fotos nuevos

PACA meeting and my Peace Corps soccer team














School field trip to Xunantunich Ruins












Kite Contest afternoon at the primary school













My good friend Sandra and her family. Her oldest son is a first generation high school graduate, and her youngest son is a future preschool student!

The mangos are in full bloom.

"Don’t worry about what you don’t know, life’s a dance you learn as you go.”

Shortly after writing my last blog, I was able meet with the education officer to discuss the preschool project Ive been working on. He gave me his full support acknowledging that there would be a paid teacher by the government when the school opens, and the following week we were able to have our meeting with the parents. 18 out of the 20 parents attended, which is a record! The meeting was a success- both the education office and the parents were able to give information, ask questions, and look at taking the project to the next level- transferring the responsibilities from me to a group. After the meeting the formal project committee was created, with a chairperson, treasurer, secretary, three advisors, and myself.

I had been planning with the PCVLs (Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders) to come and assist in a PACA workshop for the committee once it was started, and I was able to convince the committee of having it almost immediately following the committee elections. PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) is a set of tools that Peace Corps advocates us to use when working on a community project. The tools help group members recognize their own strengths and assets, how to write clear goals and objectives, set project priorities, create timelines and budgets, and how to delegate tasks among committee members. Needless to say, it was a LONG day filled with a lot of very useful information for the committee. Although not all of the members were able to stay the entire day due to family obligations, each one attended at least half of the day. The workshop gave me an opportunity to facilitate and teach useful information to the women I have been working with, which was a really great feeling for me. I felt knowledgeable, and useful in a sense that I was helping them, not just doing things for them!

After mapping out every single item that the school needs to be repaired, along with everything a preschool needs to be productive and functioning, our total budget came out be right over $7,000 bz- about 7x the amount of money we have raised over the past 4 months. What to me seemed like a clear wake up call meant nothing to the committee. Their simple answer was, “Well, we will just sell and do fundraisers every week until September.” That’s a great attitude, but the group only makes about $100 a week doing their sales… meaning at best they will only bring in about another $1,500 before September arrives. One would assume that after looking at the big picture: such as what we need vs. what we have, the budget, and timeline (only having 3 months to do all of this) would have been a light switch for them. I thought that they would realize that we must change our goals for the opening date or at least have a Plan B for the location of starting the school until the building is ready- but it didn’t faze them at all- all logic was out the window.

Something else I realized when facilitating the workshop is that none of the women I am working with, and probably most Belizeans, have no former education of analyzing and breaking down “big picture ideas” down to smaller ideas. For example, one of the activities was that the committee create a to-do list for one event. They chose “Plaster the school walls.” In order to plaster the school walls, I immediately think: find a person to do the job, buy the supplies for the job, create a date and time the job will start, decide how much the person will be paid, etc, etc. Having the women break down each task necessary in order to plaster the walls took us close to an hour. It was completely foreign to them- they were unable to break down what steps it would take in order to actually plaster. This thinking process was a whole new way of thinking for the committee.

Unfortunately, all of the great information that the committee learned and all of the planning that they did during the workshop was tossed aside the following week. Plans had been made to actually start the process of plastering the walls, and the walls are still bare, old concrete. The one thing that the committee did that was on their weekly to-do list was their food sale. In their mind, as long as they sale food and make money, the preschool will open in September. They still do not see that in order to have a preschool, we must also do manual labor on the building, look for outside funding (such as donations from businesses in town) and continue planning as a group. They have begun setting up fundraisers without my help, which I am proud of them for. After doing small tasks such as selling on their own, they will hopefully work their way up to taking more initiative in the project. Often times one committee member or another will ask me for the “answer” about something, as if my vote or opinion is always the right answer, and I have to remind them that I am simply a committee member now, and that we have to ask everyone for their opinion. Since the committee has been started, there have been a few situations that have come up where the members have completely disregarded my opinion and did things “their” way. It has been a big pill for me to swallow, but
I am keeping in mind the end goal- Individuals working on their own to maintain their progress, rather than expecting someone to do the job for them.

After accepting everything that has come into light about the project, and my “job”, it is as though my mindset has completely changed about being here. The village’s success does not depend on me. It feels amazing to say that. I want to scream it with joy over and over. The village’s success does not depend on me! I am simply the catalyst, motivator, and advisor. Success will happen, but at a much, much slower rate than I would have guessed when starting this project 6 months ago. I am here only for a short time in their lives. I can befriend them, listen to them, influence them, assist them, and I can only hope that it is enough to improve at least one person’s quality of life. I know they are improving mine. Acknowledging all of this has been the best thing that has happened to me here. The pressure is gone, the stress is behind me, and now my role is much more clear to me.

What does the future look like now? Well, the preschool committee is still holding strong to the idea of receiving the grant that the village chairman always says “is coming next week.” Ive put that idea out of my head, and unless a miracle happens, I do not believe that the preschool will open in September like we had been anticipating. If anything has become quite clear to me, its that you can’t plan for anything and expect that it will happen exactly as you dreamed. I am not disappointed about that- I still have 15 months before I leave- more than plenty of the time to make it happen. Right now it looks like Ill be focusing a lot on my girl’s after school group, GLOW, and I will still be doing weekly activities with the preschool aged students. I would like to expand the activities I am already doing with them. Right now its only a once a week 1 hour session, with all 20 preschoolers together. I am thinking about splitting them into two groups and having longer sessions with each group. Some of the moms that I work with have expressed interest in having something like a women’s group, to learn more about parenting, nutrition, women’s health, etc. Im not sure how this will play out, but I am really interested in creating presentations for them, on whatever topics they are interested in.

I have had in mind for a couple of months that I want to teach adult computer training classes. I started talking about the idea of it with one of the villagers who happens to have recently had computer training in town, and she was immediately interested in the idea of it. I was able to convince her that she could take what she learned from her training to help me in the classes, and we decided that we want to do once a week, 4 hour course for 6 weeks. The course will cover everything that a course would offer in town, at a much lower cost. Right now the café’s internet is free until January, through a grant it received. Starting in January, the café must start paying the internet bill, and currently the café is making less than $20.00 a week. This is because nobody in the village knows how to use a computer! Therefore, the participants will pay a small fee for the course, which will be used pay for the internet bill each month. Theoretically, if more people know how to use a computer, more people will come to the internet café, bringing in larger profits. This will be my first opportunity to work with a Belizean in a partnership such as this. We will plan the curriculum together and teach the classes as a team. This may not sound like such a big deal- but it is! I am so excited that I have found someone in the community who has gained knowledge, and will now turn around and pass that knowledge onto others in her village. ITS GREAT!- A perfect example of what development is (or should be) all about.

The countdown is ON! I will be home in 3 weeks, and am looking forward to so much! I will be in Texas for two weeks, which seems like a lifetime to me now. A few things Im looking forward to- getting a haircut, catching up with all of my family and friends, being amazed at how big my nephews have gotten, air conditioning, carpeted floors, walking around Target for hours, Starbucks, relearning to apply makeup and fix my hair, having an excuse to get dressed up, getting my fill of celebrity gossip, trashy tv shows, and less than amusing Top 40 hip hop music, driving, southern accents, grapes and diet dr. pepper, LUCKY LOU’S with my Chili’s crew, Saturday morning Goodwill shopping, going through all of the boxes of clothes I left behind and finding things to bring back with me, aaahh the list goes on and on!