What to Do with All the Stuff...

[finished community project]

11.6.09

All PC trainees complete a community project before beginning service. Because we saw firsthand the waste problem in our community during training, our training group decided to focus on waste management education for both our community project and our practicum in a local elementary school.

In week 7 or 8 (they’re all blurring together) our training group planned and taught waste management lessons with children in grades 5 and 6. We led an activity about decomposition and how long it takes for different materials to break down. We then taught a short lesson on recycling and held a litter relay race, where the kids sorted waste items into different categories (reuseable, recyclable, or residual).

[after the elementary lesson]

I think we were both surprised by how much we enjoyed these activities, since neither of us has much experience working with youth education. The kids were enthusiastic, and their energy was a good boost for us at the end of training. Because we’ve been working in the same village for over two months, we’ve also enjoyed seeing some of the kids who come to our events regularly and have become our fan club.

During our early focus group discussions in the village, the adults said they’d like to have waste bins on the beach, so for our community project, we decided to hold a workshop for building waste bins in the village. Brandon took the lead on design and construction, and I worked on the planning/reporting and education activities.

[waste education on the beach]

[community build]

A highlight of the project was strengthening a partnership between the village council and a local manufacturing plant, which agreed to donate waste bags for the bins on an ongoing basis. After construction, the fan club painted the bins a bright green, and the council made plans to place 7 more in the village.

[the painting crew]

The project output wasn’t particularly grand (the community constructed 3 simple, bamboo bins), but community members worked together to address one of the needs they’d identified and it served its training purpose – we learned a lot about working with barangay councils and community members AND doing construction without power tools! (Our egos were bruised, when our instructors had to lend a hand with the very basic construction – oh, how we take drills for granted in the US…)

[training group and trainers, building the prototype]