Breakthrough!

During my second year of service, I was very fortunate to work with a Connecticut-based NGO called Builders Beyond Borders to build 31 pour-flush bathrooms with personal septic tanks and one ecological bathroom. The NGO started looking for projects in the second half of 2009; I worked with community members in two communities to develop a project pitch, and our project was selected. This meant that two groups of around 35 high school students and 6 chaperones would come to the small community (one group in February and the other in March). The bathroom project committee and I worked around the clock to get funding from the municipality, prepare the families’ homes and yards for constructions, conduct educational sessions and carry out house visits, create budgets, buy building materials, develop food menus, figure out sleeping arrangements, build shower stalls, figure out how to have enough water for bathing, make arrangements for drinking water and more. I am eternally grateful to all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Ica who came before hand and spent days helping prepare everything, to the Volunteers who came to serve as translators while the high school groups were present and to the Volunteers who spent numerous hours after the groups left to help finish up the construction. The project was a big breakthrough; we were able to build some greatly needed bathrooms in the area; we had a great arena for cultural exchanges between Americans and Peruvians; it served as an excellent way for Peru 14 and Peru 12 Volunteers to bond and work as a team, and it was a personal breakthrough for me because it was the biggest project I have ever had to facilitate, and it was a challenge, but I think it worked out for the most part, and I am proud of the work that B3 completed with the help of various Peace Corps Volunteers and the participating communities.