As I wrote earlier, the local leaders and I have just written the annual plan for our Community Development Project. For those of you that might take an odd interest in the details of what we do, I will write a little summary of what is planned. Italics are used here because, while we make initial plans to prepare budgets and training that we'll need to act, the actual projects will be largely designed and shaped by the communities we serve. That said, here goes:
Hygiene courses will continue, and the 4 female facilitators that we hired this past March will step up and lead those more. We estimate reaching 5,760 women with this course, as the results have been very good.
Biosand Filters will continue to roll out, especially after the water levels decreased and contamination increased during the 2011 drought. We estimate we’ll distribute 1,000 Biosand Filters in one way or another.
Latrine work never ends here, but because our sanitation work is more in the way of advocacy and/or social pressure, we estimate we’ll only pay for 50 latrines next year.
Water sources are another ongoing emphasis. We’ve planned for 22 groundwater projects. These could be wells that need repair, springs or pools that need protection, or the engineering of a water tank or pipeline project.
Disaster mitigation training is planned for 2012, although that depends on all of us getting some necessary training first! This is a big part of our drought response program.
Agriculture for women will include plastic tunnels in February, and training in gardens in April.
Agriculture for men will include training in tree pruning, tree nursery grafting, protection against a variety of pests, and orchard set up.
Demonstration chicken farming is new for 2012. This will be a 3-year project in which all community members are welcome to come for training and do hands-on learning in chicken raising.
A chickens distribution is also planned for widows this spring, as part of our drought response program to the most vulnerable people in the community.
Big greenhouses are moving out to villages in 2012 as well. Our experiments and training in the greenhouses in school or government departments have been good, now we’ll move some out for communities to gain wider participation in the demonstrations.
An agricultural cooperative is also slated for 2012, and this is new. We’re still writing the terms on this, but it will likely be that all village members contribute 1/3 of the dues, and our project will contribute the other 2/3 to increase their initial capital for investment.
Government capacity building is also continuing. This means that we routinely give local government people a call and invite them along to see what we’re doing, and then we train their socks off and advocate for them to do more programs for the poor.
Birth Live Saving Skills course will restart after a few years break. This course for local midwives (plus any women interested) has an excellent, participatory methodology, and it has really had dynamic results.
Child-2-child health training is another activity we’re trying to restart. It makes sense, after hearing x number of old locals say, “I never died from not washing my hands after going to the toilet,” to look for a younger audience for health training.
Women’s skills training has been something we have talked a lot about this year, but we’ve had trouble getting this going. What we really need is to have a market for products made and sold by women. Until we have that, we’re training women to make things that they probably can’t sell. Anyone want to come and commit a decade to women’s rights here?
Beyond these plans, there are also things that seem to happen every year, like small bridge buildling, and tree planting on public grounds.
That pretty well rounds out the annual plan for 2012. Got any questions? Yeah, so do I, but go ahead and ask and maybe I can answer.
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