PSH Community Progress Report Thursday, June 21st, 2012 at 7:19 am
We hope today finds you well.
Things have been really busy for us at Poverty Stops Here. Over the last few months, we have tried to streamline our efforts to ensure that our resources are being deployed in the best possible way to have maximum impact on the people in our partner communities.
Efosa’s visit to all the communities in March 2012 gave us a really good opportunity to re-evaluate our operations on the ground. As a result, we have made some changes…changes which have already made substantial impact.
First of all, we are shifting our strategy to working with individuals as much as possible. These are people who have a stake in the progress of these communities; people who are able to check up on our projects regularly and report back to us on a weekly basis. We provide reasonable compensation to them for their efforts. The results have been great, as you can see by viewing the updates on our Facebook Page. While PSH will continue to partner with local organizations, we think that empowering individuals could also be of benefit in the work we do.
Another change has been a new focus on Education. We have provided – and continue to provide – support for Educational initiatives, most notably via our partnership with Hands-At-Work in Ilaje Community. We will be expanding this type of support to other communities as well. We were struck by the willingness of community individuals to invest their own time and resources in building and running a school in one of the villages. We believe we can support these efforts, for instance by providing school books, uniforms or meals for the children, as we are doing in Ilaje today.
Another major outcome of the trip was the re-establishment of contact with Balogun village, which was the first community we partnered with. We didn’t execute any projects there last year, but we are working with them again. We were able to confirm the fixing of a hand-pump well that was already established previously. In May, we also disbursed 6 loans to individuals in this community. We are preparing a report on Sanitation in this community, as well as a plan on how to address that issue.
We recently completed the new borehole project in Takalafia (once again, check out our Facebook page for pictures). We have had issues with Hand-pump wells and other in-expensive solutions in the past, so we are trying to establish longer-term solutions for water-sourcing. These cost more money, so that’s something to consider. Ultimately though, they are a better investment.
We have disbursed funds this month (June) to both Takalafia and Gbawukuchi to provide meals/supplies for school children in these communities. We also disbursed funds for end-of-school-year events for the children here. We continue to partner with Hands-At-Work to provide for orphan school children in Ilaje Community. We are aiming to sponsor 100 children this year, after doing 50 last year. A bus has also been purchased to help in income-generation so we can provide some remuneration to the hard-working volunteers here.
In our continuing effort to keep you up to date with what’s going on, we have created a new page on our website called the SCHEDULE. Here, you can see an outline of all the projects we have for 2012, along with the status. We also now have details of our finances available on our website home page.
As always, go to our Act page to see how you can aid us.
Thanks for your support.
The PSH Team
Tags: Communities, Updates
