kicking off my second year

in mid-january we had our mid-service conference, my entire training group together again. it was really cool to see some people i hadn't seen since training, tho also weird and overwhelming at times, i found myself often retreating to my little zambezia group of friends. at the conference we talked about a lot of stuff, including m&e (monitoring and evaluation, a necessary evil), savings clubs (more on that later), and the increased peace corps budget and enrollment goals and the possibility of extending for a third year of service (yes, i'm thinking about it, but don't worry, i'd be home in december no matter what). also got a cavity filled and had a doctor's appointment, no parasites or anything!

once that week was over, a smaller group of us stayed an extra few days to plan the joma and redes conferences. my loyal readers will remember way back in july i went to a meeting to plan the transfer of joma responsibilities from the old group to the new. this planning meeting was the shit from that transfer meeting hitting the fan. 7 or 8 of us sat around a table and ate greasy pizza and tried to plan out all the details of how JOMA's going to run this year. the meeting went well, but it was when it first started to hit home how much work this is going to be, planning conferences, managing money, writing new curriculum, designing and implementing stronger m&e tools...it's a lot of responsibility. the national coordinator and financial person are bearing the brunt of the headaches, but it's still a lot even for us regional underlings!

so JOMA is one of the things i've been focusing on most since i've been back at site. my main roles are in curriculum and trainer contacts. i've had to contact all the new pcvs to try to convince them to do joma, and find old and line up new technical and gender trainers. but the thing i've spent the most time on is the gender curriculum. joma has always had the purpose of working with youth (specifically boys) to promote gender equality through communications projects. but something we've decided to focus on more this year is the actual gender-related messages. in the past the conferences have been mostly about the communications areas, and only briefly touched on gender issues, and this year they're all about gender. also, the manuals the groups use only deal with their communications area. so what i did was go through a bunch of manuals that peace corps gives us, full of various activities that deal with topics such as gender, hiv, health, self-esteem, etc. from these manuals, i created lists of activities that lend themselves easily to one of the communications areas of joma (theater, music, journalism, photography, art), so that groups can use them as suggestions of activities that more directly address gender issues while still working within their chosen area. eventually i'd like to have all the activities typed out so that we can have an actual manual tailored to gender activities for JOMA, but right now it's just an organized list. on top of that, based on a conversation the joma coordinator had with a representative from usaid (who funds the joma project), i had to write up (this time actually typing out) a gender curriculum for the conferences, to be able to hand to trained gender trainers, and then cut that down into a mini version to present to the technical trainers so they're on the same page. this may not sound like a lot, but it involved going through a lot of books, in english and portuguese, and it took quite a while. i felt like i was in school again doing a research project.

on the icap side of things, i haven't actually been doing a whole lot that's noteworthy. towards the end of last year the provincial health director trained another batch of peer educators for quelimane, so there are now over 100 of them, far too many for me to keep track of or even think about doing anything that involves all of them. i still go to the cha positivos and some of their meetings. several times lately groups have asked to meet with me to discuss doing a "project," a very vaguely defined term that usually has the expectations of receiving funds. in each of these meetings, i've talked with the group about what they want to do, always income generating projects. it's a great idea in theory, but designing and implementing an effective income generating project is a lot more difficult than most of them seem to realize, frankly it's more than i'm sure i can handle, and i have yet to have a group present me with a really strong plan or show the initiative to tackle the difficult questions. i think they have a strong desire to work to earn money, but their lack of desire to deal with questions of storage, division of profits, etc. means that i don't feel comfortable moving forward on any of the ideas i've seen so far. an idea that i've presented as an alternative is that of a savings group (or VSL, village savings and loan, the more official name). we talked about it at mid-service, and i have a few fellow pcvs working on it in various ways, and i really like the idea.

basically, a group of people choose to work together. they get together every week, and they have a minimum and a maximum amount they can save. it doesn't have to be much, whatever they think they can spare, basically those small amounts that would get spent on random whatever if they held on to them, but that they wouldn't miss if they go into the savings pot. so the group saves every week, stores it in a safe place, and once their collective savings is big enough, members who want to can ask for loans from the group. because the group is self-selecting there's a higher level of trust. they pay interest on the loans, but unlike with a bank the interest stays with the group, so that at the end of the year when they divvy up the fund, they'll get more than the amount they put in. it's very basic, but because of this groups can monitor themselves. it gives them access (in a limited way) to the services a bank would offer, which poorer people often wouldn't have access to in a more traditional setting. it gives them experience managing money in a setting where they're held accountable by their peers. and it gives them the opportunity to take out loans, which they can use for income generating activities on an individual basis, thereby getting rid of the concerns of a group not managing a project well. practically everyone does some kind of informal income generation here, whether it's sewing or farming or selling bottles of juice, and on their own, within their own experience and comfort level, they might have success they might not have if they grouped together and tried to take on a much larger-scale project.

anyway, that's the basic idea, and i'm pretty sold on it, and i know of many settings in which variations of it have worked well. and as i said, i've pitched the idea to the groups who have approached me recently wanting to do income generating activities. only one group has taken me up on it so far, i think the others either weren't convinced, or couldn't come to a consensus as a group, or said they didn't have enough money even for small weekly savings. but this one group, of 6 of the newly-trained peer educators, seem to be really into it! they started saving on their own after my first pitch, and since then we've worked together to write up the group's rules, worked out simple ways to record their savings, and talked about how to run a meeting so that things go smoothly and there's transparency with the money handling. it's still relatively new, but i feel really good about it. the only really necessary input into this type of project is a lock box that uses multiple different keys, to help ensure no one member has access to it alone. i've asked for support for this from icap, it hasn't happened yet, but i'm hopeful!

what else? i moved to a new house, about a month ago, just to the next neighborhood. my old house heated up like an oven, and i wasn't crazy about my neighbors, they were loud and not very friendly, and the neighborhood was up-and-coming ritzy so i didn't really feel like i was living "with the people." the house search was way harder than i thought it would be, and i ended up in a place that isn't very "peace corps" in many ways (although i think i still get too caught up in what peace corps "should be" and not what my life actually is), but is much better for me. it's another small dependencia behind a main house, the neighbors are friends of laras's and much friendlier. the house is tiny, but homey. has unnecessary comforts like air conditioning (the landlord insisted on putting it in!) and running water. has a nice big kitchen. and it's in a neighborhood that's more "average," some houses are really nice, but there's a wide variety of economic levels. there's a school down the street so i have small children staring at me and informing me that i'm white all the time. and there are two markets very nearby where i can go to buy food. and don't worry, there are new and different (and smellier) mud holes blocking my exits in this new house, so that all-important element of my life isn't gone. i still need to buy appropriate footwear. anyway, all in all, i'm much happier in my new home.

and i'm too tired to write any more, but we're pretty much caught up on the highlights of my life. as always, i apologize profusely for not communicating more with my nearest and dearest. i've had far far less down time than i did in the old days (when i didn't write either). there are still a lot of ideas churning and future plans and possibilities, so i promise that, at least here, i'll have something to say in a month when i remember i have a blog again, or when people start harassing me, whichever comes first. i miss you all! beijos.