First Day

I am surprised at how quickly things got off to a start with PACE. There's a man named Jean who I wanted to go talk to this morning who lives in Zone F (where I am implementing PACE). I was just getting ready to go find him, when he arrived at road 26 (the place I live). I told him I wanted to meet with the community leaders sometime soon to inform them about PACE and respond to any questions or concerns they had. I expected this meeting to happen in a couple days, but Jean was able to gather all the community leaders by 2:30 in the afternoon, so I had the meeting just a couple hours later.

 

What I like about explaining PACE is that, generally, the more people understand what the project is about, the more attentive and excited they get, which I always take a good sign. It's even better when someone is translating for you because you can really focus on their reactions to what you are saying because you aren't actually speaking when they are listening to the translation of what you just said. They weren't overly emotional. But I definitely noticed some widening eyes and grins as they started to get the gist of the project.

 

The only hard part was explaining to them that I was only informing them about the project - not inviting them to participate in the project. I think they were disappointed that they wouldn't all be able to participate in the project. In the end I think they thought that the method I will be using to recruit the participants - by asking people in the community who they trust and who they think has the capacity and interest in creating a community development project - was a good way to go about it.

 

Tomorrow I will be finding a translator and going around to people in the community to find out who they think would be suitable participants. I am a bit nervous. Finding the right people is key. If the people aren't committed, or aren't people who really care about the community, or don't have people's trust then the project will fail.