Nancy Fitzimons Alvarado is the Founder and President of Bricks to Bread International, in which she created after her Peace Corps service in Costa Rica. Bricks to Bread has continued to work with active Peace Corps volunteers at their sites to build bread baking ovens and offer courses to local women to help them start and manage their own businesses. In the absence of volunteers who were recently evacuated, Bricks to Bread will work with local community representatives, including a retired local baker, to have them lead project training retreats over the next eight months.
2020: One Village Partners
OneVillage Partners will improve the rice processing system for a small community in Madina, When asked what the community of 1,088 needed most, they explained the need to automate some of their local rice processing, which takes an enormous amount of time and manual labor to harvest, clean, and mill the rice. Our MNRPCV grant will support the purchase of a rice milling machine and the construction of a storage facility for the community’s products. The mill will use solar energy and the community has contributed generously towards to project. The installation of a rice mill will greatly reduce the work of women, children, and other residents who spend significant time every day manually processing rice. OneVillage Partners was founded by MNRPCV member Jeff Hall, who served in Sierra Leone.
2019: Makka Clinic Project, Makka, Sierra Leone
The nearest Primary Health Unit to Makka (population 810) is located 3 miles along poorly maintained roads. As a result, the community has poor access to healthcare and increased chances of maternal and infant mortality. Due to lack of accessible healthcare services, women frequently utilize untrained birth attendants for medical attention or risk “on the way” births in emergency situations. With funding from third party donors, OneVillage Partners will construct a six room health clinic that will serve the community and particularly pregnant women, by providing immediate health care services as well as a place for safe and hygienic infant delivery. OneVillage Partners will construct a six room health clinic in Makkam Sierra Leone that will serve the community and particularly pregnant women, by providing immediate health care services as well as a place for safe and hygienic infant delivery.
2019: Cooking and Baking Skills Training and Certification for Women School Canteen workers
Starting 2016, ILI Learning Institute, our small community organization in the Philippines, has been working with village schools in the town of Tuba, Benguet in the areas of culture preservation and life skills development for young people. Throughout the project implementation, the parents, teachers and the community have always been supportive through their volunteer works to improve the school facilities and learning. This year, the Parents Teachers and Community Association (PTCA) of Piminggan Elementary School planned to build a small school canteen to serve home-cooked, locally produced foods for about 250 school children and 500 community members in the area. This is to provide an alternative, nutritious food option to the processed foods and snacks that most families buy for their children from the city and town markets.
2019: Safe Drinking Water Expansion in Nicaragua & Honduras
Unsafe drinking water is one of the greatest single threats to human health. Waterborne diseases are responsible for over 840,000 deaths worldwide, most of them children. EOS International’s safe drinking water program focuses on rural populations in both Nicaraguan and Honduras, which are Central America’s poorest countries. In these countries, people living in rural areas have the highest poverty rates and survive on little more than US$1 per day. There are approximately 11,700 rural community drinking water systems in Nicaragua and Honduras and more than 85% of these systems have been found to be contaminated with harmful bacteria.
EOS International will install water treatment systems in at least 60 new villages impacting an additional 50,000 people total throughout the program. They will provide community water quality and testing services to over 1,000 rural community water systems, ensuring over 550,000 Central Americans have access to safe drinking water on a continual basis. Scale SMART Center initiative in collaboration with WaterAid combining knowledge management and social enterprise to improve sustainable access to low-cost water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) solutions, with an emphasis on reaching marginalized communities with simple, market-based, affordable, and repairable technology solutions. Expand chlorine distribution points to ensure all rural communities have access to chlorine tablets.
2018: Agricultural Productivity in Pejewa, Sierra Leone
OneVillage Partners, in conjunction with the community of Pejewa, improved the community’s agricultural productivity. This was accomplished by the following activities: providing trainings on agricultural processes, developing agricultural inputs through seed loans, and improving access to proper storage for agricultural goods. Read more...
2012: Girls’ Empowerment through Reproductive Health
Emily Kjesbo-Johnson, PCV Uganda 2011-2013
This project helped educate Ugandan women and girls about women’s health issues through materials development and teacher education. Girls learned about the menstrual cycle and made reusable menstrual pads (RUMPs.) Watch Emily’s video to learn more about this great project!