Work Happenings

So I recently realized that I have mainly focused my blog on goals #2 and #3 of PC (#2: teach Togolese about Americans, #3: teach Americans about Togolese) and have not touched much on goal #1, which is transferring skills to Togolese. Most of you are probably what exactly it is that I’m doing here besides eating strange food and playing with my dog. To be honest, most of my actual work activities didn’t really come about until a few months ago when I changed sites, but now things are starting to get rolling and this summer is going to be crazy busy for me.

*Also, May 31st marks one year from the day I left California. June 3rd will be a year in Togo. Wow, time sure goes by fast.

Rachel

Rachel is my official homologue and an amazing woman. Her trade is upholstering, but her skills and ambition surpass that. Upholsterers (in French, tapissiers) are usually male and she did her apprenticeship with a male employer and other male apprentices. She now owns her own workshop and has 15 all-female apprentices (she had 9 when I moved in February). Our first project that we’re doing together is collecting photos of her work to ultimately make into a catalogue to show potential customers. She tends to only do made-to-order because otherwise people (mainly family and friends) come to her and say that they like something and then they take it promising to pay later but never do. It stems from a cultural belief that family members who are more well off should help those that are less well off.

Christoff (Sam's Homologue), Sam and Rachel enjoying a burrito lunch we served them the other day. Goal #2.

We are also working to expand her merchandise to offer bags, wallets, etc. She already makes the bags for CEDAF (see below) using their woven pagne but has the ability to use other materials (pagne and leather, for example). I have given her some sample pictures that she is using to replicate, but in her own artistic way. I’m really looking forward to working with her throughout my next year of service and hope to help her improve her business in any way that I can.

The bags Rachel makes with the CEDAF pagnes.

CEDAF Weaver’s Group

CEDAF is a co-op group of women in Dapaong that offers support to women and young girls with few or no other options and teaches them skills and life lessons. They are known for their production of traditional woven pagne. There have been many volunteers before me who have worked with them and I was eager to see how I could add to their already well-established organization. I recently helped the women receive and process a very large order from an NGO in the US, and taught them skills such as how to create an invoice, exporting and quality control. The NGO was pleased with their work and, if they should receive future orders, I hope to make them self-sustainable in the process. We just shipped off the first order last week so now we’re discussing what will be our next step.

World Map Project

My site mate Sam and I share a love of geography, so I was excited when we both wanted to do a World Map Project and decided to do it together. What is a World Map Project? It is a tool that was designed by a PCV in the 80s to help spread geography education to areas where maps and textbooks are not widely available. It allows you to draw and paint a detailed and proportional world map on a wall or floor area. We found an elementary school in Dapaong that was interested and held a drawing contest with the CM2 students (the US equivalent of 5^th grade). We picked 25 of the best artists of 100 students to assist us. At our first meeting, we began by asking them to draw what they could of a world map from memory. Most were able to draw Togo and a few more could draw Africa, but nothing more than that. We asked who had ever seen a world map before, thinking that in a regional capital it would be more likely than in the smaller surrounding villages, and two students raised their hands. In a country where adults commonly ask me “Where in Europe is America?” I shouldn’t have been too surprised. It took a week and a half, and lots of patience and trying to suppress my detail-focused OCD, but the end result looks amazing and the kids were so excited. One of my favorite parts was when Sam (who’s from Michigan) and I showed where our hometowns were on the map and then the kids realized the distance compared to the size of Togo and their mouths would just drop. Togo is their whole world and my attempt was to try an open their world up a little. We already have a request from another school for another map and I’m excited to start!

The school's director even got in on the action.

Togo–PC Partnership

Women’s Groups

Must like in the US, women here commonly form interest groups amongst their community. They aren’t groups that play Bunko, however, and use the groups to form a coalition of women who sell the same thing in the market or women who live in the same quartier and profit from the security formed between the group members. Many groups either save money or take out loans together, but they could just meet to share advice about family and ways to improve their lives.

I have met a few times over the last several months with one women’s group in Dalwak and have taught basic business skills such as marketing and how to see if your product or service you are selling or want to sell is profitable and a good business venture. I did an example on how much capital it requires to start selling tchakpa, a local fermented millet drink. Start-up materials alone are over 50,000cfa ($100US, a lot of money here) and after half the total quantity was given away as a cadeau, most women would lose money for the day–not what the women expected but they had never took the time to calculate it before so therefore never knew. To see it just click in their minds was amazing. Throughout the next few months I will be presenting on other topics to this group and a few others nearby as well.

A popular savings technique that is surpassing microfinance and even basic tontines (rotational savings groups where each week a different member receives the “pot” of money) is a village savings and loans association, or VSLA. The original success of microfinance was based in the idea that it allowed the poorest of the poor to secure loans but the original design has been commonly been modified into a for-profit business and the result has made microloans inaccessible to the poorest of the poor. A VSLA aims to use the security of locally formed groups to help members save amongst themselves and give each other loans, usually closing out a year later with a substantial (30-40%) interest rate. I knew coming into PC that I wanted to help start a VSLA but it’s important that the interested group actually is interested, otherwise the project won’t work. My Dalwak women just asked me if I could help them set up a savings group so that’s another project I’ll be working on over the next few months.

Business Club

I had a group of high school students approach me a couple months ago about the possibility of starting a youth business club. We now have a group of ten students and together are starting our first project. We will be selecting between 5-10 female students to give a small loan to for the summer to start her own small business. She will learn basic business and management skills, as well as the fundamentals of taking out a loan and the business club members will be the ones teaching them these skills. I will be supervising. It’s a model that former Togo PCVs have used and I hope to help these girls save money for their school fees in the fall and instill my students with the ability to teach these skills to other groups.

Additionally, the business club wants to open a computer informational learning center in Dapaong, catered mostly to students. Computer/Internet café type centers exist, but few places teach how to actually use a computer and classes are expensive. This is an expensive endeavor but ultimately one that I think could greatly benefit the community and be very useful in today’s technology-based society. The students (and me, actually) will be learning how to write a business proposal and investigate funding options. If successful, this will be a lengthy process but also hopefully very rewarding.

Lastly, to work on their computer and Internet skills, they students have asked to be put in touch with students in the US with whom they could converse in English. If anyone knows any high school kids who may be interested, please let me know.

WWEC

I’ve talked about WWEC a few times already on this blog, but I never wrote a follow-up post to our regional conference in March. Basically, it was a huge success and the women were amazing and fun to interact with. We taught them a variety of things from yoga to nutrition to gardening to accounting. I was chosen to be a national coordinator of the event for 2013 so you’ll be hearing a lot about it in the coming months. It’s going to be a lot of work but I truly believe that it is an extraordinary event that really empowers women and brings together women from a variety of backgrounds to share information and work towards bettering their lives, that of their families and of their communities.

WWEC women doing yoga.

Club Espoir

Club Hope, as is the English translation, was started as an expansion of the summer Camp Espoir to help reach youth affected by HIV/AIDS throughout the year. Once a month, Savannes PCVs host a morning of fun, games and a little bit of educational lessons. While my schedule doesn’t allow me to make every month’s meeting, when possible it’s a fun and rewarding experience.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Farm to Market Newsletter

Farm to Market is a quarterly newsletter produce in a joint effort between the SED and EAFS (Environmental Action and Food Security) programs to link the work that we both do. Although produced by Togo PCVs, it is shared throughout PC West Africa and with similar programs. I am one the new editors for the next year and am very excited to collaborate with my fellow editors and put my design skills to use as well. Our first issue is out in July.

Camp Joie

PC Togo offers many summer camp opportunities for Togolese youth. Camp Espoir, as mentioned above, is one and Camp Joie (Camp Joy) is another. Camp Joie invites children who are physically disabled to participate in a week-long summer camp where they have fun and come together with other disabled kids in a setting not really found anywhere else in Togo. I’ll report more after the camp but this is another one of things on my upcoming busy schedule.