The Big One

The big one--a major, bold, and innovative project. Most Peace Corps volunteers, at least in my estimation, want a Big One that they can point to as their success story, their volunteer legacy. I do not seem to be immune to this desire and I have to say, it's looking like the Big One will elude me. When I leave Macedonia, there will be no new building or annual event which I can say I created. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations for myself but lately I feel like my efforts have fallen short.

Tomorrow is Earth Day and as the lone environmental volunteer in my group, I feel as though I should have done a huge activity. Instead, I taught two classes with environmental lessons, one to kids and another to an adult English class. With the kids, it was organized chaos as I tried to be heard over about 16 rambunctious children in a small area. If I'm lucky, a few of them got the green messages above the din. Counting the 30 or so people in the adult class along with the kiddos, I reached about 0.05% of the city's population so, go me.

I got turned down to be a trainer for the next group of incoming volunteers, mainly because Peace Corps wants me to spend more time with my new work site after leaving the national park. I feel like I am being punished for being given a bad assignment in the first place and if the intent is to help me land the Big One, I think it will be for naught. Maybe I'm just grumpy because I have stitches on my back (minor thing, don't worry) and I haven't been able to exercise all week.

With the recent coverage of how Greg Mortenson allegedly exaggerated his accomplishments in his bestseller "Three Cups of Tea," maybe it is a good thing that I am keeping it real and saying yeah, I've only done a little bit. Thinking about writing this entry, I came across this Chinese proverb that gives me some reassurance:
It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.

I think it's the small stuff for me and I'm trying to be okay with that, embracing the forward momentum. Small but significant, for instance, is that I got two guys from my new boys club to volunteer in helping me teach the kids for Earth Day and they did a super job. And hey, if there was any doubt that I'm still a top notch volunteer, I suggest you read this great writeup by my friend Patrice, formerly a volunteer here and now a life coach. It's part of a series she is doing in honor of the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, so I encourage you to scroll through her blog and read about other volunteers' contributions, big and small.

Project Czar

Every year, Lake Superior State University puts together a list of words that should be banished due to "mis-use, over-use, and general uselessness"; if I were to banish a word right now, it would be project. In Macedonia, everybody likes to talk about "making a project." Correctly said, they want to do a project and by that they mean figure out some way they can get money, write that idea on paper, and then try to get somebody to hand over the cash.

Some of these projects are legitimately good ideas related to an organization's mission and should be funded, but all too often it's a way for them to pay for something entirely unrelated to the stated project. Or an organization that works on a topic like healthcare will apply to do something entirely outside their stated mission, like homeland security, just because there is project money available.

Lately I have been helping people write projects. It is my sincere hope that they will use the pointers that I offer for genuinely needed projects and so far, that seems to be the case. I collaborated on grant applications with two Peace Corps volunteers to renovate a firehouse and to build a language library in a school, valuable additions to their respective communities. With local teen girls who take part in the Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) clubs, I gave guidance on designing successful projects, meaning projects that are truly valuable and then thinking about how to get resources needed to do the projects. I know I say it over and over, but the kids here are amazing. I thought I was an all-star in high school but I wasn't spending my Saturday in grant writing workshops conducted in a foreign language.

The systemic problem with projects is that they imply something short lived--we are handing out fish*, not teaching people to fish. But teaching fishing is hard--you have to find people who want to learn, gather rods and bait, find a place stocked with fish, etc. As Peace Corps volunteers, we are fishing instructors but sometimes you give somebody a fish so the have the energy to keep learning to catch one themselves.

*In Macedonia, the fish carp is (transliterating the Macedonian) called "crap." This makes me smile every time I see it on a menu.