The Saga of the Cuesta del Aire Computer Lab

I realize that in the last post I didn’t talk about my project at all.  This is because the project deserves it’s own story.

The current computing situation in Cuesta del Aire...  the
room floods on a daily basis during the rainy season

Almost a year ago, I attended a workshop on project design and management.  Although I had no plans of completing an infrastructure project during my service, Ricardo, the director of my school in Cuesta del Aire, told me he really wanted a computer lab in his school.  He took the initiative to start organizing the community around this idea.  I agreed to take on the project as long as it remained sustainable – i.e. as long as I didn’t end up doing all the work.  I wanted high levels of community involvement.  I wanted to see that the students and parents from this school saw the importance of having a computer lab and were willing to lend a hand in the planning and execution of the project.  I also wanted to project to address the litter problem in the community.  For this reason, we decided to build the school using eco-bricks, which are 20-ounce plastic soda bottles filled with clean inorganic trash.  These bottles are tied to chicken wire and line the interior parts of the walls.  They are covered with a layer of cement, and the walls end up looking like any other cement building.

Students from Chiventur with their eco-bricks

My students teaching recycling classes

Ricardo and the community of Cuesta del Aire exceeded my expectations as far as their level of participation.  I trained the students in how to give recycling lessons, and they went into the local primary schools to teach the children how to recycle and how to fill eco-bricks.  The children made their eco-bricks and turned them in.  Two kids from each primary school won backpacks full of school supplies, donated by my friends and family.  At the same time, I worked tirelessly with Ricardo and the parents’ committee to write out a plan and a budget, and we began sending funding applications to various organizations.  By September, we were ready to turn in our last funding application to Peace Corps.  This money would come from USAID and would cover the last $5,000 of the project.  We already had monetary and material donations secured from the municipality, the parents from the school, community members living in the United States, a large cement company, an international organization that would be buying our computers, and another organization that would be selling us low-price refurbished computers.

Our stash of eco-bricks in the back of the 9th grade classroom

I called the Peace Corps staff member that works on the Small Grants Committee to ask him some final questions before sending everything in, and he told me that, due to funding changes, if I wanted my project to be approved, I would have to add a water catchment system to the roof so that the project could fall within the “adaptation” funding category.  Although there are no water issues in this community, and the water catchment system would add about $1,000 to the price of the project, I worked with a local organization to add this into the original project plan.  Because of this, I missed the deadline to turn in my paperwork, and had to wait until January for the next submission deadline.

At the beginning of December, I turned all the paperwork in to Peace Corps in the hopes of getting a head start.  And then I found out I was getting a site change.  I did not want the project to fall through just because I was no longer in the community.  I spoke with my sitemate who was still in Chiva and asked him to take on the project.  I told him that I would remain part of the project, but that he would need to be the principal volunteer, since Peace Corps requires that the volunteer be living in the site where the project is taking place.  He agreed and I was able to talk Peace Corps into accepting this change.

Then I got a call from Peace Corps saying they needed to talk to me about the project.  I spoke with the Director of Programming and Training (DPT) and he told me that it seemed to him like the water catchment system was not really a necessity in that community.  I told him that, honestly, it wasn’t.  This was a youth project, not a water project, and I only added the system on because I had been told it was the only way I would get funding.  The DPT told me that he had looked into it, and had found some youth funding for me, so I could get rid of the water catchment system, which was just a big waste of money.  I was blown away.  Here I was, being told that the extra work and the extra three months of waiting to turn in my application were a complete waste.  On top of that, if I could have turned in my paperwork in September, which I was originally prepared to do, the project would have been underway by the time I got pulled out of my site, which means it would have gone forward.

Regardless, I held my tongue and agreed to take out the water catchment system and turn in the revised application the next day.  Then, about a week later, I got a call from Peace Corps saying that the volunteer that had taken on the project for me had been really flaky and unresponsive with them, and that they just couldn’t approve the project.  I was floored.  Just like that, 7 months of hard work would be washed away.  As I was trying to take in what I had just been told, I had an idea.  There is an organization called Hug-it-Forward that builds bottle schools and has a bunch of projects going on in my new site, San Martín.  I called my friend Gerson that works for HiF and asked him if we could meet.  I planned to ask him if they could fill the $5,000 funding gap that Peace Corps had left.  He told me that he was actually in San Martín at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a recently finished project, and invited me to meet him for lunch.

I met him and his co-worker, Heenal, and explained my situation.  They felt for me, but explained that they only build new schools, not additions or computer labs.  I told them thanks anyway and started to think of where else I could look.  During our lunchtime conversation, I noticed that there was a group of five American women at another table in the restaurant.  I figured that these women were with Gerson and Heenal, so I asked who they were.  They told me that two of the women were from an organization called Miracles in Action, and that they had come for the inauguration of the new school.  The other three were the donors that had paid for the school.  I met Gerson’s eyes with a “can I pitch my project to them?” sort of look, and he smiled and nodded.

With my masons during their eco-brick construction training

I sat down with Christie, the Executive director of Miracles in Action and pitched the project.  “So you mean to tell me that this project is ready to go, and all you need is $5,000 cash to make it happen?”  “Yep.”  “Oh, we can probably do that.”  And just like that, the ball was rolling again.  I sent her the project plan and budget, and within a few weeks, the project was approved and I was ready to move forward.  Miracles in Action also paid for me to bring my two masons from Cuesta del Aire to San Martín so that they could be trained by some local experts in eco-brick construction.

Unfortunately, the organization that was going to fund the computers pulled out because they were uncomfortable with the change of funding.  At this point, I was unwilling to give up on any part of this project.  I called a family friend who is designing a new operating system and asked him if he would donate the computers.  I told him we could put his new operating system on the computers and get the students to give feedback.  He agreed, and once again, we had computers.

So now, after 10 months of stubbornly refusing to let this project die, we are starting construction this week, and it’s possible that the whole project will be done by the time I leave the country in June!  Although this was one of the more stressful experiences of my service, I’m very proud of myself for sticking with it.  I have also gained some important project management skills that will serve me well into my future.