Don't Rain on My Parade

(More pictures are coming, I just need better internet for uploading.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm back!

That past week was another exciting one in the small seaport town of Poti. It was a non stop show of rain and wind, that I can only assume is a preview of what is to come this winter (everyone hold onto your hats!). A lot went on this week, and even though I am writing this on Thursday instead of Sunday, I'm going to try to remember the best highlights for ya'll.

Poti Youth Leadership Conference group pic

Besides the ever present rainclouds, the one thing hovering over me all week was the youth leadership conference I was planning for Saturday. This was going to be my first real project designed, managed, and delivered in town with the help of my counterparts and other partners. I wanted it to be a success so that I could use it as a springboard for future projects and work (spoiler alert- I think it worked!). I'll get back to that in a minute though.

Meet my 5th grade class, half of the class was absent becuase of the weather

This week was also my first site visit from my program manager, Teo. I don't think I have really explained much about the organizational make of of Peace Corps in Georgia before, so I probably haven't mentioned Teo yet. The first thing you need to know is that she is awesome. The whole organization of Peace Corps in Georgia (and other countries) is mostly made up of host country nationals aka Georgians here in Georgia. To be exact there are only 3 Americans who work in the Peace Corps office here- the Country Director (CD), the Director of Programing and Training (DPT), and the fincial office manager person whose title I can't remember. The rest of the staff are all Georgians and they are great. Anyway, back to Teo, she is the program manager over the volunteers in Eastern Georgia working in Education. She is very accomplished, super competent, and very attentive; and she came to visit me on Tuesday.

We had a great sit down meeting where we discussed my experience in my school and how my work was going with my counterpart teachers. She understood where I was feeling some frustrations and we worked out some key issues and made some great plans for the coming months. It is great to have the amount of support that I have, without it I would definitely be drowning in confusion.

After our meeting she met with my counterparts and director and then we all met together again. She was able to translate my desires and needs to them and their opinions to me in a very effective way. Language barriers definitely are a thing but they are easy to get around, cultural barriers are a completely different issue and since she is a native Georgian and has a lot of experience with Americans, she makes for a great mediator.

Following Teo's visit my school work went very smoothly and some of the small stresses were alleviated which made it a lot easier to focus on everything that I needed to do to get ready for the leadership conference. (This is where I give a shout out to Randi my fellow Poti volunteer and Maka my Georgian Tutor, who both did a lot to help me get things ready- thanks guys!) Before I knew it, it was Friday and time to really set my plans into motion.

Before I go on with the play-by-play I should give you the rundown of my vision for the project. At the beginning of the school year I found out that each school in Poti had a student council (something that obviously peaked my interest). When I pursued the point a little more I found out that the council then elects a president each year as well. This got the wheels turning in my head and I thought that it would be great to bring all of the leaders together to get to know each other and get trained on how to be better leaders for their schools. There really isn't a whole lot that goes into soft skills training in the schools, so this seemed like a great opportunity.

The girls who came out to help me

After coming up with the idea I wrote up a project proposal and and sent my idea to a contact at the port who manages their corporate social responsibility endeavors. The plan was to have all the leaders meet me at a hotel in town and we'd spend the day in trainings, next we'd have a nice dinner at a restaurant with some guest speakers, and then come back to the hotel and play games and spend the night, then wrap up in the morning. It sound like a perfect plan. Later in the week I got my response from the port and they fully funded my project (score!). From that point I just further refined my plan and got more people on board for helping out. We decided to have sessions on leadership, project design and management, goal setting, and public speaking. I also got 6 fellow volunteers and 2 Georgians to come into to help run the sessions.

The guys (summer camp veterans) that came out to help me

Friday afternoon we finished buying everything, and there was a lot since I had to coordinate all of the sessions and all of the meals for the conference. After running errands the other volunteers started to arrive as well. My host family was ecstatic. Once again Georgians love guests. My host mom made cake and various other foods and Randi's host mom also made a small feast. We had a great time. People slowly trickled in and we ate for hours and chatted with each other and our families. We pow-wowed a bit (a phrase I had to teach our Georgian translators) and then headed to bed.

Saturday morning I woke up to the news of the Paris attacks which was very upsetting. Aside from the shock of those attacks we spent our time pulling things together and headed out to the hotel. There were plenty of bumps all morning as we got things ready, but in the end it all worked out. I was also amazed at the fact that all of the students showed up on time and that all but two actually showed up. This was a huge surprise, due to the weather (and the unpredictability of Georgians, mostly due to my lack of understanding) Fazisoba (Poti Days) celebration was moved from Sunday to Saturday and put in direct competition with my conference. I had been afraid that between the weather and these changes no one was going to show up, but they proved me wrong. The rest of the conference went off without a hitch. The sessions were fantastic, the students were great participants, the food worked out, and we basically threw the best high school party in Poti that evening.

Overall, I couldn't have been happier. Sunday morning came and the students were suddenly fast friends. We had a wrap up session and sent them on their way. The plan from here on is for them to now head back to their schools and implement a project with the help of their directors and councils. Hopefully this will help spur more community involvement and volunteerism in the community.



Once we had cleaned everything up the volunteers headed to the beach and took a little tour of Poti. We did the traditional pirate ship meal, and then headed out to the marshutka station to head out to our next adventure. 8 days away from site in various parts of Georgia for trainings, meetings, and holidays. Stay tuned!

Alex and I at the beach, excited for the upcoming week of travel