WORK- IT'S WHAT WE DO!

Hi, this is Allan.

Kathy and I often get asked what it is, exactly, that we do?  It is a harder question than I thought to answer because our work changes, sometimes by the day.  Also, it is impossible to separate our work from our life here, so here is an attempt to give you an idea of what we do here in Gevgelija, Macedonia.  As for me:

I have been assigned to the Apollonia Foundation, a small but powerful 4-person NGO in Gevgelija.  This NGO was established by the owner of the Apollonia Hotel (and a casino), 10 years ago with the purpose of giving back to the community.   I work with my director, a project manager, and 2 part-time associates.  Apollonia focuses on 4 project areas; children with special needs, envionmental awareness for kids, promoting culture/art/literature and music, and encouraging volunteerism.  They also work in other areas such as refugee support, training, improvements in civil society and education.  Quite a lot for a small group.  To give you an idea how good they are, in 2016-2017 the foundation was successful in obtaining over $500,000 in grants to create a brand new special needs center, they also won grants as partners in providing project management services to other NGOs, improving a local park, including science in its environmental curriculum, and setting up a training center.  This, in one year.  I help where I can with my own grants, some longer-term planning and goal-setting, teacher training, design work for parks and civic structures, English language help and lots of bad jokes.  I work M-F in an office at the hotel with my co-workers, and 1 day each weekend with kids.  It is fun and I do lots of stuff I never thought I'd be doing.  The Peace Corps is good at taking people and tossing them into work that is completely different, often with success.

So, here I am on my way to work last January.  It snowed which is uncommon here.  My work is about a 5 minute walk from our door.  In the background is the city library and a half block behind that is our house.

Here is Miki one of the kids in our environmental program.  He is a happy kid

Pretty much always happy

I worked with Boise State University and CH2M HILL, Boise on new designs for 2 new parks in town.  One design is for a splash park - a new concept here.  We used a camera drone to take aerial footage for the BSU Engineering student design teams to work off of.  This collaboration was a new concept here for the Peace Corps as well and has worked out super great.  CH did some auto cad drawing work pro bono, BSU is using the design work as senior projects.

As part of our environmetal awareness, we learn about animals.  Here we are trying to ID a hawk.

I work on small design projects to suggest different ways to do stuff.  Here is a hand-sketch of a trash can that would be made using recycled pipe from a plastic pipe company here in town.

For the environmental outings, we pretty much always do a trash clean-up.  There is unlimited trash here.  

There are also unlimited excellent vegetables grown everywhere.  Here are spring cabbages.  Everything is local.   Macedonia has been doing farm-to-table long before it became trendy.  It works fine, but when veggies are in season, they come in torrents, and are dirt cheap.  Then, that one disappears to be replaced by the next veggie.  No storage, no trucking, just veggie torrents.

All is not just sweetness and veggies.  The Balkans have had a difficult history with many wars of their own, and other wars brought to them courtesy of others.  The memories are still prevalent, and so is other evidence.  There are still machine gun bunkers from WWI and II around the town and in some areas there are trenches.  More poignant, here is a German WWII helmet mounted on top of an old machine gun that is now used as a fence post.  Don't see this stuff back in Boise.  Kathy and I walk all over the place and see stuff like this.  History is cutomized here, everyone has their own version.   History is still a part of every-day life.  

I also get to talk at length with my Director over coffee.  The coffee here is excellent, and some of the waiters are artistic with it as well.  Here is the hotel logo.  My Director (Atse) has a lot of interesting ideas on improvements, I can't keep up, but try and take as many as I can and create a process to make them reality.  A process is also a bit of a new concept, but there is no shortage of things to work on here.  I really enjoy my work and collaboration with my project folks, PC staff and the support I get from the US, including many of you!  Come visit, see it for yourself and enjoy our beautiful coffee.  The tomato season torrent is about to begin, and it is awesome!
Al