Good Morning! I thought I would do a little shameless plugging right now, since it is my last day in this wonderful office, with all of my wonderful co-workers and bosses. :) The Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project has been my "summer" internship since March, and I can't say enough about all the wonderful experiences I have had here. The organization runs two primary schools in Uganda for children who have lost their parents to AIDS. We also run a farm in order to feed them healthy meals, a community library so everyone can get in on the education and are in the process of building a health clinic.
For the past 5 months I have been helping to manage the Grandmother Basket Program, which helps provide opportunities to the Grandmothers of Nyaka to extend their economic independence, and provide for the children that they care for. They make beautiful handicrafts, which we then buy for a fair price, sell here in the states and then put the money back into the organization. We also have training programs for them in community development and micro-loans. Supporting the Grandmothers of the community is essential since, after the death of their own children, Grand parents often take over guardianship of multiple children.
So it is a wonderful organization, and I have been proud to work here for the past couple of months. That being said, they recently started a blog and we are trying to get the word out there, thus the shameless plug :) http://nyakaproject.blogspot.com/ is the address, and if you are interested in helping out the project you can check out the website at: http://www.nyakaschool.org/
On a more peace corpsy type note, I am hoping to hear back from placement sometime soon, since I sent in all of the extra information and at this point the only thing they (and myself) are waiting on is my final transcript. I'm hoping that they can still work on placing me before that comes in because I feel like it would just be a waste of time to wait for a document that isn't going to be ready until the end of the month. But we will see, and I can be patient. Breathe in, breathe out, the time will come sooner than you think.
Much Love,
Claire
For the past 5 months I have been helping to manage the Grandmother Basket Program, which helps provide opportunities to the Grandmothers of Nyaka to extend their economic independence, and provide for the children that they care for. They make beautiful handicrafts, which we then buy for a fair price, sell here in the states and then put the money back into the organization. We also have training programs for them in community development and micro-loans. Supporting the Grandmothers of the community is essential since, after the death of their own children, Grand parents often take over guardianship of multiple children.
So it is a wonderful organization, and I have been proud to work here for the past couple of months. That being said, they recently started a blog and we are trying to get the word out there, thus the shameless plug :) http://nyakaproject.blogspot.com/ is the address, and if you are interested in helping out the project you can check out the website at: http://www.nyakaschool.org/
On a more peace corpsy type note, I am hoping to hear back from placement sometime soon, since I sent in all of the extra information and at this point the only thing they (and myself) are waiting on is my final transcript. I'm hoping that they can still work on placing me before that comes in because I feel like it would just be a waste of time to wait for a document that isn't going to be ready until the end of the month. But we will see, and I can be patient. Breathe in, breathe out, the time will come sooner than you think.
Much Love,
Claire
Sounds like an amazing organization- I will check out the site!
ReplyDeleteJust to warn you, I was medically cleared on May 18 and didn't get the placement officer contact until mid-July. However, for some people it's faster. I just think I pissed them off or something, and my file is on the slow boat....