CE Tools to Use
The momentum is definitely building as we begin the downward slide towards the end of training! On Thursday we had our last language progress check before the final language interview, which was the last formal check that our LCF does with us. Combined that with our site visits last week and I know my cluster has basically thrown in the towel for language class. All of us are either going to switch languages and therefore get a tutor anyway, or want to continue at site with a tutor regardless of where they are now so none of us are terrible interested in attempting class with the given circumstances. We’ve shifted to “Language on Foot” and other such alternatives to actually having class.
Our Community Project also pre-empted class for two days. The Community Project is supposed to be the culmination of this phase of training where we pull all of the Community Entry (CE) tools we’ve been learning together and find a project that is helpful for our cluster community. The actual project turned out great, though the lead up was a tad suspect. We ended up working with a small elementary school on their “Brigade Eskwela,” which is a national program to spend a week fixing up the school before classes begin June 6th. The particular school is very well run and has a strong, active PTCA (Parents, Teachers & Community Association) so the organizing was already done. We attended a planning meeting and talked about where we could chip in. We ended up providing funding for some concrete and merienda for one day as well as taking and developing pictures to submit. We also, of course, chipped in with the manual labor which ended up being the most fun! The big task ended up being trying to figure out what was wrong with, and then fix their well which was not producing water anymore. Picture 15 Filipinos and two Americans (Jackson & I, both WATSAN) all standing around scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do with this well. We ended up hauling the entire 24M pipe out of the ground, in 6M section, and taking it apart. Not an easy task at all. We found a few foot long sticks stuck inside. I guess the first lesson at school this year will be how not to put stuff down the well. All in all it was a great two days of work and quite helpful for the school. We also did some basic yard work and used the cement to fix some steps and put a gutter along the front of one of the buildings to catch and channel the rain water from the roof on down the hill. Still, the lead left a lot to be desired. We had been charged at our last Hub Site to come up with a Community Project and then begin to implement it. The four of us in Lamut happen to be spread across 3 different Barangays (something like a town, though more Barangays equals more government funding so, for instance, the town center of Lamut has been split into two). This has made it difficult to make a lot of contacts on the government level and all of us had mostly been focusing our attention on our various families and, at least at the beginning, language. Because of that, we did not really have any ready made ideas of what could be useful to the community and about a week to figure all of this out. So, we sat down and had a 2 hour meeting to hash out a couple ideas and decided to try and host a Bingo event with some community education about the Peace Corps and some health issues thrown in. It was about the best we thought we could do on such short notice. The next day the Hub Site staff rolled out in the PC Land Rover and tactfully informed us that we would be helping out the school at Bliss with their Brigade Eskwela. No questions about what we might have been thinking, no questions about how we liked the idea, it was pretty much this is a great project so you will do this and we’ve made a few calls in that direction. It was definitely a much better idea than what we had, but I also think they ended up undermining a lot of what the CE tools and training was for and fell into the trap that we are continually warned against as PCVs, mainly not to force through our own ideas and to work within the community to empower them with their own. They missed a great chance to model the way they want us to approach our communities with suggestions of ideas and instead, ironically, fed the PC issue of diving headlong into projects. As it goes, I realize this is everyone’s first time with this training set up and they did have a wonderful idea, they could have just used some work in the presentation. Anyway, the work days were a blast!
Our Community Project also pre-empted class for two days. The Community Project is supposed to be the culmination of this phase of training where we pull all of the Community Entry (CE) tools we’ve been learning together and find a project that is helpful for our cluster community. The actual project turned out great, though the lead up was a tad suspect. We ended up working with a small elementary school on their “Brigade Eskwela,” which is a national program to spend a week fixing up the school before classes begin June 6th. The particular school is very well run and has a strong, active PTCA (Parents, Teachers & Community Association) so the organizing was already done. We attended a planning meeting and talked about where we could chip in. We ended up providing funding for some concrete and merienda for one day as well as taking and developing pictures to submit. We also, of course, chipped in with the manual labor which ended up being the most fun! The big task ended up being trying to figure out what was wrong with, and then fix their well which was not producing water anymore. Picture 15 Filipinos and two Americans (Jackson & I, both WATSAN) all standing around scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do with this well. We ended up hauling the entire 24M pipe out of the ground, in 6M section, and taking it apart. Not an easy task at all. We found a few foot long sticks stuck inside. I guess the first lesson at school this year will be how not to put stuff down the well. All in all it was a great two days of work and quite helpful for the school. We also did some basic yard work and used the cement to fix some steps and put a gutter along the front of one of the buildings to catch and channel the rain water from the roof on down the hill. Still, the lead left a lot to be desired. We had been charged at our last Hub Site to come up with a Community Project and then begin to implement it. The four of us in Lamut happen to be spread across 3 different Barangays (something like a town, though more Barangays equals more government funding so, for instance, the town center of Lamut has been split into two). This has made it difficult to make a lot of contacts on the government level and all of us had mostly been focusing our attention on our various families and, at least at the beginning, language. Because of that, we did not really have any ready made ideas of what could be useful to the community and about a week to figure all of this out. So, we sat down and had a 2 hour meeting to hash out a couple ideas and decided to try and host a Bingo event with some community education about the Peace Corps and some health issues thrown in. It was about the best we thought we could do on such short notice. The next day the Hub Site staff rolled out in the PC Land Rover and tactfully informed us that we would be helping out the school at Bliss with their Brigade Eskwela. No questions about what we might have been thinking, no questions about how we liked the idea, it was pretty much this is a great project so you will do this and we’ve made a few calls in that direction. It was definitely a much better idea than what we had, but I also think they ended up undermining a lot of what the CE tools and training was for and fell into the trap that we are continually warned against as PCVs, mainly not to force through our own ideas and to work within the community to empower them with their own. They missed a great chance to model the way they want us to approach our communities with suggestions of ideas and instead, ironically, fed the PC issue of diving headlong into projects. As it goes, I realize this is everyone’s first time with this training set up and they did have a wonderful idea, they could have just used some work in the presentation. Anyway, the work days were a blast!
posted by george at 12:43 PM
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