Guinea

The Republic of Guinea is located on the southern edge of the great bulge of West Africa. It borders six other countries: Guinea-Bissau in the northwest, Senegal and Mali in the north and northeast, Côte d'Ivoire in the east, and Liberia and Sierra Leone in the south. Despite its mineral wealth, Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world. The tropical country's economy depends mostly on agriculture and leading crops are coffee, bananas, palm kernels, and pineapples. There are rich deposits of bauxite, iron ore, gold, and diamonds, but Guinea's underdeveloped infrastructure has prevented it from industrializing.

From the initial group in 1962 to the present, a total of more than 1,000 Volunteers have served in Guinea. The program today consists of approximately 100 Volunteers working in four projects: secondary education (math, physics, chemistry, and English); public health; natural resource management (agroforestry).

Education

Volunteers have been working in Guinean secondary schools since 1986. Volunteers help foster students' access and performance, build teachers' capacity, improve school resources, and enhance communities' self-reliance. Volunteers teach English, physics, chemistry and math to nearly 8,000 students at 33 schools and the University of Kankan. Education Volunteers incorporate gender equity values in their daily teaching and give remedial instruction to girls in their schools. Many do secondary projects that help females cope with educational and developmental problems they face.

Environment

Volunteers work with water and forest technicians and primary-school teachers to raise communities' awareness of environmental issues, promote sound agroforestry practices, and better the lives of rural people. The focus is on community participation at the grass-roots level to address top priorities of the rural population: boosting farm yields, food security, income generation, and environmental protection.

Health and HIV/AIDS

Volunteers work as public health extension agents in small rural communities. Their overall task is defined broadly as health promotion that directly supports Ministry of Health priorities (reproductive health, diarrheal control, malaria control, and nutrition). Volunteers and their counterparts participate in annual HIV/AIDS workshops that provide participants with tools to carry out effective health education work.

Small Enterprise Development

Volunteers work as small enterprise development advisors in medium to large communities. Their work is aimed at empowering youth and small-scale entrepreneurs (especially women) by strengthening their business management skills. Volunteers conduct business management and entrepreneurship training, create and strengthen market linkages, and establish basic accounting systems.

Last updated Sep 28 2008