This Past Year

When I wrote the post “Projects to start strong this new year” I intended to follow it up with this post, detailing the successes and failures of those projects. What I didn’t intend was for the year to pass so quickly. With only six months left on my contract (out of 27), it seems my time in Kyrgyzstan will be over before I know it.
As expected, the list of projects I wrote about a year ago did not all come out to fruition, but that’s not to say it wasn’t a successful year (I think that double negative is acceptable given the context. “but it was a successful year” seems a bit too strong…)

1. Help Establish a Microcredit Agency within the NGO Epkin
Well, this one didn’t pan out. Step one of the process was to visit other microcredit agencies and see what we could improve upon to make a new microcredit agency that would better meet the needs of the rural women we serve. As it turns out, there are many (too many, maybe) already existing that can provide for our membership, the main issue they have is getting the word out. We have decided to instead focus our efforts on connecting our women with the right agency for their endeavors. This will be a full project extending through my departure. We are currently applying for a UNDP grant to help us connect lawyers and bankers with our women and youth entrepreneurs.
Also, notice how I just added youth in there in that last sentence? That’s right, we’ve recently expanded from a rural women’s organization to a women and youth org. The org has been trying to delve into working with youth for a while now, but have had difficulty getting youth interested. My counterpart decided since I’m a youth (youth is defined here as between 18 and 30) maybe I would attract them to join, and apparently it worked. Maybe it’s a work in progress.

2. Give Computer Lessons to 6 Villages

Accomplished. This was a success, although a much much much slower success than I expected. While I thought I’d be giving excel classes in the first day of lessons, it turned out I would spend a minimum of 30 minutes starting each lesson with how to click the mouse. Then another 10-20 on moving the cursor.. So it was slow going. But after several months of traveling to each village we’ve accomplished the initial goals of teaching each village activists plus a few others how to open and save documents, create word files, create tables, and print. After that point it was on the village activist to train the rest of the village’s members. More in depth trainings on internet marketing and such will be on an individual basis as needed.

Here is a photo of one of those trainings. Now famous because this photo appears in the Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan brochure!

3. Help Start a School Theater Program in my village of Epkin
This one simply didn’t happen. My secondary counterpart and I created a proposal for the program, but after realizing timing wasn’t right for this year we pretty much scrapped it. My thoughts were that maybe we’d try again earlier this coming year, but it seems my secondary counterpart has moved on to bigger and better things for now.

4. Help Revive Epkin Village’s Library
Not complete. Getting books is not as easy as I thought. Especially Kyrgyz books. I have some leads on used books and will be meeting with the village government to discuss a portion of the surplus budget being proportioned to the library. The counterpart for this is still interested, I am still hopeful for this project’s success before I finish.

5. Help Organize and Run a Leadership/HIV Camp for Rural Youth

Complete. This turned out to be my big project of the year. I got a grant from the Peace Corps for the camp/training. Representatives from multiple village youth committees came to the five-day training in a beautiful village just south of mine, Issyk Ata. Issyk Ata is known for its hot springs and rejuvenation spas, unfortunately I wasn’t able to enjoy those during the training, but some of the participants did. The training happened in mid November, much later than originally planned. Originally we had planned to hold the training during the summer, but the funds were delayed and so we rescheduled for the fall. As the date arrived more than half of the expected participants informed us they could not make it because they needed to work the harvest. Rather than lose half the participants, we changed the date again to mid November.

Here is proof of the training.

More proof.

A fun activity, match the STD/STI to the symptoms.

Presenting their findings.

The training itself was hugely successful. I gave a few of the trainings (in Kyrgyz) as did my counterparts and some HIV/AIDS experts we brought in from Bishkek. We measured the effectiveness of the training through pre- and post-tests and saw a marked improvement from an average of 15/25 questions wrong to just 4/25 wrong. (Is that a negative way of looking at it? Maybe I should say 10/25 correct to 21/25 correct.) Being able to socialize with many Kyrgyz people my age was a special treat. We played Mafia in the evenings and shared magic tricks.
This project includes a follow up portion, as the participants are now required to conduct similar trainings in their villages for the rest of the youth committees (or if the youth committees are small, to the 11^th form students) and report back to me. So far only two of the villages have completed this requirement, but I’ve given them until February 1^st to do it.

OTHER
My English talking club has been somewhat taken over by the three new volunteers in the area. They’ve introduced a recycled art club, a movie club, and I think a business/computer skills club (though I haven’t been to the last one yet despite being a business volunteer.) It’s nice having even more volunteers in the area.
I have also been consulting several aspiring entrepreneurs in my village and the nearby villages that share the local governance. Many people have great ideas for business but access to information is difficult it creates a significant barrier to entry for most of the ideas.

I also had my Dad and brother Brian visit in April and then Patricia visited at the end of the summer. We got to do some traveling around this beautiful country. I’m looking forward to more travel around Kyrgyzstan after I close out my service.

My dad awkwardly shaking my host dad's hand and my host mom.

Brian enjoying his first Marshrutka (minibus) ride.

Patricia and I spent the day at an orphanage making dreams come true..dragons on faces.

Also, this little guy now lives at my house. He brightens even the darkest of days.

2015 PLANS
In addition to the unfinished work I described above and the ongoing projects, I will be spending the next six months preparing my organization for another volunteer. It isn’t a sure thing yet, but there will hopefully be a replacement volunteer for when I leave. I plan on staying a couple extra weeks beyond my first leave date to get the new volunteer up to speed. I will also have to decide on what to do with my future…I am currently applying to graduate school programs for public policy in international development, but will only attend if I can secure a full scholarship. (Like my blog? Have a spare hundred grand? Eh? Nudge nudge) Otherwise it’ll be the real world for me, so job hunting. (Like my blog? Hiring? Preferably in the Chicago area? Eh? Nudge nudge)

That’s enough for now, happy new year!

no strings attached

You Can Have This Money, Just One (Thousand) Condition(s)

You must give it all away.

Despite my best efforts to be lazy, November turned out to be a very productive month. I began the month by taking the GRE in the capital city, a necessary step in applying to graduate schools. Finally welcomed the new group of volunteers to the Oblast. Conducted a week long training for youth committee leaders from several villages on best practices, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases. Worked individually with youth leaders on business plans and project proposals. A string of movie theaters in the capital started offering movies without Russian dubbing, so I enjoyed a cinematic experience for the first time in a while. I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Peace Corps (PC) country director’s house with many PCVs and PC staff. Had my annual review at work, which seemed to go well. And lastly, and what this post will focus on, I worked with my organization on securing funding for the next six months.

Standing with two trainers and a participant from the Youth Committee Training

Funding an NGO is not easy. Funders, when you can find them, prefer to fund projects - not organizations themselves. Of course, in order for the project to work, it needs to be carried out by an organization that can keep its ducks in a row, but funders do not enjoy the idea of contributing to overhead costs. Most grant openings I’ve come across specifically stipulate that exactly none of the grant can be used for overhead costs. I’ll even admit, when I was back in the states and was struck by a feeling of generosity, I’d look up organizations and choose to donate based on how low the percentage of funds used toward overhead were.  The lower the percentage, the higher the likelihood I would donate.

There is this mentality when giving money- we want the money to go toward the project, not into the pockets of those running the project.

I think it’s time we take a second to pause and think about whose pockets those are. The pockets we refuse to pad with our dollars. People like my counterparts, Bubumairam and Guljash. Two women who have dedicated the past two decades to improving the local economy by empowering women through education and access to opportunities. These women were never rich and decided to give back, no. They were not privileged and felt guilty, not that either. These women were victims of a failing system that promoted male chauvinism and cronyism, and decided they were not satisfied by the status quo. They decided to make a change in their own generation, so that future generations would not suffer the same. Slowly, over the past twenty years, these women have been attending any training they can find and afford, acquiring skills they can pass on to other women, building resources for their members, and eking by on limited grant money so that their more than one thousand members can continue to grow in abilities and empowerment.

We don’t want our money going into the pockets of Bubumairam and Guljash…right?

In my opinion? Wrong. Of course I do! Those are exactly the people I want my money going toward. If you’re not comfortable with your money going to Bubumairam and Guljash, then who in the world are you comfortable giving to?

Bubumairam on the right, giving a certificate of completion to Ruskul, a budding activist in a small village nearby my host village.

What does overhead costs mean, anyway? Obvious things like the electric bill for the office, maybe even the water bill (not the case for my organization, since we don’t have a water line to the office), heating, paper, pens, maybe computers and printers, ink cartridges. Less obvious things, like advertisements, auditing, new employee training, application fees for certain certificates. And most importantly: employee wages. If a grant does give in on some overhead costs it will often allow for the first two categories, but almost never will it allow any percentage of the money to go toward employee wages.

Why not?

Why do we not want to pay the people doing good things for the world?

Taking a moral perspective, we are a lousy society to refuse to pay people for doing things that are beneficial to society, like empowering women in the rural areas of Kyrgyzstan, while promoting a system (implicit or not) that allows chief executives of fast food companies and soft drinks to become billionaires.

Taking an economic perspective, we have to ask what will happen when these good people are given a wage. I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I would feel confident in saying paying people like Bubumairam and Guljash would increase the chances of them staying in this line of work. Meaning the people who have taken the time to learn how to empower rural women, will continue to empower rural women. Meaning the people doing good things will be increasingly better at what they do, more qualified and effective.

So, do not buy another bottle of CocaCola, instead give money to an organization that does good, no strings attached.