Update: PACA & Community Priorities

As Jim mentioned in a previous post, we recently held two 2-day PACA meetings  in Kongodugu and Duguba in order to help the village choose development priorities, aka reasonable goals and projects that could be completed in the next few years. James’s meeting consisted of many educated “functionaires” very accustomed to shiny NGO meetings. This meant that these well-educated Malians who were already leaders in this larger town had a LOT of ideas about how to improve the town and the challenge was to reconcile the differences and help different groups of people agree to work together.

 

Participants split into groups based on gender and age and developed a daily calendar, seasonal work schedule, community map, and priorities which fit their group. Food Security was one of the main topics of discussion and everyone agreed that it was something they wanted to work toward in Duguba. Then, the Malian Peace Corps trainer brought everyone together and helped them to combine and  rank their collective priorities, and start thinking about an action plan for making improvements to the community, all this while keeping the crowds attention and energy up with stories and jokes that only a Malian could pull off. After extensive discussion and voting, Duguba decided that food transformation, microfinance, education, and gardening would be its top priorities. Therefore, in the past two weeks Jim has started talking to the women’s association about solar drying fruits and vegetables and hopes to organize a training in the near future.

 

Doing PACA in Kongodugu was a horse of a different color. We started by drawing a community map. However, since only about 10 % of the people at the meeting were literate this could have been a very intimidating exercise for them. Instead, the Peace Corps trainer adopted the training to their needs. We gathered leaves, ash, and rocks, and made a map of our village by drawing every landmark in the dirt and labeling them with little pieces of paper.  I helped people write their names down and place their houses on the map. We used the map as a springboard into topics such as why open defecation is bad, how drinking water gets contaminated, washing hands with soap, etc.

 

On day two in Kongodugu, we split into groups of men, women, and youth to discuss village priorities for development. It was amazing to see the women get involved. Three of the 15 women had started literacy classes only last year, so they helped their group slowly make a list of changes they wanted to see take place. Still, it was easy to see that the women and the youth were thrilled to have a voice in village life, a place traditionally reserved for older men.  Each group presented their list and after much discussion and voting led by the Peace Corps trainer, we decided that fixing the old broken water pumps, farming equipment, improving women’s handicrafts (shea butter, cloth dying), and education would be our focus.

The success of these meetings has led to a whirlwind of activity in the last few weeks as people are finally excited and motivated to get started on some of these priorities.  Therefore, last week, we found a blacksmith who knows how to fix pumps, obtained a diagnosis of the problems, got a quote on purchasing new parts, and met with the village chief to explain what needs to happen if the village wants to move forward.  The big challenge now is to see if the village can raise the relatively expensive sum of money to serve as Peace Corps’ required community contribution. If so, we plan on submitting a grant proposal to Peace Corps and following through on the project.

 

 

~Joye (and James)