The deadline for submitting a draft proposal to the Peace Corps in Kiev came and went. We didn't make it.
It's difficult to work on a complex project without an interpreter. This was the first disappointment. The second, not making the deadline, is related. The language barrier is too great.
It's difficult to work on a complex project without an interpreter. This was the first disappointment. The second, not making the deadline, is related. The language barrier is too great.
It's also difficult to coordinate busy schedules. Hard as I tried, I couldn't coordinate enough times when both the NGO director and my interpreter, PCV colleague Mike Young, could meet. It just didn't happen.
Mike and I have been "exchanging currencies," as the Peace Corps puts it. Mike, who majored in Russian in college and is a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher at the university, was helping me translate and I was helping him and Natalia with their proposal for an English course for high school students taking a national proficiency exam. I like their proposal to give equal opportunity to rural kids in eastern Ukraine to take and pass the test. I hope it gets funded.
NGO Victoria's human rights project is also a good one. But all projects take collaboration and wide-ranging input from a project team, and without that it couldn't get done.
Disappointment. Perhaps it was meant to be. There's always another deadline. Maybe we'll aim for that.
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