I asked for life in the village to start moving again and it is....a bit too fast though! This always happens, I will have no work and be dying of boredom for one week and the next week I won't have a minute to catch my breath.
The village has decided to try to organize another clean up. They scheduled it for a day that I will be in Suva working. The villagers also placed a tabu (no fishing zone) on the reef in front of the village. John has been trying to get them to agree on this for a year now and they just decided Tuesday at a meeting. John has completed his proposal for funding from the UNDP Small Grants Fund to help train the village in maintaining and properly marking the tabu. He should receive the funding in the next few months. A portion of the fund will also go to alternative livelihood projects, specifically beekeeping development. This helps me!
My PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Program) is completely funded as of last week! Right before Christmas I received a large donation from Friends of Fiji, a group of returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Fiji. While the remainder of the funding came from the North Texas Peace Corps Association, a group of returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served all over the world but live in Texas (yay Texas!!!). I am so excited to move forward with this project. Next step is to place a large order for beekeeping equipment from Mann Lake Ltd. Then we will catalogue the equipment and it will be managed by the Business Incubation Center and the Ministry of Women. We should then have three series of trainings (1 business and 2 technical) before John and I close our service. A lot of the trainings planned out in my project timeline have already taken place, so the majority of our work is behind us.
Next week I will be in Suva writing a beekeeping handbook for Fiji that will be translated into Fijian and Hindustani. I will also be meeting with customs concerning my Mann Lake order. Finally I will be preparing materials for the Alternative Livelihood training that John C. and I are facilitating in February for Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts. Busy, busy, busy. Praise Jisu!!!
1 comment:
Hey Leslie and John, Ira here. I am a recent RPCV from Ghana and have started a round the world trip to get readjusted/avoid going back home for a while. My girlfriend and I are currently in India but will be in Fiji for a while in mid April. I imagine you're COSing soon but if you wouldn't mind, we would love to see a Peace Corps site. If you're not available, would you mind putting us in touch with a fellow volunteer? Thanks!! irashaughnessy@gmail.com
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