Ahhhh. The beauty of Sundays. I have come to love them. The sweet smell of big Sunday lunches coming from my neighbors houses, children playing in the river with adorable innocence and clean laundry blowing in the wind. I find myself sitting on my veranda gazing at the beauty around me, appreciating the small little wonders of this thing called life.
Things in Grenada have been, well....interesting. Without putting Grenadian culture and my work places on blast, lets just say its been a struggle to remember just why I am here. But there are a few small successes (or miracles) that are worth mentioning.
I recently started writing a VAST grant for my primary worksite, the Grenada National Organization of Women. VAST grants are an opportunity for Peace Corps volunteers to get their hands on some fairly quick money through the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. Projects obviously have to be centered around HIV/AIDS work, but its easy to tweak your program to include many other facets, like women. I started this grant back in August with hopes of conducting the project in September, but with organizational issues, the date has been pushed back to the end of November.
What is the project you ask? Well, GNOW received a large amount of money back in 2006 to start was is now called the Community Support Network. The Community Support Network (CSN) is comprised of about 100 trained volunteers from villages all over the island. Their main role is to be liaisons in their respective villages between victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and the Royal Grenada Police Force. Often times victims feel that they are alone in the process after being victimized, and the CSN network was set up to ease the burden and give some helpful assistance to those victims.
As the Caribbean is often known for, monitoring/reporting as well as sustainability is less than superb in the NGO field of work. The CSN was no different, and after completion in 2010, the network has become almost completely dormant. This sparked the idea to write a grant that brought these dedicated volunteers back together and trained them on the newly passed Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse Law, which also includes a Protocol for the country. The new protocol will help significantly the volunteers of the network in ensuring proper handling and support of victims.
After much frustration and multiple "please fix section blah blah blah" emails from the overview committee, I have completed the grant and hope to receive the money sometime soon. Hopefully this grant will give the network a much needed boast and set the volunteers up for future success in their respective communities. Wish me luck!
