GAD PC PY meeting minutes ¤ Sept. 28, 2007

Break out the yerba and t-ray equipo, because it's time to catch up on another edition of the GAD meeting minutes.

Despedida

GAD took a hit when our calidad-er than calidad coordinator Julie Silvernail left Peace Corps last week due to a family emergency. Julie, you rocked. And we won't drop the ball on you!

Avisos

- The PATF scholarship funding campaign is underway! Get all of your friends, family, former coworkers and other Stateside contacts to make their tax-deductible donations via secure online transactions on the official Peace Corps website link below:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=526-178&region=latinamerica

We need to raise $10,000 by December 1 in order to get the scholarship girls their funding in time for back to school!

- Now available – the GAD Paraguay 2008 calendar with gorgeous photos by RPCV Emily Horton (her works were featured in the 40th anniversary exhibit at the CCPA). Save up your 32 mil now and pick one up at the PCO or at Thanksgiving. Buy a whole bunch and solucionar your holiday gift giving en seguida.

- In lieu of a traditional GAD meeting, we're going to have a GAD powwow over lunch at the PC Thanksgiving event at Hotel Tirol in Capitan Miranda near Encarnación, Saturday November 24.

And now for the feature presentation…Joan kicked off the meeting with some buenas noticias!

GAD raffle – With powerhouse prizes such as Rosana and Orlando, we raised a cool 120.00 Gs at the Duck Soup Seedbank benefit concert.

Calendar fundraiser– Gariety took the reins on layout and got the job done. Joan and Jen have gotten the first 25 printed. If we sell them all, we'll get more made for Thanksgiving!

The GAD Gabber – props to Evangeline, Lauren and Joan for publishing the inaugural edition of the GAD PY committee newsletter, complete with leadership camp news, PATF beca update and other juicy tidbits – make for your mailboxes and let us know what you think! Email all GAD Gabber feedback to gadparaguay@gmail.com. Your feedback will help us decide how often we'll be sending out the newsletter – current thoughts range from bi-monthly to quarterly publication.

GAD in the Kuat – Nov 10 is the deadline and the topic is Paraguayan perspectives – which makes our ongoing gender issues interview project a match made on match.com. Here's what to do:
1) Download your copy of the interview guide from Sharepoint, search your email for the electronic copy sent out to the mailing list or look for it in the December Kuat. Or feel free to do it your way and come up with your own questions.
2) Interview your contacts, best Paraguayan friends, whoever you feel may have some share-worthy perspectives.
3) Once you've done your interviews, send the cream of the crop on over to gadparaguay@gmail.com. One of the officers will review it and submit on your behalf to the Kuat.

Youth Leadership Camp – The guapo GAD camp committee has secured us a site for the February 2008 campamento! The place is called Tati Yupi near Ciudad del Este. What's more, the committee has wrapped up SPA grant número uno, with a budget accommodating 36 Paraguayan youth participants and 18 volunteers. One difference from last year is that the youth participants most likely will have to fundraiser a portion of their travel costs to Tati Yupi, the issue being to asegurar that they have taken their own initiative to participate at the camp. We discussed the possibility of using GAD funds to pay for 1 or 2 participants who would have difficulty raising the money for whatever reason via an essay contest.

PATF Young Women's Scholarship – 2008 applications are now available at the PCO! Pick one or two up if you have a deserving candidate (good grades + community service) from your site in mind. FYI – applicants will need to make an extra 2 copies of the recommendation page. Now let's get $10,000 (yes, that's USD) raised by December 1! We discussed the possibility of more effective messaging for the fundraising campaign and settled on follow-up emails with suggestions to add a personal message and alternative content formatting.

In other beca news, on October 5, the 2007 recipients attended the 2nd workshop on topics including leadership, budgeting and career plans. Kudos to the beca committee – Lorien, Evangeline, Lara, Sarah Fouts and Julie for the guapaite-ness.

New Projects
GAD manual – The idea is to compile GAD resources for our posterior PCVs – charlas, dinámicas and tangible strategies to deal with gender and development issues in site. Here's the brave new committee – Carole, Allison Whaley, Mila, Seth and Joan. Resources include PCO GAD manuals, Kuña Aty org (3rd year PCV Liz), leadership camp charla presenters (various) and Decidamos NGO (Seth). The plan is to get preliminary resources organized by December 15 before many take off for the holidays. So far, yet so soon…… and so-long!

GAD is guap@, ¿verdad? Thanks for reading! – Jen Cheng, GAD secretary