Une nuk jam nje gomar! (I am not a donkey)

Or our Earth Day project . . .

I have to say that overall it went really well, or at least as well as can be expected. Did we make a big difference in the world? I'm not sure, but it was a great process to go through:
For the past four or so months I have been working with my Outdoor Ambassadors kids (about 10 high school students) to plan and implement a project for Earth Day. We started with an idea to fix up one of the parks in Peshkopi and went through the whole project planning process. We applied for a grant from Disney for "Global Youth Service" and won the $500. Now we had to figure out what to do with that money. Probably the most difficult part of the whole process for me was trying to get the kids to make decisions, plans, and lists and not just doing it for them (I think I said "this is YOUR project" about four thousand times over the past few months). I think that we spent two months making task lists and then on the day of the project I still had kids asking me what they were supposed to do . . .We decided to buy new wood to fix all of the broken benches in one of the parks in town, plan some flowers and do some education about Earth Day, protecting the environment and not using plastic bags. For this purpose we also got some cloth bags printed that say "Take drastic measures, don't use plastic bags" (it rhymes in Albanian) and the Outdoor Ambassadors logo.We spent the last week really getting ready for the project- we put up posters around town, we invited important people, we talked to all of the classes in both of the high schools. And finally the day arrived. And it was raining. At about 9:00 I started getting calls from the students, "are we still going to do the project??." YES! It's not raining, I don't believe in rain, rain does not exist! Luckily for me, my positive attitude won over the weather and at exactly 10:30, the project started and the sun came out. The rest of the day was beautiful. And chaotic. We had men from the bashkia (city hall) come to help install the new wood for the benches, and then the kids painted them. We passed out plastic bags and gloves to the (it seemed like) hundreds of kids that came out of nowhere as soon as the sun came out to pick up trash. When they came back with full bags, we gave them candy (whose wrappers ended up back on the ground half the time . . . what can you do?). When I tried to distribute the cloth bags to the kids that worked the hardest, I got literally mobbed. With children climbing over each other and onto me, I almost lost it. It's hard to remember how to say "Get off of me, I am not a donkey!" when children are attacking you. Eventually, most of the craziness died down and we were able to get some work done including planting some flowers and painting the rest of the benches.

Was it a big change in the world? No, not really. It wasn't even that big of change in this small corner of the world (I think between picking up the trash and all the candy wrappers we maybe broke even on the whole thing . . .) but all that is besides the point. Ten motivated high school students, a few supportive adults and two slightly crazy Peace Corps Volunteers took a project from an idea to a reality in a few months. I hope that I have at least proven to these kids that it is possible to do SOMETHING even if it is small and that people will help if you have a good idea. I also hope that I have laid some foundations for projects with these and other kids to continue in the future. I can't wait to see what they do next . . .