GAD PC PY meeting minutes ¤ August 4, 2007

The week after a successful roundtable session, the diehard GADdies got together, got riled up and established the following current group focus-

1) GAD Newsletter - we want to make this a priority to give some publicity to the great projects GAD has going! We are looking to put GAD project recaps and your personal gender and development experiences into the inaugural issue. Let´s hear it for the newsletter committee - Evangeline, Rosana and Lauren. Please send Evangeline your content submissions at evan77sk@yahoo.com by September 7th!

Upcoming meetings and events-

GAD leadership camp subcommittee- Sunday, Aug 19 at 11AM at the PCO before the 40th anniversary cokout

Come one, come all to the next general meeting on Friday, September 28 at 4PM (NEW TIME, moved from 2PM) in the PCO conference room.

September 28 is also the date of the second beca taller for 2006-7 recipients, to be held all day a partir de 8 AM at the Gobernación Central in Aregua. Contact Julie for details.

Now for the meeting - First up, our priceless Pres Joan shared info from the PC Ecuador GAD website (http://www.projectsforpeace.org/gad/index.htm )

- A PC PY GAD website is a potential goal (is anyone into Web design?), but for now we have the PC PY GAD blog to catch up on all the GAD gab.

- Jen Cheng will be emailing out interview guides to this mailing list so that PCVs who want to understand more about the PYan perspective firsthand can use our questions (translated into Spanish and Guaraní thanks to help from our staff adviser Josefina and the lovely folks at CHP). Any great responses you get would be a welcome GAD newsletter or Kuat GAD section submission! - which brings me to the next point-

- Newsletter vs. Kuat - why do we want a newsletter when we already have our own section in the Kuat?

Here´s the breakdown-

Newsletter - geared toward all-Peace Corps and international audience, well-rounded source on all things GAD

Kuat - geared toward PCV and PCO staff audience, better for lengthier submissions

- Beca update by Julie

If you know a 2006-7 recipient of our young women’s scholarship from Dept Central, please let Julie know if the girl would be interested in being interviewed.

Evangeline and Julie are preparing to send out this year´s funding proposal for 50 scholarships (10 more than last year!) to Washington via the Partnership program. Look out for the brochures to take to your sites and how to help fundraising info around the end of Sept.

FYI the second taller for current beca girls will be all day on Sept 28 (same day as GAD meeting) at the Gobernación Central in Aregua. Contact Julie or Evangeline if you are interested in participating, especially if you have a winner from your site.

Pirapire update
It´s been hard to get the swear-in/peace out goods pirapire activity going because of timing restrictions. So this fundraiser is not canned, but on hold - G19ers, start saving us your stuff!

We are thinking of putting together a calendar or planner in time for Christmas - Ceci, with her infinite wisdom of experience, recommends we get this going by September/October - Joan and Jen will get on our treasurer Orlando´s case on this one. Another idea is a co-ed PCV/GAD pageant or auction at Thanksgiving (taking notes, O?).

GAD Roundtable recap - turned out to be a stellar event, with a turnout of 36 volunteers and 10 staff members. Kudos to Julie for her calidad coordinating efforts. Roundtable results - let´s do some interviews with PYan contacts, figure out how we can balance out representation of men and women as charla and other event presenters, let´s focus on men´s needs, self-esteem and use traditional PCV activities like teaching English classes as a segway to working on gender issues.

Due to the event´s success, we´ll be looking into reconvening about twice a year.

Last but not least, Lauren has agreed to be GAD email reminder gal, pulling newsworthy bits from the minutes and keeping GAD members in the know!

Can´t get enough of GAD? Read up on more in the GAD section of another gab-worthy edition of this latest Kuat.

-Jen C, secretarY