Switching Gears

     During the past six months in Accompong, different project ideas have presented themselves to us. Because we have almost complete autonomy to put our energy into projects that seem worthwhile, we can pick and choose what we want to do. We do this partially based on our own passion, and partially based on what the community wants and needs. Some of these ideas have flourished, while others have fizzled. One of the original, and primary, projects that the Peace Corps identified for us, through the Accompong Maroon Council, was the creation of a Junior Council. The Accompong Maroon Council is the ruling, elected body in our community. The structure of the Maroon Council goes back almost three hundred years, and at first glance, looks, and functions, much like any other town council, but one has to remember that the implications here are far greater because (remember your Jamaican Maroon history)… Accompong is technically a semi-autonomous state within Jamaica. But that is another story, for another time.
     The Accompong Junior Council… is one of the ideas that is beginning to flourish, and could begin to absorb more of our time. The idea for the Junior Council (at least as we see it) is to train a small group (less than ten) of young (17-25 year olds) to do exactly what we do as Peace Corps volunteers… community development, with a side-focus on responsible, effective leadership. The goal is to empower a small group of young people to affect positive change within their own community. The Junior Council wields no power, is accountable to, and is recognized by the “senior council”. One of the identified needs of the community is to have a community “action group”, a group of people (Junior Council) who can get things done, proactively, in Accompong. The Accompong Maroon Council model works… reactively. We think of the Junior Council as the “legs” and the Maroon Council as the head. I was recently speaking to a grant-proposal writer for-hire in Kingston who has a long history of working with Accompong. What he told me was this (paraphrased)… “Accompong does well when Peace Corps is there, projects happen, things move forward… but as soon as Peace Corps volunteers leave things begin to fall apart. They lack strong central leadership…”. What we’d like to do is to get Peace Corps out of Accompong, and move towards sustainability. As Peace Corps volunteers, as community developers, no matter what we do, it has to be “sustainable”. The creation and training of the Accompong Junior Council is one step towards this goal.
     What we have with the Junior Council is this… youth, energy, drive and passion. Practically, this is how it is looking… a brain-storming session on the project possibilities, and desires and goals of the community, training in grant-writing, action. This group has identified dozens of projects, some small and some very large, that they would like to possibly start in order to improve their community. Ideas such as… replanting the flower bed at the entrance to the community, making and distributing food to the elderly, writing a grant proposal for the rebuilding of the herbal garden hut, revitalizing the football field and school playground, re-painting the library in a way that reflects their shared heritage, and on and on and on. The most valuable thing about these ideas is that they are community generated. The tricky thing about this first step is that generating these ideas is the easy part…