Meaningful Projects

28^th July 2007
Talking about meaningful work as an Atheist is all well and good. Doing meaningful work is another matter.

I like teaching here. It's fun, enjoyable and important. Is just a very different type of "meaningful" than the work I did Africa and Phily. When I first came here, I felt very guilty that I was doing something as self-centered as working for money. I knew I had to find something meaningful to do while I was here.

I have been working on a proposal for a Community Based Education Center for the islands of Romblon in the Philippines. The almost-finished proposal comes in at about 13,000 words and sixty-four pages(!). Here are some various versions of the proposal for those who want to read it:

The proposal still needs some work. The section on the building itself is conspicuously absent, as are the budgets. It also needs a little word-smithing as well.

We (CERV Philippines and I) plan to apply for funding through this site: www.globalgiving.com. This will allow us to collect small donations from many people (like you!) and organizations as opposed to one large donation from one organization. We haven't finalized the budget yet, but we suspect the whole project (stage one to stage three) will come in at about $US10,000.

For those you can't be bothered reading the whole proposal, here is a brief summary:

Build the center
The community based education center (CBEC) is central to all our other plans. It will be based in Romblon and have a classroom, admin area and so on.

Stage Two
Stage two can commence immediately after we have finished construction of the CBEC.

Daycare center
The CBEC will host a free daycare center. We will have fulltime Filipino worker and use volunteer teachers as and when they become available.

Family Planning
We will be conducting family planning talks in the CBEC. We will talk about cycle-beads (that will keep the church happy) and condoms (that will condemn many souls to Hell).

Administrative base for CERV
The CBEC will also be used as an administrative base for CERV (the organization I will be working with).

Stage Three
We will apply for Stage Three funding once the CBEC has been completed. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, we want to prove ourselves as worthy recipients of funding. This is one of the keys ideas behind Global Giving: Better performing recipients of money will be more likely to receive monies in the future.

Secondly, we still have lots of preliminary work on this projects before we are in a position to receive funding.

Vocational Projects
All of the following vocational groups will use the CBEC as a base for training and so on.

Craft Groups
We will train the people in simple craft techniques and then helping to sell them in markets in Manila and on the internet. There a lot of parallels here with www.grassrootsuganda.com.

Mechanical Training
There is a lot of out-of-school youth in Romblon just dying to get stuck into something. We will be training them in simple and advanced mechanical techniques for jeepneys and tricycles.

Fisheries
Most of the catch is sold in Romblon as-is. We will be training them in simple de-boning, skinning, filleting and drying techniques that will add value to the catch. We except that people will pay a few extra pesos for filleted fish.

Fish paste business
Some people on Romblon have made a fish-paste that Raymund (head of CERV) thinks is delicious. We plan to bring the product up to marketable standards and then market it.

Tailoring and textiles
Some of the money we receive will be used to purchase pedal-powered sewing machines. The power in Romblon is too unreliable for electric sewing machines.

We will train them on how to make simple garments which we will then sell. We may end up also selling them along with the crafts on the 'net.

Mangrove Nursery
The current mangrove reforestation project in Romblon is not great. We plan to get it up to a world class standard. The land around the CBEC will be used as a mangrove nursery.

Websites
I'm about to launch into the development of a website for CERV in the Philippines. An early prototype can be found here.

Grassroots Uganda - Child Sponsorship
Just before I left Uganda, I helped Rose set up her organization so that it could accept volunteers from GVN. When people volunteer with Rose, they usually head up to Kitgum^*.

One person who did head up to Kitgum was quite affected. So much so, that she has set up a child sponsorship program. These kids are going to be featured on GrassRootsUganda.com. There will be more information on this in the future. In the meantime though, here is one of the kids up for sponsorship.

African Groups
I'm fairly busy with school at the moment. The kids are all on holiday from their main school at the moment, which you'd think would mean a rest for them. But no, that's not how things work here. A rest from their main school just means more work at their Hagwon (a private language school. At the moment, I'm working 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., and then from 1:30 p.m. till 8:15 p.m. This doesn't give me a lot of time for other activities.

When I finish however I am going to try and start up some African Awareness groups at the local university. I have high hopes for it and think it could work well. If nothing else, I think Korean university students are always keen to talk to a native speaker of English to improve their own English.

Watch this space!

^*I do take some pride in this, by the way. People would not be volunteering with Rose if it wasn't for me. And I can say with no false humility that GVN volunteers would not be going to Kitgum now if it wasn't for me. That first group of us that went up were actually quite brave. Everybody expect Rose told us that it was dangerous and foolish. Rose told us otherwise. Rose was right.

Do you like the work that I am doing?

Wanna help in a real and tangible way?

Then visit GrassRootsUganda.com and purchase some crafts made by Ugandan ladies. 100% of the profits are returned to the ladies

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(c) 2005, 2006 and 2007 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to link to this page. Heck, you can even copy stuff from here if you want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.

Meaningful Work