My main job is teaching English to schoolchildren, but I am also involved in all kinds of secondary projects to assist the development of my poverty stricken community. After integrating into the local lifestyle and assessing the needs of the people, I have found that youth development is one of the most serious issues that needs. Straddling the line between tradition and modernity has created a troubling situation for the young men and women of Chuuk. The leaders of my village have requested that I help them build a basketball/volleyball court as a recreational center for the youth to enjoy.
The undertaking of this project will require a lot of work by the locals. One of the village elders has freely offered a parcel of his land for the placement of the court. However, there is no flat land on Fefan, so in order to make a place for the court they will have to create a piece of flat land with their hands. We have no large machinery to assist with the construction. Using shovels, machetes and pick-axes, the locals will reshape the jungle hillside into a foundation for the court. They will pound rocks with hammers to crush the volcanic boulders into aggregate to mix with the cement. The men will dig sand by hand and carry it on their backs almost a mile through the jungle pathways. All of the difficult construction work will be done for free by the willing young men of my community.
My responsibility for the building of the court is to organize the project and provide most of the materials. I will need to purchase hundreds of bags of cement and rebar poles, basketball posts and backboards, and all the other materials needed to complete the construction. This is where you come in. I am hoping to rely on the generosity of my friends and family back home in America to provide the money to buy the materials for this project. The community leaders and I have entered into an agreement called the Peace Corps Partnership Project, which relies on a combination of contributions from the locals and Americans to fund the project.
If you are interested in possibly donating any amount of money towards the building of a basketball court for my community, please consider visiting my website and contributing a tax-deductible charitable donation through the online payment system. I would greatly appreciate if you could also spread this message to anybody that you think might be interested in our fundraising efforts. The community and I will be forever indebted to you for lending a helping hand towards realizing our dreams and improving the quality of life on our island.
Please visit our website at www.peacecorps.gov/donate and input the project number 401-142 to complete your donation.
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Good for you on this ambitious project. Have you thought about ways that folks there could themselves raise/earn money for this? When I was there in Chuuk some folks would collect and dry copra, some would sell reef fish. I believe Feffen is known for its wood carvings. I own a few. Perhaps auctioning off wood carvings? If somehow some folks ended up with experience in successful economic enterprises doing this, I think that would be just as useful as the project itself. Just my two cents.
ReplyDeletebtw, with my comments above, I certainly do not want in anyway to dissuade donations for this cause. Just brainstorming.
ReplyDeleteA third of the cost of the project is going to be covered by the local community. The youth group has already started organizing fundraising events and coming up with different ideas to cover the costs. This project isnt just about building a place for them to play, a big part of the reason that I am doing this is to raise the leadership and planning skills of the youth. Instead of me just handling everything and gifting them a basketball court, they will feel ownership of the area because they will be the ones who worked so hard to build it. I am putting it in their hands to formulate an action plan to reach their goal. The hope is that they will gain the skills and knowledge about how to undertake these type of projects in the future, on their own without outside help.
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