Moldova
Bulgaria
Macedonia
Morocco
Guinea
Madagascar
Moldova
Learn how Sarah Dobsevage, a TEFL (Teaching
English as a Foreign Language) Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova, is
working to clean up her community's stream and well water, in addition
to developing the first of its kind conference on environmental issues
involving local and regional officials.
In a place where plastic bags float around freely like pollen in spring
and attempts at inducing change are met with stubborn inflexibility,
the task of implementing environmental education into Sarah's two years
of service has been unexpectedly successful and rewarding. Sarah Dobsevage,
a second-year TEFL volunteer working in Moldova, a small Eastern European
country between Ukraine and Romania, has devoted much of her time, both
inside and outside the classroom to raising ecological awareness among
members of her community.
Though Sarah had never really considered herself an environmentalist
before she joined the Peace Corps, she has certainly earned the reputation
as an ecologically conscious volunteer. Sarah's desire to raise awareness
was piqued in April 2002, after having walked along the bank of the polluted
local stream, where she saw piles of garbage strewn along the path of
the stream and within the stream itself. As she walked further she saw
some men sitting outside their gates talking, indifferent toward the
mountains of garbage on the not-so-distant horizon. She was disturbed
knowing that the people sitting outside chatting were part of the problem.
These two men symbolized generations and generations of people. Their
indifference and their need to keep the inside of their houses and their
own yards within their gates clean were the main causes of this mess.
Just when she thought it couldn't get worse, it did.
A woman began turning the crank of a well, filling up her bucket to
bring water home. "What she was going to do with that water?" Sarah thought
to herself. "She might do any of the following: drink it, bathe in it,
feed her animals, wash her clothes, or scrub the floor." The well was
fully surrounded by garbage, and by extension, the well's water was completely
contaminated. It was irrelevant what she was going to do with the water;
in all these cases, she'd be using polluted water in a potentially hazardous
or unsanitary way.
Seeing this disturbed Sarah to such a degree that she drew public attention
to the ecological question, initiated a school-wide river clean up, and
created a forum for discussing environmental problems. Although she was
met with some criticism, Sarah was able to organize a river clean up
in which grades 5 through 12 participated. In addition, every Thursday
of the month, students discussed environmental topics. On Fridays, they
implemented into practice the theories they had discussed the previous
day. The work was shown on television with a clip of the students pleading
for support from the local government, and an article was written praising
the students for taking the initiative. In response to the article, an
elderly man wrote an editorial, reprimanding the elder generations for
their indifference and complacency and commending the students for teaching
their elders. Not only did Sarah's efforts reach the student body of
her Lyceum, but they also extended to the local population through the
media.
This year, Sarah has increased her efforts in raising ecological awareness.
The entire school cleaned the river, but this time Sarah was out there
with them. She recollects, "We were all out there picking up bottles,
plastic bags, empty cosmetics containers, bird feathers, excrement, a
broken sink, syringes, sticks, building materials, and netting - to name
a few." Convincing the staff and students to clean was not always an
easy task.
At the end of this month, Sarah will be conducting an ecological seminar.
She has invited three representatives from the capital, one from the
ministry of ecology and two from environmentally conscious non-governmental
organizations. The seminar will focus on raising the ecological awareness
of the residents. The mayor, the state ecological inspector, the head
doctor, local school directors, school nurses, and the teachers of biology,
chemistry and geography from five schools have been invited with the
intent that they will then pass the information onto their students.
Sarah hopes her efforts during the past two years will develop further
following the seminar.
Bulgaria
Learn how Joey Bristol is stirring up community-wide
interest and action in protecting the environment.
Joseph "Joey" Bristol is an environmental management and training volunteer
posted in a small town in the northern foothills of the Central Balkan
Mountains in Bulgaria. Joey has worked with the municipality for nearly
two years on a variety of projects such as eco-tourism development, water
testing education, and teaching English to the municipal administration.
Together, Joey and the municipality have realized positive environmental
change in the region.
In order to stimulate the local tourism market and to promote low-impact
use of the mountains, Joey has also spent time working to gather, organize
and professionally present local knowledge about hiking and biking trails
in the region. Presently, the ecological department of the municipality
is working to implement a separate waste collection and recycling program.
An uncommon endeavor in Eastern Europe, starting a recycling program
has not been without difficulty and roadblocks. However, the community
is proud to celebrate and begin using new recycling bins on Earth Day
this year.
Earth Day has traditionally been a day of work and celebration in this
Bulgarian town. Last year the municipality sponsored a reservoir cleanup,
during which citizens, municipal employees, students from the village,
and even the town mayor picked up garbage and removed non-native shrubs.
After cleaning for much of the day, they gathered for a banquet and eco-festival
at which local high school students sang and led younger kids in a series
of eco-challenge activities.
Most notably, a US Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored
project for outdoor leadership and environmental education courses won
the town, and Bulgaria, recognition when it garnered a silver prize in
the International Green Apple Awards presented at the House of Commons
in London last year. This year, in addition to opening the recycling
program, the community plans to organize a trash-bash to clean up river
banks, plant trees and flowers around town, chalk the asphalt with eco-graffiti
and go for a short hike to enjoy the local beauty.
Following Earth Day celebrations, Joey and his colleagues are looking
forward to organizing a youth exchange with Macedonian students in order
to promote ecological awareness, mountain rescue skills, and democracy
between the two Balkan countries. They are also gearing up to host a
group of environmental college students on a field studies course in
Bulgaria this summer.
Macedonia
Jay Cable, an environmental volunteer in Macedonia,
is working on a number of projects to help his surrounding communities
learn how to put in place ways to keep their environment healthy. Here
are just a few of the projects in which he is working.
Jay Cable has been working for 15 months in his assigned community.
You could say that he knows how to diversify his skills and keep himself
busy.
For example, Jay is working in conjunction with non-governmental organizations
and a number of local communities on an educational and promotional campaign
for increasing environmental awareness. He has been working to organize
town hall meetings, and coordinate volunteer student workers in an effort
to increase awareness of the harmful effects that excessive use of plastic
has on the environment and to lay the groundwork for future recycling
programs.
In addition, Jay is helping a high school student council to renovate
and clean-up their courtyards to help improve the exterior ambiance of
the high school. He's also working in conjunction with the Citizens Advisory
Board and group of young Macedonian community volunteers, modeled after
the Peace Corps, in a beautification plan to replace house and building
numbers, as well as street signs in the local community.
Come June, Jay and the local group can also cross off their list the
completion of a marketing plan for the usage of geo-thermal water. The
group's main goal has been to increase citizen awareness of the benefits
of using geo-thermal water for heating and electricity. The same group
is also creating a technical manual for the water treatment plant outside
the community. This manual will translate and explain to international
organizations the technology, purpose, and capacity of the plant.
Morocco
In Morocco, learn how Aimee Petras and Sarah
Shaffer are making a difference in the women and children's lives in
the communities in which they serve.
Aimee Petras, serving in the Anti Atlas Mountains -a site known for
its unique Argane forests- is assisting her community in several environmental
projects. First, Aimee's goal was to teach young students that keeping
your environment healthy can be rewarding in several ways. At the local
primary schools, Aimee focused on how something as small as planting
a tree can have a positive impact on a community. By planting trees,
they would not only help to beautify their community, but they would
also prevent soil erosion and desertification, a major challenge in Morocco.
Second, after teaching the benefits of tree planting, Aimee actually
practiced what she taught. She helped plant 3,500 olive trees that not
only provide a positive environment, the tree groves also help to improve
income generation and job creation abilities in the community.
Sarah Shaffer, serving in the Middle Atlas- a site with ecological
and biological importance- is helping her community through the promotion
of eco-tourism. Sarah is working with her community to design, construct
and organize a small bed and breakfast. The bed and breakfast will try
to draw more people in to better understand and realize the important
ecology of the area. This is a way to build a direct relationship to
the people who provide food and housing, who share their knowledge of
local flora and fauna, and who produce souvenirs and handicrafts. The
revenue of the business would be distributed directly into the surrounding
community.
In addition, Sarah is working to create a "neddi," or women's and girls'
club. In her village, many of the women marry young or stay in their
household. This coupled with the heavy, unpaid work burden placed on
them; girls have little opportunity to develop marketable skills or to
make significant choices for themselves. By developing a neddi, Sarah
hopes to increase their handcraft skills. In the long term, she hopes
to encourage the women to form their own business association. This would
be one group helping to showcase the handcrafts, made from nature, and
promoting eco-tourism in the area.
Guinea
Peace Corps volunteer Nathaniel Duncan is an
agroforestry volunteer posted in a village in Siguiri. His story shows
how his project helped turn skeptics into doers.
As the first ever volunteer to serve in the village, the task of establishing
Nathaniel's work identity was a particularly daunting one. The breadth
of projects that could possibly be undertaken was equally as difficult
as the task itself. After several initial meetings with the assistant
director of a non-governmental organization, ADRA, Guinea's food security
project, Nathaniel realized that although ADRA had more than 20 agents
working throughout the region on various food security issues, none of
them were involved in food preservation, especially fruits and vegetables.
Nathaniel decided to fill in the blanks, so to speak, and create a project
that would specialize in food preservation. He would use his stateside
teaching experience and expand the work capacity of another development
organization by conducting a hands-on seminar that would provide ADRA
field agents with the necessary skills to build and promote solar drying
as a means to improve food security.
The day of the seminar began with an interactive discussion of the importance
of food preservation and the need to add to the nutritional content of
the local diet. These agents' doubts were quickly dispersed by the hands-on
construction of a solar dryer, in which every agent had to participate.
The two hours they spent building the solar dryer and explaining fruit/vegetable
preparation saw the transformation of the skeptics into converts. By
the end of the seminar, the ADRA agents had broken off into smaller discussions
on how to apply the knowledge gained to their work.
To say Nathaniel's project produced results is an understatement. All
participants in the seminar have duplicated the process on the village
level, and there are plans to encourage the implementation of solar drying
into the program of more than 500 groups that ADRA/Guinea works with
in the region. And, all of this resulted from Nathaniel's question, "Where
do I begin?"
Madagascar
Do clean water and healthy fish really come
from trees? The people of this Madagascar community thought this riddle
was a silly concept. But, Peace Corps volunteer Mark Fabian helped
solve this equation and taught the residents that taking better care
of their environment can mean a healthier family.
Before Mark Fabian's help, the people in his community had a hard time
maintaining a good supply of clean, safe drinking water. Over the last
year, Mark has been working with community members, local authorities,
and others to supervise the design and construction of a gravity-fed
water system.
But before they dealt with the water, Mark worked with the community
to plant trees and vetiver grass, a special plant that helps conserve
soil on the hillsides of the watershed. They chose fruit trees because
people would be reluctant to cut them down in the future for firewood.
And, not only do they produce healthy fruit, the trees also help reduce
soil erosion, and clean the rain and runoff as the water reaches the
spring.
After several days of planting trees, people began seeing a method to
his madness - or riddle that is. This task has resulted in clean flowing
water in the spring. In addition, the runoff from the new, clean water
spigot now flows into a fishpond, which also irrigates some nearby rice
paddies. Mark Fabian's project represents a model not only of collaboration
among the community, local authorities and non-governmental organizations,
but also a model of integrated watershed management and the provision
of useable, safe drinking water. |
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