Projects and Plans

Life is never boring, and always full of surprises. Just last week Vadim left Eritrea, to go back to Russia and work, and now I have a new room-mate, Gabri- one of my Dutch friends here, who is an architect working with the Ministry of Justice in designing court houses all across the country.

So after a lot of changes and some major disappointment (with Vadim’s sudden departure) I took another trip to the beach, and had a lovely weekend where I visited the Dahlak islands, with a diverse group of internationals all working for different organizations here in Asmara. We did some amazing snorkeling along the coral reefs and camped on a deserted island in the middle of the Red Sea.

So after another great weekend trip, I am totally refreshed and happy to be back at work. I am always so impressed by all the amazing projects the women are implementing and proposing. Currently I am working on a project proposal, we will be implementing with the Ministry of Health, thanks to substantial funding from the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS(which by the way Canada is a large contributor of). We are also in the process of preparing projects that will be funded through a new NGO in California, One Tribe Foundation, some of these projects include an expansion of NUEW’s micro-credit programming, to reach women in the areas surrounding Keren, a recycled paper production project (this will be a project I will manage out of our office in Asmara, as a pilot project to test the market for recycled paper), and a water purification project. The water project is pretty neat; Paula, the director of the NGO came up with the idea for the project, after her visit here last year. She asked someone in the Ministry of Health what was the major cause of death in Eritrea, and was told that over 50% of all deaths were due to water contamination and the complications related to water-borne diseases/illnesses, so essentially due to lack of safe drinking water. So after being told that, she did some research on the net and found an organization in Switzerland which discoverd that if you place plastic water bottles on top of the roof, under a sheet of coagulated tin, which is painted black, after 6 hours the water will become pure and safe for drinking, as the sun kills all the bacteria and micro-organisms living in the water. So now we are planning to do an initial 25 households in a village near Asmara, and after that test the results and progress and then most probaly expand the project to more families and to other villages.