Special projects
on Wendy Margolese (Zambia), 20/Jan/2011 13:09, 34 days ago
So last weekend I celebrated my 35thbirthday.  We actually celebrated on my real birthday I planned a pool party for 2o to 25 people, unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate so it ended up to be a Braai (BBQ) with no pool activity at all, but fun none the less. It was nice to have everyone together for a nice afternoon, after the Braai we went to Eagles Rest (on of the lodges a little bit further from us) it was a nice night.I was shocked at how much vodka I consumed, and although I was not hung over.. I had a rough time getting anything done.. It was a very lazy day on Sunday. Sunday afternoon we went to Sandy Beach to watch the sunset..Every time I go there I realize how beautiful and peaceful it is.. it reminds me of an all inclusive.. beach, sand, sun and palm trees. What’s not to like. (except maybe the mosquitos)This week brings interesting work.. there are 3 volunteers from an NGO called SPICE in Wales here to do an analysis on a time banking project.. basically this group helps an NGO to start a time banking project. They help you to set up the project, to run it, to fund it and to make certain that it’s sustainable long term. They have over 40 of these projects currently running so they are experts at knowing the right questions to ask to uncover all of the information needed to start a project like this.All these projects are currency based and the idea is that you develop a local currency to encourage a community to reach a common goal. So as an example if you were looking for teachers.. you would provide them with 1 hour of“currency” in exchange for 1 hour of their teaching time. They could then exchange their 1 hour of currency for an hour of needed service, it could be babysitting or wood cutting etc.They have never done a project like this in Africa, most of these projects are running very successfully in North America. They have a few of these projects running in South America and they have decided that SNG could potentially be the first African partner. We have our initial meeting today to discuss what would be our unit of measurement because I don’t think anyone is convinced that time would work here in Africa.. but we’ll see what happens..