You all must think I don't get any work done around here! Just cook and bake all day :). Well, I wish I could spend more time in the kitchen honestly but I do have some projects I'm working on. Quite a few actually. They're all in the works though. This is the slow part. Once I get everything ready, then will come the unending work days! Here is what I'm currently working on:
Projects in Progress
Website Creation
I've been going around town taking pictures of what El Negrito has to offer in terms of services, public spaces, recreation, events, and culture and am in the process of creating a website using these photos. I'm using Weebly because it's free and also has a lot of great design tools. The only thing I don't like is that the official site name, once published, will have ".weebly" in the address. A lot has already been done on the site, such as history of El Negrito, information about some organizations here, events, and numerous other pages, but it's going to take a while to finalize everything. I'm first writing it in Spanish, but will have a link to the English version. I want it to be as comprehensive as possible before publishing.
The mayor has enlisted my help with the design of a new park in one of the barrios (neighborhoods) closer to the main highway, where the main road turns off to El Negrito. Since we already have a centrally-located park in the casco urbano, or urban area of my town, this new one is located further away and more accessible to the people who live in that area. It will be smaller than the parque central but at least it's another public space where people can relax and enjoy the scenery. Since I have no formal training in planning or design, I brought on two other PCVs to the project, one of whom is an Urban Planner and the other a Landscape Architect. My mayor has expressed that he'd like benches, lamps, and an illuminated fountain (although that seems like a grandiose move to me). We already visited the site and took measurements, photos, and I found the location/GPS coordinates on Google Earth but the images are outdated. We should be able to move forward with this project in March once the designs are submitted.
Stove Construction
There are two projects within this:
1. I went out to one of the barrios here with a coworker from UMA (Unidad de Medio Ambiente, Environmental Office), one of the offices in the Alcaldia, and we split up and collectively went around to 20 different houses to get information about the families in each house, such as name, age, education completed, relationship within the family, phone number, job, if their houses were rented or owned, if they had access to potable water, and to take a picture of the woman of the house with their stove. The National Congress alongside the municipality has decided to donate 20 improved stoves for these families. We had to go out in the field and collect the information for submittal. I really enjoyed talking to all the families but was disheartened to see that nobody had been able to complete their education past elementary school, either because there was no school in their area they could go to, or they didn't have the means to attend school. Their children did seem to be continuing their studies, however. Some were already working on their technical training in high school, so hopefully will finish and graduate. Most of the families had at least 6 people living under one small roof, and some women were single mothers raising like 5 children on their own, most without sufficient clothing, shoes, or water.
2. The second project is mostly on the part of the municipality. 100 families in 4 aldeas will be receiving help with housing, roofs, floors, and stoves. The muni is taking care of the housing, roofs and floors, and I am helping with the stoves. I've been in contact with several organizations to obtain funding, design and material information from them to compare and see what is the best option for us to use. I created 5 project profiles already, each with a different style of stove to present to the mayor, alongside other information from the respective organizations. He hasn't had a chance to look at anything yet but I'm hoping he will soon so that I can get in touch with whoever we choose to work with.
With these improved stoves, a number of severe problems can be averted. For one, the smoke from the fire will exit through the chimneys, rather than contaminating the air the families, namely mothers and children, breathe in. The smoke accounts for several respiratory illnesses prevalent throughout villages that have poorly constructed stoves. Another issue is the inefficient use of firewood. The new stoves will aid in the reduction of firewood use and make cooking more efficient so that children and families will not have to travel as often by foot to collect the wood.
Water for People FLOW Training
This entire week, Water for People has been giving a training on their FLOW program. Municipal office workers as well as the school director and some other city workers attended. FLOW, or Field-Level Operations Watch, is a monitoring system that runs off of Android phones and allows water systems already in place to live update their statuses and functionality to an online database. The program asks a variety of questions pertaining to water and sanitation, allows us to take a photo of the water system, and to edit our responses if need be. We got the chance to practice with the phones in pairs and to put them to real practice out in the field. Unfortunately I wasn't able to participate in the field exercises because I haven't been feeling well this week, but the technology is super easy to use and I'm sure I can replicate whatever needs to be done when the time comes.
English Classes
I initially spoke with some people at the Alcaldia (mayor's office) about English classes and while they mentioned that would be great to teach teachers, they kept putting the idea on the back burner. I then went to the School District Director, my other counterpart and he said he thinks I should tutor 6th graders in English. That also got pushed aside, not because of him, but because I don't think it would be productive to tutor 6th graders in English as it's not sustainable, and also because a lot of the schools here are bilingual schools. What I've decided to do is teach English to my coworkers at the Alcaldia and at Visión Mundial since I think that would be more helpful in their interactions with foreign clients. Those at Visión Mundial also provide several workshops, and if their English reaches an advanced level, I'm sure they will also be able to train others in the language as well. The classes I give will be held at the Visión Mundial center, for an hour and a half twice a week after normal work hours. Fortunately for me, I visited Janet in Yorito (she left already though) to get materials from her and to observe how she taught. The trip gave me a number of creative ideas and I look forward to starting these classes soon!
Small Business Training
I was at the muni the other day working on the website and a married couple who is related to my landlady dropped in and we chatted a bit and threw around an idea of microempresa training. The wife works at the cooperative and can help with the microfinancing of small businesses. Unemployment is a large problem in Honduras and if I train a sizable group of people to be entrepreneurs, it could help at least a little bit. After the training and helping the people draw up their business plans and make products, if there are any who are in the business of craft-making, I want to have a monthly artisan fair where they can get together in the center of town to sell their products. I spoke also with the manager of Visión Mundial to see what kind of support I can receive from them and they also have some knowledge of this type of training. I went to one of the training events actually, where a VM staff member gave a presentation to a group of interested teens, but to me the lesson could have been elaborated on even more and I felt like a lot more could have been done with the time allotted.
Mini-Supermarket Product Labeling
I do a lot of my non-fruit and vegetable shopping at the mini-super in town and have come to be friends with the manager and a couple of the girls that work there. He told me that when foreigners are in town they always ask for certain products, but because they don't speak Spanish and he doesn't speak English, a lot of things are lost in translation. I figured I could make it a small fun side-project to help him learn the English names of all his products. I was supposed to go last Saturday but the manager said that this Saturday would work better and they'll have everything prepared this week.
Completed Projects:
ArcGIS Database Input with Catastro Office
This was basically busy work for a while. Late last year the high school students had their technical training and some were at the muni helping out the Catastro office, as was I. We had to calculate the new taxes every person was going to pay for 2010, work through several land value and house value calculations, and transfer the new information to a table, then from the table onto the ArcGIS database which already had all the areas mapped out. 8 hours a day of inputting information onto the computer.... not fun!!! I did much prefer that over the calculations though because those were tedious and time-consuming. Computer input is much faster and I really also helped to gain back whatever confianza I had lost from not being around a lot due to PC meetings, house improvements, and the temporary personal issues I just couldn't deal with in public... Things are great now though, and they really appreciated my help!
Read linked blog post for info.
Read linked blog post for info.
Sigh. I really also have to buckle down and study for the GMAT!!!!
