Last night I came into Chivay to head to Arequipa for the day today to give a presentation to an NGO. We are looking for economic and human resource support for the greenhouse project. When I arrived, Chivay was in festival for the anniversary of the region. The buses were cancelled because the majority of their riders had decided on staying the night to celebrate.
I rescheduled by bus for 4 am and shivered through the 5-hour ride (yes, it should have been 4 hours, but we ran out of gas halfway and had to wait for a refill to arrive). 9am I hopped in the shower at a Peace Corps hostal in Arequipa, put on the high heels, and scarfed down a croissant while John and I edited the Power Point and budget for this project and jumped in a taxi arriving at the door right on time.
Solaris is an incredible NGO, and speaking with and presenting to their representative was not only refreshing due to her obvious high educational level, but informative. I have to admit, the entire meeting I kept fighting my brain from daydreaming into the image of me sitting in the desk next to her as a co-worker someday.
Katherine was impressed by the strong development of the project (great work Rocío), and I think she could relate to John and I in our Peace Corps mission here in Peru. All three of us stared at each other all glowy-eyed because we saw great counterparts in one another. This NGO has goals that fall mainly under education and healthy lifestyle development, but they are based out of the city while they have schools and programs functioning in pueblos of villages in the North and South of Peru. We, as Peace Corps volunteers, are educated individuals that live in those villages. In a sense, we need each other.
She was the first person, ever, to actually recommend to any Peace Corps volunteer I know to extend the time frame of the project in order to secure sustainability. It is a 6- month program developed to not only bring community members together to help one another build the walls for greenhouses, but to help them find the resources to build the roofs, and on top of that give workshops on how to rotate the crops for optimal production and another set of workshops on healthy cooking habits and nutrition. Katherine wanted us to pull the workshops out to at least a year. Brilliant. And if she can help us find the economic support to make that possible, we are on it.
She even taught us a chart often used by NGOs in Peru to present potential projects in a very readable way for future presentations. John and I skipped out of the meeting and can’t wait to get an e-mail from her about the funding.
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