MRF!

We finished our community project finally!  It was quite the process in which we began brainstorming and throwing ideas out the first few weeks we arrived at our training sites.  I believe I have described in previous posts that we had a budget of 2,000 pesos (46 dollars) in which to draw from.  The other sub cluster of CRM trainees here did a mangrove nursery while we opted for an MRF.  Partly because our barranguay does not have any mangroves, just an extremely polluted beach.  Like I said before, we hired Lenny the carpenter which cost us about 1250 pesos including labor.  He was able to construct our MRF in about 2 days which was pretty quick since he worked alone.  He finished our MRF late last week and we held two education sessions for the community...one on Tuesday and the other on Thursday.  The first session was very mediocre.....it rained like crazy an hour before and during our entire presentation so therefore only 10 people showed up.  Out of the 10 there were only two kids and we had planned a trash segregation race for the kids so that idea was tossed out.  But, on Thursday we got a break with the weather and the people came out in droves.  I think we had over 40 people at apex of our presentation.  I personally presented on four common myths here in the Philippines regarding burning ones trash.  We also touched on the lifespan it takes a banana, can, bottle, plastic, etc to decompose from the earth.  We talked about composting and we were able to have our trash segregation relay because there were plenty of mga bata (children).  Finally for the finale we sketched out some trees, "bularan mrf", etc on a big poster and had the community paint it.  We hung it behind our MRF and that was it.  It felt really good to know that we have left something tangible behind for the community to use and hopefully when more funding comes they can build on / improve our current structure. 

painting banner

MRF shot w/ community

This week is pretty much free for us except for the fact that we have our LPI on Thursday afternoon which nobody is looking forward to.  Cannot wait to get that thing done with and move on to my permanent site on November 7th.  On the 6th all the trainees and their host families will be going out to a restaurant to celebrate the 2.5 months we spent here and to say thank you.  We will be presenting a slide show, videoke of course, with lots of food, and games.  Tonight my neighbor is hosting a Halloween party at 8 PM, so it will be fun to celebrate with my fellow trainees.  It will be interesting to see what everyone dresses up as because our resources are quite limited here in Banate...  That is all for now!
dason lang-
Robert