3 December 2010

It’s just a day under 6 months away and it’s our final, official last day with Peace Corps Belize. It’s definitely for real this time! I know we talked a lot about finishing in July/August; we were planning on it – I mean, we’ve been exchanging Belize dollars, we’ve been clearing out items we don’t need, we’ve been telling people we were coming home, … . After great deliberation, many hours of conversations, pondering, and pro and con lists (and even attempts at PACA) we both came to the realization that it makes the most sense to be here through some major projects and activities we are committed to. While it means another 4 months beyond our anticipated completion date and longer until we are back among American family and friends, we know it’s just a very short time in the grand scheme of things. Really, what’s another 4 months after 3 years? Granted, it is hurricane season, but it’s okay.

Anthony is in the midst of a major project with the HIV/AIDS Committee, he’s coordinating a barrier analysis on the usage of Belize’s Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) curriculum in primary schools. This has been a major undertaking that started over a year ago with the creation and publication of a supplemental teacher’s manual that covers required curriculum items with new and engaging lessons and activities. The project is also taking place within the designing for behavior change (DBC) framework we were trained in last November by the PTO from Peru. It’s such an incredible and important approach to all the work we do as Peace Corps volunteers and really makes sense (I wish I’d known about it when I was working with the teachers, the kids, and the teen moms) and fit perfectly with the mission of the HIV/AIDS Committee. To be able to see through the entire project and subsequent training planning and implementation is important to each of us, as well as to the members of the committee. In addition to the behavior change project, we are also overseeing a number of initiatives that will help address the goals and objectives for PEPFAR. PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Launched in 2003, PEPFAR holds a place in history as the largest effort by any nation to combat a single disease. Belize has been granted $2.5 million over the next three years, some of which has been allocated for our Peace Corps post to further the community development and health-related work that volunteers are involved with as we help to improve health and education services. Over the past couple of years we have partnered with a number of agencies and developed close working relationships with some that have really had an impact on the overall success of the committee’s initiatives. Most recently, we have met with and plan to collaborate with UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) on a number of common issues and concerns raised by multiple agencies and organizations country-wide. So, suffice to say, there is definitely a lot of excitement in the air as many of the projects and work from the last few years begin to show great promise and future success.

We also have a major initiative coming up in the programming department with a review of our four projects in order to reduce to three projects that will involve the activities of the fourth within all of them (we’d no longer have a stand-alone youth development project, but would instead have all volunteers include youth-focused work in their assignments). This will have major programming implications and we both want to be a part of making those reality. With my strong passion for youth development and service focused on youth (considering 70% of the population of Belize is under the age of 30), I would like to be here as we incorporate this into our project plans and make it an intentional focus of our site development and planning for the next class.

We also feel really good about being able to see and support the class of 2010 as they complete their service, the class of 2011 as they reach their one-year mark and the class of 2012 as they reach their 6-month mark. Since I trained the latter classes, I feel I will be able to continue that valuable support to their work throughout these coming months and look forward to being a part of the entry-into-site events for the new class and the mid-service check-ins with the 2011 class. Also, we have our second IST on DBC that we want to take part in since we’ll have completed the process with the HIV/AIDS Committee and have direct, relevant work in which to ground the theory. We are also looking forward to the other upcoming IST and AVC training activities we will continue to be involved with by staying through December.

Finally, it’s just not yet time to say goodbye to Belize. Though we’ll never truly say goodbye, we both feel these remaining 6 months will be the right length of time to have our work in the office become more institutionalized and enable us to share and hopefully implement more of our big ideas with the new staff on board (our fabulous new CD and the incoming PTO) to help in making the progress needed to help Belize become the strongest post it can be.

We guarantee that this time around, the date is set. We want to be home for the holidays and we both know that the time to move onto something new is with the start of a new year (although it would be pretty neat to be with Peace Corps for the 50th anniversary… ;) ). Thank you all once again for your encouragement, love, and continued support.

PEACE!