Brittany Nicolaides's blog

As a new member of the Longitude team, I took the opportunity to travel to India to meet Ravi Kumar and the rest of the ARV staff.

Days at the office include numerous phone calls from the villagers, government officers, and volunteers. In the office, reports on current projects are completed and new endeavours and discussed.

There is always much activity in the office, with 5 ARV staff members there on a daily basis.

The founder of the Indian grassroots agency ARV, Ravi Kumar, will be traveling to Japan to complete a 2-week long speaking tour. Both ARV and Longitude feel this is a great opportunity to build new partnerships, meet potential donors, expand the Japan-based volunteer network, and increase awareness of Dalit issues. Ravi is scheduled to visit both Osaka and Tokyo in efforts to further develop ARV’s capacity through these speaking events. Past volunteers have already collaborated to generously provide the plane ticket for Ravi’s flight to Japan.

Cyclones In KI

KI Village suffered its worst cyclone in 14 years, Laila, who arrived in late May of this year. This cyclone produced high-speed winds and torrential downpours that forced evacuations of some 50,000 residents, including those in the KI village.

Fortunately, the KI villagers returned after the storm to find their homes intact and their belongings in place. This was greatly different than the tragic losses they suffered in 2004 after the tsunami.

PROFESA students have recently received word back on their National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) exam scores. Many of the students passed with distinction in specific areas. In the photo above you can see that Cynthia did very well in her typing, but needs more work in her office procedures course. While the exams were very positive for most of the students, Meshach Bondzie, the Academy's founder, is troubled that only 8 students were able to register for the exam due to financial barriers.

Houses for Dalits

Work camps of volunteers headed to Chevuru Village this past Spring to complete unfinished houses started by the Indian Government. A group of 6 volunteers in March and 18 in May set out as the first international volunteer group to visit Chevuru. Insufficient funds had been issued to some of the villagers by the government to construct new homes due to destruction from monsoons on their thatched huts. Yet requests from the government for the villagers to raise their own money to aid in the construction have left these homes unfinished.

Students at PROFESA Academy, a non-profit vocational training school in Ghana, have begun writing their first semester's exams- check out the pictures below. As you can see, many of the students have to share desks due to lack of supplies. Please see our Friends of PROFESA monthly giving campaign in which you can sign up through the website to donate $10 a month taken directly from your account to aid in the education and future of these students. Click here to donate.