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Summer 2005 Newsletter

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Mark your calendars!

Our next RPCV-SA Meeting is scheduled for Saturday, July 16, 2005 at 3:30 pm. Please note the time and day change. This will be a swimming party, so don’t forget your suit! Come join us at Pam and Phil Lopes’ house (with your family, friends, and a dish of food to share), located at 1421 N. Camino de Juan. To get there drive west on Speedway, pass Greasewood, and just as the road merges to one lane you will come to Camino de Juan. Take a right and the Lopes house is the last house on the left side. Meetings are potluck/socials.

* From MaryAnn Ahrens:

The next ethnic dinner will not be a dinner but will be at Austin’s Ice Cream Shop on Country Club and Broadway August 13th, 2005 at 6:30. They also sell food for people who don't want to cook when it is hot outside.

* From our RPCV-SA Treasurer, Morgan Daniels:

Things are looking pretty solid on the finance front. We should have $700 or so to help sponsor another partnership project. Also, I will try to bring some advance copies of the next Peace Corps Calendar for sale to the July meeting. They will also be for sale during our September and November meetings as well as at the Street Fair. On another note, we did finally finish our reaffilliation process with the NPCA. Thanks to everyone who has renewed their membership with NPCA- we have received a substantial amount of money for membership renewals this summer.

Local News

* From our RPCV-SA Partnership Program Coordinator, Nancy Meister:

Forty- five pit latrines were built by the community of Tijera, Panama under the leadership of PCV Tony Knapp. The pictures below were recently sent to us by Tony.

* From one of our RPCV-SA Newsletter Editors, Tanya Hoogerwerf:

Don’t forget out our free local website! Please visit the site and send in suggestions. 50 MB of space is free, and if we go above this amount we will have to pay a fee. Future issues of the newsletter will be posted on the site:

http://rpcvtucson.atspace.com/

RPCV-SA Fund Raising

Hello Everyone,

For those of you who know me this may not come as any sort of surprise, but I despise watching good things go to waste and am a huge proponent of recycling. There is an event that occurs each year that a number of others and myself like to term “Hippie Christmas”. This is the time at the end of the year when the students at U of A move out of the dorms and throw everything they own into the dumpsters. Back in the day it was a simple matter of rounding up folks with trucks, picking all the stuff out of the dumpster and giving it to people who need it. But in today’s consumer driven society they have posted the police to guard the dumpsters against such actions. That is correct, your police guarding trash!

·          This year on a cursory 20-minute survey of items in 5 out of 50 or so dumpsters we noted the following items:

·          A new and functional DVD player

·          A vacuum cleaner in very good repair

·          A brand new Osterizer blender (the restaurant quality kind that can chop rocks)

·          A mint condition rolling leather office chair

·          A Pentium 4 computer (hard drive, monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, everything)

·          Innumerable pieces of clothing in great shape

·          Massive quantities of packaged non-perishable foods

·          And many other things

This was one night out of a four-night bonanza and a very small sample of what was there. Why should all of these items go to the landfill and be wasted? An excellent question and one that has me fired up to turn this into a win-win situation.

My plan involves getting us legal sanction to sort the stuff that these students are throwing in the dumpster and rescue all the usable materials. All food will be donated to the food drive of our choice. All clothing will go to a clothes bank. We will store all the rest of the goodies for three months until school starts again, and sell them back to the students at half price. The students will love being able to acquire things they want and we will put the money towards the international project of our choice.

There are a number of details to be worked out for this plan to work. Fortunately we have a whole year to make this a go. I need four people who would like to be on a committee for the execution of this grand recycling/relief effort. There are a number of things to be done, but together we will make short work of the small details. We have the RPCV group non-profit status, well placed political persons, and experienced dumpster recycling experts on our side. We will not be stopped! Anyone interested in helping make this project a reality please contact Dan Broockmann (RPCV Haiti 2001-2003) at (520)791-2913 or broockmann@yahoo.com. I would wager we can turn this into the largest Tucson RPCV fund-raiser yet!

Sincerely,

Dan Broockmann

(Dumpster Recycling Expert)

Namibia Project

Orphans Growing in Ongwediva

By Toivo T Mvula

The Mayor of Ongwediva town has expressed shock at the number of orphans at his town.

Erastus Uutoni said he was shocked at the high number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) who were registered for the After School programme at the Sam Nujoma Multi-Purpose Centre (SNMPC).

The Day of the African Child was commemorated in the Oshana region at the Sam Nujoma Multi-Purpose Centre at Ongwediva town yesterday.

Coordinator of the Sam Nujoma Multi-Purpose Centre at Ongwediva, Albertina Ndengu.

The theme was “African orphans, our responsibility?”

Uutoni said they discovered that there were more than 1 000 orphans at Ongwediva and surrounding areas, but the coordinator of the centre, Albertina Ndengu, said the number is understated.

She said the National Policy on OVC define an orphan as any child who lost either one parent or both.

Because of this, the figure could be higher.

There are said to be 156,165 orphans in Namibia.

Uutoni said they had registered 108 orphans at the centre. They are assisting them with food and homework, but a lack of resources is hampering them from accommodating more orphans.

He called on parents, guardians and community members to assist OVC in any way possible.

Ndengu said they started with the Orphans and Vulnerable Children programme last year in February with only 67 children.

The number has since grown to 108.

Ndengu said they only assist OVC who are identified to be in need of assistance.

So far, the centre is only assisting OVC living in Ongwediva and surrounding villages, because they do not have vehicles to transport OVC from the neighbouring towns of Oshakati and Ondangwa.

With donations from individuals and various institutions such as Bank Windhoek and the GIPF, the centre is able to provide food for OVC three times a week and carry out other activities of the centre.

Bank Windhoek donated N$35 000 last year for the training of volunteers. This year, it donated N$25 000. GIPF donated N$10 000.

Teachers and unemployed youth volunteer to assist OVC with their homework.

The centre also provides clothing and blankets for the children. Last year the Oshakati Factory Shop donated blankets to the centre.

Ndengu said the centre also received 67 pairs of shoes from friends in the United States of America, which they would distribute among the orphans and vulnerable children.

So far only a few boxes of the shoes have arrived. More are expected later.

A group of returned Peace Corps Volunteers in the US also donated N$7 000 in memory of the late Barbara Williams who was a volunteer at the Sam Nujoma Multi-Purpose Centre.

Uutoni urged community members to report OVC cases to relevant authorities as some households are child-headed and they do not know what to do and where to get help.

The Sam Nujoma Multi-purpose Centre was built by the town council in 2002, with the assistance of two sister towns in Belgium.

Additional funding was provided by USAID through its cooperation agreement with Family Health International (FHI) for health training, specifically HIV/AIDS activities.

The centre also has a library, computer and internet facilities, among others.

The mayor urged the children to utilise the centre?s facilities in order to be productive citizens in the future

Job Announcement

The House of Neighborly Service is a community center that serves the physical, social and spiritual needs of the residents of South Tucson. We are filling a new position for a Youth and Family Services Program Coordinator.

This person will oversee all youth and family services for House of Neighborly Service including after school tutoring, recreation, and prevention programs. This includes supervision, management, development, teaching and evaluation of programs.

Please send this out throughout your networks...and don't hesitate to contact me for more information.

See you in July.

Thank you!

Courtney Martin

HNS, Operations Manager

623-0100

RPCV, Dominican Republic 01-03