Educate a girl, educate a community...

Hi all! Just a quick update to let you know that I am putting in for funding to repaint, build desks, and create a library at my CEG (rough equivilant of a middle school or junior high). Some of you will be getting the information sent through the mail to you from the Peace Corps - please do NOT feel like you have to donate anything! If you are interested, I will be putting more information up as soon as the paperwork goes through, and you will be able to access more at www.peacecorps.gov. A brief list of reasons why I want to work on the schools:

**Bats in the celing! Really gross, and hopefully relocateable...

**Peeling paint - creating a better looking area will hopefully create more ownership, especially as they'll do the work themselves!

**A 37% pass rate of 3eme students on to the Lycee (high school) level - we can do better than that, and starting off with more books and fewer children per desk (bench style) will be step one.

**Because I truly love the students in my town, who show up for extra english study sessions, help me plant my veggies, invite me to go swimming and make sure that I can't walk ten feet without hearing "good morning Chantel!" Even said at night, this is an improvement from "bonjour vazaha!"

Will update soon, love and miss you all!

xoxo chan

p.s. For Mary - more books you should read

Little Bee by Chris Carver(?) Wonderful and terrible. katie and I each devoured this book in a day, so we could talk about it asap!

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell A collection of his fabulous New Yorker articles

Continent for the Taking - brutal, but a fascinating story of corruption and abuse in Africa

Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien- because the books are so much better than the (admittedly awesome) movies

mazatoa!