Dear Friends and Family,

Manahona! Greetings from Madagascar! Things are going petty well out here on this tropical island (though it is amazingly cold, what happened to the tropical paradise bit?) I have been in my village for just over a year now and attempted and failed at many projects. While all these failures have been frustrating and discouraging they have also been a fantastic learning process teaching me what my villagers are interested in and what they will accept.

As I reached the one-year point in my service I spent some time reevaluating what I was trying to do here and why I was having so much difficulty getting anything tangible accomplished. After my mid service conference and visiting my friend Elizabeth at her site I was revitalized and motivated to return to Anivorano and to try again. I am revisiting many of the projects that have been attempted and not yet succeeded, looking at things from a different angle to decide if they should be attempted again, and I have started on a number of new projects.

I have spent a lot of time talking with other PCVs from my region and around the country and it is almost universally agreed that one of the most rewarding projects a PCV can participate in is running a camp for children. I just recently participated in a camp for 10-15 year old boys organized by three PCVS from my region. The camp lasted for 4 days and was held at a local park, during the camp the boys participated in sessions on health, environment, and gender issues, learned how to play American children's games and much much more. After seeing the success of this camp, how much these 15 young boys opened up and bloomed in those four days I decided that we needed to have a girls camp as well.

The Tamatave region will be holding our girls camp in the first week of September at Andasibe National Park. Plans are still being developed but we are taking what we learned from the boys camping improving on it and in some cases amending the lesson content to be more appropriate for a young female audience. Our hope is that we will be able to give these girls, many of whom have never been out side of their villages, not only a look at the wider world but a chance to increase their confidence and develop new skills. We hope these girls will become leaders in their communities passing on what they have learned and motivating those around them to strive for a better life.

This brings me to the reason why I am writing to you, we have decided to sidestep the months long grant process and go directly to our friends and families to ask for money to fund this project. It is a relatively small project and with a budget of only $1000 but if we decided to go threw official channels we might not get that money till months after we planned on having the camp. We are asking each person to sponsor one girl, for $50. Think of the difference you can make in one girls life for only the price of a tank of gas. If you are interested in sponsoring a girl please send a check to my mom at the address below she will then deposit the money into my bank account, which I can access directly.

Corinne Shindelar - cshindelar@gmail.com

2422 35th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55406

A heartfelt Thank You in advance from myself and the girls of Madagascar.

Yours Truly,

Amelia Shindelar

PCV, Anivorano- Est