Some of you have had the pleasure of listening to me vent about my experiences with NGOs in my village here in Senegal. I think most NGOs are fantastic and have wonderful intentions, but one thing I've learned from my time in Senegal so far is that the collaboration of some of the NGOs with each other is less than stellar. For example, there are 3 separate NGOs each working in my village of 600 people. One oversees my health hut, and the other 2 are mainly involved in various ad-hoc projects. However, a lot of those projects overlap. For instance, each month, each of the NGOs wants us to monitor the growth of babies and children under 5 years old, but each organization has its own guidelines to follow and its own notebook in which it wants the data recorded. This creates a lot of confusion and duplication of work for my community health workers (volunteer positions!). If we're not going to pay them, we should at least make it easy for them to do the work, right? This is just one example of a personal frustration I have faced during my Peace Corps service.
SO, the Peace Corps volunteers in the region of Tamba (that includes me!) are coordinating a gathering of all of our local NGO and government partners for a day of relationship building, networking, and information sharing and we need your help! Though this may not be the sexiest project we do, it is one of the most important! Opening the lines of communication between all of these parties will not only make the jobs of local partners and Peace Corps volunteers better, but it will hopefully make everyone's efforts more impactful in the right ways.
Interested in donating to help us make this event a reality? Click on the link below:
Your donation is tax deductible and 100% of your contribution will go towards our project.
Thanks for listening to my shameless plug!
And thanks for reading. Peace & love,
Lindsay
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