Thursday, September 10, 2009

A project

Well, I finally have a long term project to work on, something that I can busy myself every day since family or school gardens are exactly a 9-5 job and I think I might go crazy if I don´t have something to do everyday. The project is basically constructing a shredder that can chop up food and organic wastes and then can be descomposed in beds to fertilizer, with the help of the cure all of animal shit. Then, these bags of fertilizer will be sold out of my counterpart´s cooperative to farmers at discount prices that are far lower then the chemical stuff they buy in the city. Hopefully this project can be small business project as well as we can hire some jovenes (young men) from San Lorenzo to be the employees and then long term would be to form a sort of ecological club in San Lorenzo using this project as a base.
But before that happens, a lot of stuff needs to happen first. We need funding for this project, so I am filling out a PL-480 form, which is like a grant from the USDA to help fund a developmental project abroad. It can be up to 7,000 dollars which could easily covers the costs of this project. However, I am primarily responsible for doing the PL-480 and it should be interesting because I have never written a grant before, let alone in Spanish. Lets just say I am wearing out my spanish-english dictionary as we speak. It is really tough and frustrating at times but it is helping my vocabulary so I guess there is always a benefit. So if we get the funding, we can either buy or construct the shredder. What is exciting is that a friend of mine´s cousin actually makes the exact shredders that we care looking for...it really is a small world. Then we have to ask for the support of the local government to help us gather up the kitchen scraps and organic wastes from the families around San Lorenzo. There is a truck that comes by once a week that picks up the trash so this could be doable. If they don´t want to support us, then it might be a little harder. You never know with small town politics. We´ll see, but I am really exciting about the potential of the project in the benefits (organic fertilizer, education for the young kids who work, employment, small businesses, and the knowledge for the farmers that they can actually cust their costs and improve their soil at the same time).
Also, I am excited about our reconnect conference next week, I will be able to see some other PCVs that I haven´t seen in a few months, though we won´t all be together, since it is regional and they split us up depending on the region (coast, highlands, jungle). But something is better than nothing I figure.
Till next time....