small success

We got our small committee back! Our first meeting is December 6th. My counterpart and I went to a project design workshop put on by the Peace Corps and together we wrote a nice proposal for the ecotourism project we want to start. So we'll present it at the meeting and see if we can make this happen. My vision is to use this small committee, consisting of representatives from all groups in the village (each family group, the women, youth, Turaga ni Koro, etc.), to start and then manage the ecotourism business together as a team. The money that we make would then go towards helping parents pay their children's school fees and maybe some other education promotion projects. But that's just my vision, and I know some other people share it with me, but some have different visions so our challenge will be to put all the visions together. But I'm happy that we've made this important step. That is starting the committee and setting the date for the first meeting. We'll see how it goes...