April Newsletter
April has proved to be another busy month for Meaningful Volunteer. Both the RYE School and Project Lifecycle have taken great strides and the project plan for Project Mangrove has been finalised.
RYE School News
RYE School Proposal
A joint proposal between CERV Philippines and Meaningful Volunteer.
Note: This proposal can be downloaded in Word 2007 format here, Word 2005 format here, and pdf format here.
This proposal is to raise funds for the RYE School – a solar powered , Internet enabled school where children pay in the form of community service to attend the school.
The school will also provide family planning seminars; a base for the Meaningful Shop – an Internet based livelihood project and an office for Meaningful Volunteer.
Click here for more info.
Computer Demonstration Day
Part of launching any educational program requires generating some hype. It is not different in a developing country.
On April the 2nd, Meaningful Volunteer had a computer demonstration day at Sogud Elementary School. Anybody who had an interest in seeing the computers were welcome to come along. The age range varied from six to fifty, and about 100 people participated.
Click here for more info.
RYE School Summer Classes Underway`
Meaningful Volunteer is delighted to announce that its first Summer School classes are underway.
You can meet our students here.
Click here for more info.
School Supplies Donated
Jyoung-Ah Kim - from Seoul, South Korea, recently visited the island of Tablas to observe the Meaningful Volunteer projects.
She was also good enough to bring along a suitcase full of school supplies that included pens, pencils, a desk-mounted pencil sharpener, notebooks and crayons. The supplies will be used in the RYE School.
Click here for more info.
Student Statistics
We want to keep our students motivated and give potential sponsors as much information as we can.
With this in mind, we are proud to release detailed information about each students.
Check out the statistics for Carlo and Encreek for some example students, or click here to view all our students.
Click here for more info.
RYE School Site
The site for the RYE School has been identified in the barangay (village) of Sugod.. It is a 160m2 piece land and will cost 55,000 pesos (~ $US1,145).
At present, the land is being used for vegetable crops and the land is consequently sunken and damp. About 10,000 pesos (~ $US 208) needs to be spent to make the land suitable for a building. About 5,500 pesos (~$US 114) needs to be spend on legal fees which brings the total cost to 70,500 pesos (~$US 1,486.75)
Click here for more info.
RYE School Building Plans
Meaningful Volunteer is delighted to announce the release of the building plans for the RYE School.
The first floor of the complex will be used for the school itself. There are four classrooms, each with a capacity of about sixteen students. All of the windows will be barred. The building is made secure by one large door at the front of the complex. There is an administrative room at the front.
Click here for more info.
Picohydro and Green Energy
Getting green energy to the island of Tablas and to the RYE School in particular is a challenge.
Up to this point, we have been focusing on solar energy. Solar energy is a well documented solution that provides green energy the world over. Getting solar energy to Tablas presents several problems. For example, solar paneling should ideally face in a southerly direction, but the proposed site for the school faces merely faces in an approximately southerly direction. We'd also lose a two-to-three hours of sunlight every day as the sun sets and rises behind some nearby mountains. Getting the necessary equipment to the island would present logistical problems.
Click here for more info.
Project Lifecycle News
All about the Local Health Care Centers
The local health care centers are often the first step for locals who seek family planning advice.
The former President of the Philippines – President Estrada – officially stopped asking for family planning assistance from USAID. One assumes that he felt that the Philippines was “developed enough” to support its own family planning norms. This is obviously not the case in the rural areas
The Pill and the Injection – the two most common types of contraceptives given out at the Local Health Care Centers – are often in short supply. The Health Care Center asks for a donation for the items. This can be anyway from zero to twenty pesos for the pill, and about twenty for an injection.
Click here for more info.
Sexual Health Surveys
Meaningful Volunteer has just completed a 500 person sexual health survey across six barangays (villages) on the island of Tablas in the Romblon province. Sogud, Long Beach, Carmen, Cabolutan, Poblacian and Cawayan were surveyed.
The survey can be found here. The survey was translated into the local dialect.
The surveys were conducted by local BHWs (Barangay [village] Health Worker) and community members. All surveyors were paid between 150 and 250 pesos (~$US 3.10 - 5.20) depending on the size of the survey area.
One problem we encountered was that the surveyors were asking the question "Do you know how to use a [condom]?", where they should have been asking "Do you know of [condoms]?". We were interested in whether they had heard of a method as opposed to whether they knew how to use it. The surveyors who conducted the erroneous interviews returned to the households.
Click here for more info.
Project Mangrove News
How we will save the mangroves
Saving the mangroves is not easy. Many people have attempted mangrove reforestation around the world and almost as many have failed.
Here at Meaningful Volunteer, we are determined to do it better.
How will we do this? Well, we will not do it by reinventing the wheel. We will do it by seeking the help of as many experts as we can and use standard methods that have been proven to work.
This document represents our plan and is a distillation of all our research.
Note also that this paper summarises why a lot of the mangrove projects failed around the Philippines and should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to be a part of Project Mangrove.
Click here for more info.
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