19th April 2009

Well, that's the first month down for Meaningful Volunteer.

What's been happening? Lotsa.  Meaningful Volunteer formed a partnership with IRH, control group testing for the RYE School, the RYE School Summer program was launched, new volunteers arrived, Project Lifecycle got some structure, a motorcycle was purchased, Cycle Beads are now available online, office space was rented and four laptop computers were purchased.

Gasp.  Pant.  Gasp.

And that's just the stuff for March.

So, what's been learnt?

Our two big projects at the moment are the RYE School Summer Program and Project Lifecycle.  One of the biggest problems for both of these projects is - well - me.  I'm critical for both of them.  If I were hit by a bus, it would be game over for both projects. I don't like this.  (Especially the getting hit by a bus bit...)

I did lotsa preparation work for the RYE School project especially.  There is a lot of cool online stuff that allows the teacher to get ready for their lessons, print lesson plans, print in-classroom materials and so on.  The Internet is just a trickle at the moment.  Far too slow to use the online tools.  So everything has to be done via my development laptop.   This creates a real bottleneck.

So now we are investing a lot of time and money into getting high speed internet to the island.  It should be technically possible (there is a satellite service here), but maybe not practically possible (getting a technician here). 

Project Lifecycle is a politically charged project.  If it goes wrong, it goes really wrong.  So I've been micromanaging it when I'm unable to do the work myself.

I really don't like it that I am so important to both projects.  One of my goals for this year is to make myself no longer necessary. I wanted to have the projects so well designed, that any old person could do them.  This is achievable for the RYE School (provided we have high speed Internet), but not for Project Lifecycle.  Hopefully some replication lessons will be learnt on the way.

Since we have no volunteers for Project Mangrove, it hasn't really had much attention.  I have been working hard on a project plan for it though.   So hopefully when we do get volunteers, the project will click into life.

One of the more exciting projects I'd like to do is called the Educational Walkway.  It would fall under the School Building and Maintenance program.   The barangay (village) of Cawayan is located up in the hills.  Most students walk up and down a dirt track to get to work.  When it rains, it is just not practical for them to get to school.  This is having a huge impact of their education.  Our control group testing showed that students in Cawayan scored an average of about 85, while students in other areas averaged about 100.  I attribute this to the hill.

So what's to be done?  I want to build a set of concrete steps up the hill.  This would have a huge impact on the community.  Not only in terms of education, but also in terms of health - you could get sick people to hospital quicker; their economy - you could transport goods out of the village quicker and therefore cheaper; and just make their life so much easier.

I think it is a winning idea.  The volunteer fees would pay for the concrete and the volunteer and locals could build the road.  I am sure that the locals would be more than happy to provide free labor as it would be such a boon for their barangay.

It's been a great first month.  I'm very much looking forward to the second!