Getting my hands dirty

Last week I went down to another volunteer's site, Favi, she lives in San Martin Sacatepequez, to help her build stoves. Favi has been in site one year longer then I have and has therefore been trained etc. in building projects (my IST or in service training will occur in April), and I really wanted to get some hands on experience in building projects as it seems I will probably be doing one (older relatives get your purse strings ready to donate and younger uni friends start saving up for a plane ticket down to Guatemala to help me build!).

It was great to see what materials we'll need, what we need to mix to make the different types of cement, to talk with the families receiving the projects and to really get my hands dirty carrying cement blocks mixing cement and generally building.

I think that doing a stove project would be needed in San Vicente, and I know that a lot of families are in need, but I don't want to be like Santa Clause and just regalar stoves, so I have to find a process of finding the families most in need (thus the census I suppose) and see what materials/labor they can provide and see who'll come to my charlas to learn how to use it and learn about preventative health etc.

It's going to be a long slow process applying for grants, finding the families, organizing the charlas, completing the censuses, getting the material and doing all the labor. However, I hope it will be worth it to the community in the end of the day if (fingers crossed) I am able to do it!