Funding!!!

I've been fretting the last couple days over the upcoming project another volunteer and I started at my work site. Funding is the number one problem many Peace Corps Volunteers face during their work related service. We are challenged by the Peace Corps staff to come up with creative ways to build projects using local resources only, but often times the only resources available are man power. I have reached this obstacle in varying ways since arriving in Grenada and subsequently this project joined the group.

Carnival is the 9th and 10th of August and incorporates the culture and history of Grenada and the Caribbean as a whole. Through music competitions, parades, pageants and dance parties people come to life in celebration of the Caribbean culture. With excessive drinking, little sleep and mass quantities of people in one area, sexual activity increases. There is a significant stigma attached to HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean and often times the term is tagged taboo. With the second largest percentage of HIV/AIDS cases in the world (only to Africa), this has become the focus of many of the campaigns recently. But sometimes the work being done is met with a total contradiction culturally, as HIV/AIDS is very stigmatized and taboo. This society is very "what happens at home stays at home", causing lots of reluctance to accept advice, information and help.

The goal of our "Staying Safe During Carnival Season" campaign is to raise the awareness of the significant prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Grenada and just how drastic the increases have been in recent years. We as an organization will be attending close to 6 events throughout the month handing out prevention kits. Inside these prevention kits will be condoms (male and female), brochures and resource information. We hope to be able to reach each parish on the island so that our voice is known and we can heighten the sense of awareness as Carnival arrives.

My major obstacle throughout the project planning and implementation has been finding funding for these prevention kits. The Ministry of Health kindly donated the condoms for distribution but I needed to find funding for the bags, ribbon and materials to print brochures. This might not sound like alot but with the budget for my organization running in the negatives consistently, this is a big chunk of money. I diligently wrote sponsorship letters to about 15 business' in hopes that maybe just a couple would help out and we were finally awarded for our hard work today. Our secretary walked in with an envelope and said it was from a sponsor. We opened it guessing it would maybe be 100 dollars (our budget was set for around 300), and it was 500 DOLLARS!!!!!!! There is a God!!!!!! This kind donation almost doubles the amount of prevention kits we can hand out to party-goers!

Just another small accomplishment that means so much to the people of Grenada and to me of course.