Give me Money!

Ok, This just went out as an email to my friends and family, but anybody else who reads this blog should help out! Sorry if this is the second time you are seeing this for those who got the email and also read the blog.

Hello all!

It's that time- the time when I ask you all to give me all your money. I've finally figured out financing for the projects I'm working on for the rest of my service, and your help on all of them (there's only 3) would be greatly appreciated. I'll give you an overview of the point of each project and its importance-

Tamba Marathon for Girls- March 4th, I am running a race to raise money for projects concerning gender awareness and development throughout the country. Despite the name, I'm actually not running the full marathon- they decided to cut that, and now the options are the 5k, 10k or half marathon. Despite my general love of running, the Senegalese environment, training conditions and diet really aren't conducive to long distance running, so I'm going to do the 10k with a bunch of my friends. This is not the highest priority, but if you feel very generous and want to throw in a couple of dollars towards me pounding the pavement (sand?) and helping women's advancement, here's the link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-CFD

More importantly, we are trying to raise money for the Girl's Camp that will be happening in June, and I will be much more directly involved in planning and carrying out this project. This is a week in which we invite a couple of girls of a middle-school age to a camp outside of Sokone and teach them skills for the future, have talks about careers and the environment, and we have a bunch of games and sports for the girls to play that they would never normally have the opportunity to play in the village. I'm going to be leading a bunch of sports (naturally) and we'll have cross cultural games and snacks (s'mores included). Anyway, here's the link if you're interested: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-198

Finally, I just got funding through the wonderful organization appropriate projects to construct 12 new cement-lined latrines in my village. This is actually a huge deal, because most people in the village don't even have a sanitary place to do their business in the morning, and I often see kids hanging out with their pants down in village trash piles during my morning runs. When the rainy season comes around, there are lots of problems with bacterial diseases as you may imagine, so this project will be accompanied by a health sensitization meeting informing the villagers of the importance of building and USING these new latrines. This project will be partially funded by the organization that works with appropriate projects, but they ask for donations if you are able to do so, as this ensures that the organization can continue to fund other projects around the world in a timely manner. Anyway, here's the link- http://appropriateprojects.com/taxonomy/term/3 You can even see some of my lovely village pictures on the site!

Ok thanks for bearing with me. I'll post more about this on my blog over time so you can track how the projects go and see pictures, not to mention hear about my other lovely projects that I am continuing to work on as my service winds down. I'll be home this fall, can you believe it? Here's my blog if you lost the link:

http://www.emilypcsenegal.blogspot.com/. Honestly, if you don't have the money or just don't feel like donating, I will not be offended. I know that many of you asked if any of my projects required monetary contributions, so here's the information you were asking for. If you want to help but can only contribute to one project, the girl's camp would really benefit most from your help because donations are the only source of funding available. Also, please forward this email to anybody and everybody that might be interested in helping out, because I don't have everybody's email addresses. (That means please forward this to my extended family, etc.) This will be the only time I ask you guys to help out with my Peace Corps service, and I thank you all in advance for any help at all. Even just a couple of dollars here and there add up.

Thanks one more time, and greet America for me!

Jamm Rekk (Peace Only)

Emily

aka Fatou Sy