PHAST Workshop

This entry is for all the international, grassroots development nerds:

So like I said in a previous entry, the day after I came to site Billy put me to work. PC suggests not to try to do any projects for the first three months of service, but the timing worked out that I was coming in just when Billy was doing the workshop, and in retrospect it was really nice to have something to do, and for me to see all the faces of the community, as well as see what project I would be advising on for the next year. And Billy truly did an amazing job.

We held a Participatory based workshop called PHAST, which uses pictures and pile sorting to identify current behaviors, behaviors to encourage, ways to make a plan for achieving changes, etc. It's a way to get community members to discuss amongst themselves what strengths and weaknesses their community has, and how they can change or improve said observations. It beats two white people standing up in front of a room lecturing on proper sanitation practices.

It was a four day workshop spread out over two weeks, so I told Billy I wasn't ready to facilitate a session on the first day, but then we got to the second day and I gave it a whirl. For some crazy reason I decided to facilitate the session on gender tasks, where people had to designate activities under a picture of a man, a woman, or a couple. After they were sorted, I changed the pictures of the man woman and couple around so the activities had a new gender. This caused quite a bit of noise and discussion which was great. Debating, thinking, talking. Billy ensured them that we understood the custom roles of genders and that we weren't trying to change gender roles. We were just trying to get everyone to step outside the box.

Today, the last day of the workshop where all the big decisions were to be made, billy and i were going over the agenda when he said, "Nancy we are doing it. We are doing development."

And we really are. It was grueling and trying of my Bislama, and at times it was difficult for me to see how the activity would lead to any kind of outcome, but it really did. They decided in buying a water tank for the community and the rest of the money to build new toilets for every house. It also helped them to make a water and sanitation committee, which I am to act as a Advisor to two water and sanitation committees of vandue and waleiwumbue. 

We are using money from Billy's peace corps partnership, which you can donate to but I do not have a link yet.