badness outta STYLE

intense discussion
The whole group
Lenroy...a sweet kid
kids at the top

There's a rope swing...limitless entertainment for them
STYLE kids on our hike
Cayon High Sports Day..quite possibly the biggest event of the school year
Violet Petty Sports Day
A pumpkin growing in my front yard from when i threw out food scraps...amazing soil here!
My fifth graders made these Lost Dog signs and posted them all around the neighborhood...my heart literally melted

Hi everyone!
I'm providing another more detailed blog than the last one. i tend to ramble off on emotional, introspective topics rather than updating you all on my life here.

At this time last year I was noticing that work-related life was picking up some speed and actually becoming something real and noticeable. And just like last year, after the lull of the holidays and Carnival, things have now revitalized and resuscitated from their November-February dormancy. This is quite a change for me because now I have replaced sitting at home and being destitute and wishing I had something to do with stressing over the frustrating unpredictability of projects. The grass is always greener...

Earth Minute is the project I'm most excited about and focused on right now. I guess I haven't mentioned it yet because I was unsure whether or not it would happen, and I'm getting quite tired of reporting on projects that eventually end in failure. While there is no guarantee that that is not the shared fate of this project, I'm still trying to think positively, so i guess I will disclose some of the early details.

Earth Minute is a project I am working on with the Ministry of Sustainable Development. The last project that fell through with this Department was the recycling feasibility study, yet I still retained contact with Jay Farier from that project attempt, so we are now working together yet again. I proposed the idea of Earth Minute to him and he was immediately on board, and has added the Public Relations Officer from the Department to work with us. The idea is to have thirty one-minute infomercials once a week that will give advice on different ways to live a more environmentally conscientious lifestyle. The tips will encourage people to make small lifestyle changes, like don't run the water while brushing your teeth, how to reuse materials, try using re-usable water bottles, etc. will be the We are going to have local faces, both famous and ordinary, to deliver each segment and air them before the local news one day a week. I think it would be great to use local people because they will then indirectly become invested in the fight for environmental protection and preservation just by their participation. I already wrote up the list of tips and tried to pair pertinent people with each one, for example, one of the suggestions is to eat local, so we will have someone who sells fruits and vegetables at the market deliver that segment. This will provide greater incentive for them to work with us because it will give them a chance to promote their business or industry.

We have proposals written out and have approached various media houses as well as independent, private producers to figure out a price range. Considering we have zero dollars right now we are going to have to find some source of money for this project since nobody is willing to film and edit for free. This means either shmoozing with various government persons or writing a grant. We are really short on time since I'm leaving in October, and the goal is to have the first segment ready to air on Earth Day, so a grant does not really seem feasible right now. This does make me secretly relieved since I despise grant-writing, especially writing them within the pressure cooker of time restrictions. So onto making better acquaintances with those government people with the big dollars.

STYLE, the boys and girls group I tried starting at the high school almost a year ago, is just now becoming active and engaged. Last Friday I paid a guide to take us on a hike up the crater as a way to kick start these kids' enthusiasm for our group. It was much more effective than approaching them and asking them if they wanted to be a part of a community-service project. The way this whole hiking event transpired makes me wish I could comfort the Alisa from 6 months ago who was pulling her hair out because nobody was showing up or showing any interest at all in STYLE. Now that there a is real, tangible event that these kids had a chance to participate in, and even better, skip school for, everyone wants to be a part of STYLE. I have kids coming up to me saying "why wasn't i picked to go on the hike? It's not fair that you only took those kids." It makes me want to both laugh and cry that they have the audacity to say that to me after I've spent the entirety of the past 8 months going to Cayon High School and literally begging kids to join my group. Eventually we just had the guidance counselor hand-pick kids that she thinks are experiencing behavior issues and need some added guidance, which I think works out better anyways. This select group is now extremely excited and has taken ownership over STYLE and personalized it. They identify themselves as members of STYLE and already have a lot of great ideas running through their minds. The only issue is that my grant money for this project must be spent by July and I have barely even touched it, and school basically shuts down at the end of May for testing, so I have two months to spend a grant I had written for a years' worth of projects. Shopping spree? Maybe.

Thinking about STYLE and the amount of time, patience, and effort I have put in order to not quit completely and abandon the project only reminds me of how naive I was last year. I put so much energy into romanticizing what the group would be like, the projects we would do, and how wonderful and joyous we would all be. I meticulously mapped out each project and idea in the grant and somehow convinced a board of people from USAID that my project was ready and worthy for a grant. They approved it; they believed me as much as i believed myself. Then I had a launch and invited students and parents before I had even been to the high school or met the principal and told them all about this wonderful, groundbreaking idea I had thought up from behind the glow of my computer screen. I was such a sappy, ignorant, idealist, post-college sociology major nutcase to think that after a launch I would be able to miraculously convince high school kids to join me, whom they have never met before, in a community service-based after school program. In a way I deserved the 11 months of frustration, helplessness, and stress. Shame on me for being arrogant enough to think that I had the ability to just walk into a high school and tell people what's a good idea, what's best for them, or how an after-school program should be. Now that STYLE has seen some success in a much more natural fashion, with guidance counselors and teacher from the actual school being committed and invested, I can truly understand what it means to start a project like this and have it actually take off. Before I was giving myself gratification before I had even faced the turmoil. Now that I've pulled my head out of the clouds and dealt with the grimy part, I have been able to internalize the valuable lessons that inevitably sprout up from the rubble. Because that's all I can really hope to walk away from this experience with; some lessons on how to not be a pompous foreigner trying to do "community development" in a place that is not my home or community.

As many of you know, my dog Shaggy ran away last month. It was really hard getting over the fact that I might not ever see him again. There are so many dangers to dogs here-cars, other dogs, people poisoning dogs, etc.-yet at the same time I'm almost certain someone picked him up because people love small dogs here and he's too smart to fall for any evil antics. I just hope he's off somewhere getting fed and receiving daily belly rubs.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy!! Miss and love you all

Alisa

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