand what is expected from them in return for the materials. I met with my board of directors for the project this past week and we wrote up a contract that everyone will have to sign in order to receive the materials. The project basically states that the beneficiaries agree to contribute some of the materials to build a pila, to pay for transportation of materials, to complete certain tasks by their appropriate deadlines, and a couple of other little things. Overall, I think the project is much more transparent to the people here. I came into town today to print out the contract, and then we will have a meeting with all of the community members involved this week to explain the contents of the contract and have them sign it. After that, I’ll show my country director the contract, and talk with her some more to make sure everything is ready before she approves the grant.
I’ve finally started teaching in the schools here about a week and a half ago. I teach environmental education to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders twice a week, and English to 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th graders once a week. It’s keeping me really busy, but I’m enjoying it a lot. Last Monday, I had all the kids bring in hoes and pickaxes and we cleared out a plot of land in front of the school to have a garden. The kids cleared out all the rocks, cut all the grass and weeds, and built up beds. We were going to start planting the seeds, but there was no water coming out of the faucet in the school (due to the amount of heat we’ve had recently), so we have to wait until next week after we talk to the town’s water board to try and get them to turn on the faucets for the school. I can tell these kids are really excited about the garden by how hard they work and how they are always asking me questions about it. Hands-on learning is something kids in my community have never experienced, so I plan on having the majority of my classes be activities completed outside in the open air. Next week, I plan on taking them to the river nearby to measure the current. Above are some pictures of the kids working to build the beds, of them deciding which seeds to plant, of a couple of the groups in front of the bed they constructed, and of all of them after a couple hours of hard work.
Some of the other pictures above are from other trips. Some are from when Mark, Amanda, and I went to a meeting for AJARCO (the water board for my protected area). Others are from last week when Mark and I visited Amanda, who is about an hour from us, with Jacob, a buddy of mine who is a youth development volunteer, to see her compost latrine project. Jacob is interested in constructing compost latrines in his school, so we used this as an excuse to get to chill out, do a little work, and have a nice lunch together.
Alright, until next time.
Peace,
Miles
I’ll start out by giving you guys a quick update on my pila project. About 2 weeks ago I turned in a grant requesting funding from Peace Corps for my project. I got a call from our country director the other day, and we talked for a long time about the sustainability of what I’m doing. She told me that in all likelihood Peace Corps would be able to provide the funds. However, I need to make a few changes to the design of the project first to make sure the beneficiaries understand what is expected from them in return for the materials. I met with my board of directors for the project this past week and we wrote up a contract that everyone will have to sign in order to receive the materials. The project basically states that the beneficiaries agree to contribute some of the materials to build a pila, to pay for transportation of materials, to complete certain tasks by their appropriate deadlines, and a couple of other little things. Overall, I think the project is much more transparent to the people here. I came into town today to print out the contract, and then we will have a meeting with all of the community members involved this week to explain the contents of the contract and have them sign it. After that, I’ll show my country director the contract, and talk with her some more to make sure everything is ready before she approves the grant.
I’ve finally started teaching in the schools here about a week and a half ago. I teach environmental education to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders twice a week, and English to 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th graders once a week. It’s keeping me really busy, but I’m enjoying it a lot. Last Monday, I had all the kids bring in hoes and pickaxes and we cleared out a plot of land in front of the school to have a garden. The kids cleared out all the rocks, cut all the grass and weeds, and built up beds. We were going to start planting the seeds, but there was no water coming out of the faucet in the school (due to the amount of heat we’ve had recently), so we have to wait until next week after we talk to the town’s water board to try and get them to turn on the faucets for the school. I can tell these kids are really excited about the garden by how hard they work and how they are always asking me questions about it. Hands-on learning is something kids in my community have never experienced, so I plan on having the majority of my classes be activities completed outside in the open air. Next week, I plan on taking them to the river nearby to measure the current. Above are some pictures of the kids working to build the beds, of them deciding which seeds to plant, of a couple of the groups in front of the bed they constructed, and of all of them after a couple hours of hard work.
Some of the other pictures above are from other trips. Some are from when Mark, Amanda, and I went to a meeting for AJARCO (the water board for my protected area). Others are from last week when Mark and I visited Amanda, who is about an hour from us, with Jacob, a buddy of mine who is a youth development volunteer, to see her compost latrine project. Jacob is interested in constructing compost latrines in his school, so we used this as an excuse to get to chill out, do a little work, and have a nice lunch together.
Alright, until next time.
Peace,
Miles
No comments:
Post a Comment