The Peace Corps website recently featured Ashley Benson, who served as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer in Guyana. Working through the Catholic Relief Services, Ashley provided 6 months of much needed support to the “Program on Abstinence for Guyana”. Working with the goal of prevention in mind, Ashley found the experience to be rather rewarding. ” With this opportunity, “Ashley wrote, “I was able to include topics regarding not just the message of abstaining from sex; rather, abstaining from anything that could affect you in a negative or unhealthy way. This broader message developed into a 15-session curriculum encompassing topics such as self-esteem, goals, healthy lifestyles, discrimination, peer pressure, violence, sexuality, volunteerism, and much more.” Click the link above to learn more about Ashley’s experience.

Beneficiaries:

Congratulations to Philip Chan, an RPCV from Guyana, who won our hearts – and our first small grant – with his proposal to assist a small villiage in Guyana in their effort to obtain clean drinking water.  Please take a moment to read his magnificent project report below.

PROJECT REPORT FROM PHILLIP CHAN

(Slightly abridged by FROG)

Summary:

The purpose of the trip was to implement a small scale clean water project in the Amerindian village of St. Monica.  The decision to conduct this project was based on ongoing communication I had with my village since COS-ing regarding the rise in gastrointestinal complaints (vomiting and diarrhea) reported at the health post and village concerns about the increasingly polluted waters of the Pomeroon.  Prior to the trip we conducted research on applicable clean water applications, including portable filtration systems, Life Straws, water purification packets, and river bank sand filtration.  We consulted with the local Philadelphia chapter of Engineers Without Borders (regarding the river bank sand filtration method) and with Dr. Andrea Thorpe of the Miami Chapter – Rotary International.  We also invited a guest speaker, Dr. Christiaan Morssink-president of the United Nations Associations of Greater Philadelphia to come to our school and give a lecture on water security in the developing world.  Dr. Morssink had previously lived in Suriname, where he was head of the Department of Planning and Project Management in the Ministry of Health.  Ultimately, we settled on rainwater collection as the application for use in our project, primarily for three reasons:

• Turbidity and conductivity data collected by a 2006 CDC team to the Pomeroon indicated rainwater as the cleanest natural source of water in the region.
• Village leaders identified rainwater collection as the desired source for clean water in the community, and already possessed resources to support the set up of a rainwater collection system on the central village compound (including four 450 gallon rainwater tanks).
• In conjunction with Rotary International, a successful larger-scale project to set up rainwater tanks had already been conducted in the neighboring village of Kabakaburi.  Assessment plans to expand this project to St. Monica and Karawab were already underway, and our efforts would complement those of the RI team.

We arrived in Guyana on the morning of Sunday, March 22, and arrived in St. Monica the following day on Monday, March 23.  On Tuesday we traveled with the tushao to Karawab at the request of Dr. Thorpe, who wanted to collect population and resource data for expansion of Rotary’s clean water project to this community.  We were also planning on setting up a second water tank stand at the Karawab village compound, near the primary school and health post.  However, due to time limitations we were restricted to setting up a single water tank stand at the St. Monica compound.  Wednesday and Thursday were devoted to clearing the work site area and gathering materials for the stand, including 384 BMs of lumber donated from community members, representing nearly half of the necessary resources for the project.  Construction commenced on Thursday, and was completed the following afternoon.  Friday evening we had a sendoff dinner and party at the village community center.  Paiwari was shared.  I danced the Worm.

Read the rest of this entry »

(via kaisernetwork.org)

Guyana’s Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy said recently that a U.S.-supported HIV/AIDS prevention program has helped to reduce the country’s HIV/AIDS prevalence from nearly 3% to about 1%, the AP/Google.com reports. Ramsammy said that the USAID/Guyana HIV/AIDS Reduction and Prevention Project, or GHARP, “is a huge success story.” According to Ramsammy, the government has tested nearly half of the population over the past three years and used the results to track HIV/AIDS cases. USAID/GHARP is a $20 million program (AP/Google.com, 3/14).

USAID/GHARP, a President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program, was launched in 2004 and will come to a close at the end of April, the Stabroek News reports. According to Ramsammy, the project has a place in Guyana’s development because of its contribution to reducing the spread of HIV. He said that 1.1% of pregnant women tested HIV-positive at the end of last year, compared with between 4.9% and 7% in 2000. Ramsammy reported that over the past two years, 90 pregnant women tested positive for HIV and that three infants were born with the virus. According to the health minister, the number of HIV cases among commercial sex workers and men who have sex with men remains high, although there has been some reduction in the number of cases. According to the News, Lisa Thompson, senior USAID/GHARP program officer, said that the program has helped to refurbish health care facilities to improve prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission and to increase the number of facilities offering these services. In addition, Thompson said voluntary counseling and testing centers were rebuilt under the program, adding that mobile testing teams brought these services to hard-to-reach rural communities.

PEPFAR Country Coordinator

The United States Embassy in Georgetown is seeking an individual for the position of PEPFAR Country Coordinator.

BASIC FUNCTION OF POSITION:

The incumbent is the primary point of contact and Coordinator of activities related to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in Guyana, and will play a critical role in planning, implementing and reporting program performance of inter-agency programs.

A copy of the complete position description listing all duties and responsibilities is available in the Human Resources Office, telephone 225-4900, extension 4249.

QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED:

NOTE: All applicants must address each selection criterion detailed below with specific and comprehensive information supporting each item.

1. An advanced University degree (Masters or higher) is required with major work in Public Policy, Public Health, Administration or Business Management.

2. A minimum of five (5) years of proven experience working with large, complex international or domestic programs is required with at least three years experience working with HIV/AIDS and/or development programs in Guyana.

3. Level IV Fluent English, in reading/writing/speaking, is required.

4. Must have a strong knowledge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Guyana and the programs to prevent and mitigate its effects.

5. Must be highly proficient in word processing applications (Word), Spreadsheets (Excel), presentation graphics (PowerPoint), database use and have knowledge of the internet.

Download attached files here.

Webmaster for Peace Corps

Join the Peace Corps web team as our Information Technology Specialist (Internet), providing front-end web support for www.peacecorps.gov. Be part of our mission to promote world peace and friendship by helping share the Peace Corps story and helping find the next generation of Peace Corps Volunteers.

The Peace Corps website is part of the innovative and award-winning marketing team within the Office of Communications. While we are a federal agency, we don’t feel like one. We operate in a fast-paced, collaborative and creative environment. We are passionate about the work of our Volunteers, and helping inform and inspire the over 5 million website visitors we average a year.

This position will help evolve our successful website, serving as the webmaster and providing skills in XHTML, XML, CSS, ColdFusion, JavaScript, jQuery, Photoshop, Dreamweaver. Flash is a nice bonus.

Fulltime. Salary up to $94,089.

To Apply: Interested candidates must apply online through Peace Corp’s job site: http://tinyurl.com/netcomspecialist . (Don’t be put off by the clunky third-party interface – everything after that about us is pretty cool. Really!) Be sure to attach your resume and include a URL where your portfolio can be seen.