Be the Change Network

I have 9 beautiful faces leaning over my shoulder as I write this.   The girl to my right is named Srey Mom.  She is 13 years old and only in the third grade, having studied here for three years.  She started school when she was 10 and old enough to walk the 2 kilometers to this school.   She likes to study computer and English.  Judging by how close the girls are leaning in behind me, I’m guessing that class time behind the computer is quite limited.   At least the new super-capacity batteries I bought last year allow the solar panels on the roof to keep the two computers powered for 6 hours per day. Out of more than 400 students, only 40 are chosen for computer studies; you have to be the top of the class to get behind the keyboard.   We are bulging at the seams here, truly in need of another school building, or at least a library and extracurricular training facility.   The music class keeps their instruments piled in the library room and practices in the afternoon under the shade of the tree.  I love to sit with them and listen.   The music class is just as popular as the computer class.  They practice every day, even on Sunday.   I am contemplating buying the school director’s old house, dismantling it and resembling it on the land behind the school that I bought last year.   It could serve as a temporary home for the music class and library, until we can raise more money for another school building.
 
Before we jump that far ahead, however, we have to stay focused on the task at hand:  pulling together a briquette workshop, so that kids stop skipping school to chop down trees.    When you are working in a community with zero organizational skills, just making the necessary preparations for the workshop feels like it may do us in.
 
Sanu has had us working hard for 3 days to prepare for a community demonstration.  We’ve built a small shelter for our Briquette Workshop Training Facility.  The students have collected piles of dry bamboo leaves, rice husk, rice straw, scrap paper and cardboard.   Sanu 2 has been very busy welding the frames for the briquette presses, as Sanu 1 says that welded metal parts will compress better and last longer.   But we’ve impressed both our Nepalese experts with the strength, weight and cheap price of the local hardwood available and will create one briquette press with it.  That way our participants will know how to manufacture the necessary equipment completely out of locally available materials. We found a standing dead tree in the school yard to use - now if we could just find a working chainsaw.  You’d think those would be plentiful around here.  Every single day and night caravans of oxcarts travel the road with freshly sawn tree trunks – a completely illegal activity that is done with impunity right out in the open.    
 
We have a small but passionately committed group of local community members who showed up this morning to learn more about the curious little briquettes.  One man actually showed up two days early and has been volunteering his time to help us prepare the hardware; he has HIV and no job, supporting his family with 30 kilograms of rice donated by the Lutheran World Foundation every month.  Two monks from the forest pagoda came to see us and have committed to bring 4 members of their community to participate.   I was most pleased to see Tau Soka and her 6 month old baby in the group.  She is a twenty-year-old woman with four children who wrote the first letter last year when I asked the community to express themselves concerning their forest destruction problems.  Her brave letter ignited a campaign that sent 170 letters from this community to Voice of America, human rights groups and other media outlets. I learned later that her husband had quit his job as a policeman because together they had decided that they didn’t want to be involved in taking bribes.  Now she calls me “bong srey� for older sister.   A small amount of law enforcement resulted from our letter-writing campaign.  At least now there is some press living in the area.  The reporter from the local Mohoran newspaper spent time with us, going directly to the wood cutters in the forest to invite them to our training.   One wood cutter said he would come, but I didn’t see his face today.   
 
Sanu demonstrated how the piles of raw materials can be transformed into the briquettes which he burned in both the traditional claypot cooker and in the smaller tin stove we brought, specifically designed for the most efficient burn of briquettes.    It is definitely the people who are concerned about the forest who have shown interest in the briquette, but even they are skeptical about this curious new product.  Honestly, they just want a job.  Whoever participates in the workshop is guaranteed the job, either full day production with a salary or a half day with commission for selling briquettes in the afternoon.  But the business model is the least of our worries right now.   Getting the community mobilized, organized and committed to what we are doing is a constantly-evolving process.  Building the equipment, translating the manual and collecting and processing the raw materials will consume the rest of our week, and we have a bigger challenge on the horizon – getting the community to care about creating their own future.  This is a society too used to donor hand-outs.
 
It is easy to gather waste materials for free now, especially sawdust from the many lumber operations, but once local people see us create something of value from it they will want to charge. I am trying to convince Bun Vanna, our briquette workshop manager, to tell people we are performing a service collecting their waste materials to support their school.  The community contributes their waste, we turn it into a marketable product and use the profit to support teachers and strengthen the education opportunities for their children.  Bun Vanna and our school director understand the logic but are skeptical that the community will rally.   Frankly, so am I.  But step-by-step we must try to convince them that recycling their waste to support their school locally will offer a better future to all.   I have no idea if this will work. 
 
Ten people showed up to volunteer this morning, their labor committed in lieu of payment for the workshop.  It’s a start.  We need the local people to feel ownership of the project if it is going to subsist on its own.
Thankfully, we have the beautiful tunes from the music class that seem to quell my fears of the many obstacles we have to overcome.