[FOG/PC Guinea news] FOG funds projects

From Projects' Director Claire Lea:

FOG provided some classroom technology to a private school in Conakry. This school, in the Petit Simbaya neighborhood, was started by the Amazonian Initiative, and is a bi-lingual school that instructs in both English and French. The students are a mix of Guinean, Sierra Leonian, and Liberian. FOG provided a new LCD projector and a gently used laptop (procured by Mackenzie Dabo) to help computer instruction. The total cost of the donation was $846. Mackenzie brought the items to Conakry during the Christmas holiday.

School director James Koundouno writes that thanks to the donation: "…the school is relieved from the stress of queuing in a line for school documents to be processed on the computer at the cyber cafes. Every Friday, we have what we call in the school the Literary and Debating Society program where the children participate in different school programs and for this time round, the laptop computer and projector are used to show some school literature documentaries that are on DVD/VCD plates; also other documentaries are shown through the help of this computer. We usually do a computer course without any computer in the classrooms. For now we are using the one computer and projector to do some basic practical tutoring on computer through the PowerPoint program and it is shown on the wall where everybody sees whatever the teacher is discussing/teaching. This has motivated students in the computer classes, and they are very happy to participate and never want to miss any computer practicals…we want to once more say we are very happy for the donations and this will go down in the history of the school."

FOG also helped fund two current volunteer projects. The first is a project that will repair a primary school roof. PCV Samantha Levin, a Public Health Volunteer, is coordinating this project. FOG donated $400 and THIS PROJECT STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP! You can donate directly to PCPP through their website, or call 800.424.8580 ext. 2170.

Here’s a link to more info on Samantha's project: http://tinyurl.com/c6r6st

The second project aims at the development of an eco-tourism site in the Fouta. PCV Catherine (Katy) Murtaugh, a Small Enterprise Development Volunteer, is coordinating this project FOG donated $1000 to this project and we are waiting for feedback.

Finally, we gave the Volunteers in Guinea 14 new DVDs to update the collection in the Conakry house, per request of the PCVs, at a total cost of $206.

There is one CURRENT VOLUNTEER PROJECT on PC Partnership Program THAT NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT. Link directly at: http://tinyurl.com/c7jody

[Peace Corps issues] Downsize the PC to make it more effective?

Robert L. Strauss, an RPCV and former Peace Corps recruiter and country director, wrote an interesting op-ed in Wednesday's New York Times.

Strauss opines that the present demographics of the Peace Corps prevents it from being an effective development organization. Most PCVs are recent college graduates.

In the Peace Corps' early days, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.

According to Strauss: What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country... but that the organization is not doing so because it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet.

[Development issues] Does US food aid hurt or help?

The International Herald Tribune has a good article on the debate surrounding US food aid. The prominent NGO CARE is rejecting $45 million a year in federal funding because it believes that the structure and delivery mechanism of US food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.

It contends that by flooding the local market with surplus US food, it drives down prices for indigenous farmers and undermines their broader anti-poverty efforts.

World Vision and 14 other charities disagree with CARE'S decision and argues that the system works because it keeps hard currency in poor countries, can help prevent food price spikes in them and does not hurt their farmers.

[Development news] UN projects target clean drinking water in the Forest

The IRIN news service reports that 14 UN-affiliated agencies and the Guinean government signed an $80 million aid package to improve access to clean drinking water in the country's southeastern Forest region.

The package envisages an increase in the number of people with access to drinking water in the region from 59 to 85 percent by 2011, with the main goal of reducing waterborne diseases like cholera and diarrhoea.

“There is a real need right now,” said Idrissa Souare, head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) N'Zérékoré office in the Forest Region. “It’s really very worrying.”

He told IRIN there were 3,067 drinking water points for over two million people in the Forest Region - about half the required number.

Cholera epidemics have affected several hundred in the last two years. The disease is closely linked to poor hygeine and limited access to clean water.

The Forest region bore the ecological brunt of the more than half a million refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia that lived in Guinea in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

According to the 2006 UN Human Development index, half of all Guineans do not have reasonable* access to a clean water source.


(*-defined as 5.3 gallons per day from a source within 0.6 miles)