The Adventure

The Adventure: For ten weeks from June until the end of August, I will be working with Village Life Outreach Project in the surrounding villages of Shirati, Tanzania. VLOP works on health, education, and life enhancing initiatives for the people of the Rorya district of northern Tanzania. To check out all the great projects VLOP has, go to http://www.villagelifeoutreach.org

From the end of September until the end of the year, I will be completing my final (Capstone) project for the Clinton School in Lima, Peru. I am working with Minga Peru, an NGO that works with women, children, and entire communities in the Peruvian Amazon to increase awareness of health issues, reduce violence, train women in leadership and health information, and build communities through the empowerment of women, income-generation projects, and establishing of municipal partnerships. For more information about Minga, go http://www.mingaperu.org

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Back in Business for a new experience

Well, everyone, after an unfortunate 8 weeks away from the blogosphere, I'm back in business.  The last few weeks of my project work in Tanzania were very busy as I completed my 80 hut-to-hut surveys and conducted multiple stakeholder interviews with village leadership, school faculty and staff, and even with the Rorya district primary school officer. Once back in the US on August 30th, I barely stopped moving, never in one place for more than 4 or 5 days: Fayetteville for the first Razorback game of the season, Hot Springs and Lake Hamilton for Labor Day and quality family time, DC for a wonderful reunion with close friends and some professional meetings, NYC for the Clinton Global Initiative, and in between a lot of short periods in Little Rock (ALL IN ONE MONTH). 

On September 26th, I packed up my bags again (much lighter this time) and headed off to Lima, Peru
to begin project work with Minga Peru.  I am developing a study tour program for the organization that will bring undergraduate and graduate Communication students to Lima and the Amazon to learn about Minga's work and to meet the women and children with whom Minga works.  Although Minga looks to work with multiple universities in the future, we are currently planning on a pilot program with UALR for this coming May. The deliverable of my project is a program guide for the organization outlining not only the programming and lessons for the May trip but providing a framework so that Minga staff will be able to coordinate programming and logistics for future programs as well.

Not only does this next experience look to provide numerous lessons in program development, organizational management, and fundraising, but also will be a great comparison to my work this past summer in Shirati.  Whereas in TZ my project work was in the field and I was working in the field most days, my work in Peru will be based out of Lima.  I will only have one opportunity to visit the Amazonia communities (for a week) and so will have to take advantage of that week to gain as much insight as possible into the programs, the people, and the dynamic of Minga Peru in the Peruvian Amazon.  Here's to the next adventure! Salud!
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