VAC VP Jason, Sec. Molly, and former-president Jacob
VAC grants are a unique opportunity for volunteers to get a smaller project off the ground with the help of a small amount of cash (between $50 and $100). The amount isn't enough to give community members the impression that PCVs are going to be a source of major project funding, capable of financing any idea they come up with (a role to be avoided), but rather to provide just enough to jump start a project through the purchase of educational materials or minor infrastructure improvements. In their applications, PCVs are asked to explain how their grant will be used to support a sustainable project, why the project will be useful and successful, and how many people will be positively affected by the grant.
Until recently VAC grants were handed out by the grant coordinator and his or her smaller committee, but now we use our entire smart and ambitious council of representatives in order to make the selections a more democratic process. This requires each of us to read all of the grants that were submitted, applying initial quantitative scores, then arguing out the details as to who the recipients would be and why.
So we spent an entire morning at our last meeting reading through the different proposals, scoring them, and arguing over who deserved our precious VAC grant money. No, it isn't much, but it is something, and it could be a turning point for a PCV trying to get in good with his or her community. From the down-to-the-cent specifics ($76.34 for a jewelry making drill) to the excruciatingly vague ($100 to help start a 'nature center'), we set out upon the task at hand (we even received a few requests for world map supplies). Some proposals were unanimously rejected outright, others embraced by all, but the vast majority had a few strong proponents and a few who felt it did not meet our specific requirements.
The way Peace Corps Ecuador is configured, there are four different programs: Natural Resource Conservation, Sustainable Agriculture, Community Health, and Youth & Families. This, more or less, puts us into 2 camps. ‘NRC’ and ‘Agriculture’ (the green group that deals more with the environment) go through training together; likewise, ‘Health’ and ‘Y&F’ (the people people) go through training together. When it came to making decisions about who got VAC money for their projects, our personal project scopes became a major factor in how we, as individuals, understood the main criteria of "sustainability".
As we battled it out, project-by-project, something interesting and nearly unprecedented happened -- people changed their minds. When was the last time any one of us sat in a conversation and had their mind changed by a persuasive argument? We were essentially debating sustainability (as many of us do over beers now and again while working in the development biz), but this time it came down to the actual dollars and cents that we had the privilege of distributing. It wasn't much money that we were talking about giving, but it was enough so that every penny of it was scrutinized. Why would this proposal be successful? Will it continue to impact project’s life after the end of the PCVs two years of service? What about after 3 years? 5 years? To what extent has the community demonstrated interest? Does the proposal reflect support for a "project" or just an improvement?
It was difficult to put aside our biases - NRC and Ag volunteers for green projects, Health and Y&F volunteers for health projects - but I think the discussion ultimately broke down the idea of sustainability quite succinctly, as well as forcing us to verbalize and argue for our own definitions. In development we talk about "sustainability" all the time - so much so, in fact, that I loathe using the word when another will do as well. However, since it was our criteria, we were steered back to the familiar jargon time and time again. Not all of us had our minds changed, but enough of us did so that we finally came to decisions that were (very nearly) consensus.
Before we moved on, we broke into groups and wrote feedback for each of the proposal submitters – why we did or did not accept their proposal and if not, how they could improve their proposal to be considered the next time around. Going through the action of writing the feedback reinforced the process of examining what makes a good project and which would be worth funding.
Despite being a much more tedious process and adding several hours to our already-long meeting, the joint decision-making process was a huge improvement over the former method, as well as a rewarding intellectual experience for those involved.
VAC Treasurer Ethan and me
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