Peacecorps Partnership: Support our Bee keeps

The time has come. After months of organizing, planing, writing, and revising, Chimeo´s Partnership is up on the web. As I have explained throughout my year in the community, when I arrived there was a great deal of interest in bee keeping, however no one to train them or help them look for funding to bee suits, smokers, boxes and other much needed equipment. Our group today consists of ten diverse families. Our oldest member is 68, while the youngest is 19. Half are new and half are experienced, and we are split evenly between men and women.

Group members have demonstrated their commitment by passing bee biology and hive maintenance classes with me about once a month, and they will continue to do so for the rest of my service. Each family will also provide a counterpart of 40 Bs to purchase the materials to make their own homemade bee mask and gloves. The thinking behind this is that bee keeping is a family affair. It is not safe nor easy to revise a hive of africanized bees alone. Therefore, each family receives one complete bee suit and they make another, for the spouse or older children. In addition, group members will work in the community tree nursery to promote environmental conservation as well as to raise mellifluous trees for their apiaries. The bees themselves will be captured from the plethora of feral colonies in the community and in the Parque Aguarague. The project will also provide each family with tools, smokers, three boxes, and one nucleus hive. The group will receive the one piece of wax transforming equipment that we lacked as well as a workshop on genetic selection to learn to breed less aggressive colonies.

Group members will not simply harvest honey for sale. As a community that puts more emphasis on natural medicine than western medicine, the many products of the bee hive- propolis, wax, pollen, royal jelly, and honey- are already highly valued. Group members will also learn to transform these products for auto-consumption as well as for sale.

This project, nonetheless, cannot be completed without the support of friends and family from the US and the world at large. The idea behind a partnership is that the community puts a counterpart- bees, money, wood, etc. in our case- while we ask contacts within the US for further funding. I feel that one of the most positive aspects of donating to a Partnership project is in its accountability. Whatever project it may be, in whatever country on whichever continent, donors can be assured that there is a volunteer there, making sure that every cent of the funds is properly allocated (and often putting in a few cents from their own pocket.) Donors should know that even small donations go a long way in Bolivianos. $7 will buy Don Justino his bee smoker, which tames the bees and renders the hive workable. $40 will buy Dona Marina a bee box that will harvest up to 100 kilos of honey each year to provide for her six children. $100 would pay for our entire genetic selection workshop.

If you are interested in donating to this partnership or other partnerships currently listed on the web, they can be accessed via www.peacecorps.gov. From there look to the left hand side of the screen and click Donate Now. From there you can select where you would like to donate by country, region, or volunteer´s home state*. My country would be Bolivia, and as of this writing it is the first Partnership listed. Chimeo´s partnership can also be accessed directly at https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=511-096. A good friend of mine, Britta, will also soon be posting a Partnership which is nearly identical to mine. While Britta and her community are equally deserving, please read the project briefing before you donate.

As I said before, I believe that Partnerships are an excellent, highly accountable way to donate to those who may not be so economically fortunate as those of us in the US. Even if you do not have the ability to donate this spring, please keep Partnerships from PC Worldwide in mind when you do donate in the future. Please feel free to send this email, my blog link (jbrysacz.blogspot.com), or the project link on to friends and family who may be interested. If you would like more details on our project, just ask. This email and the breif on the PC website are minuscule compared to the entire written project. I would be happy to send the details on.

Thanks in advance for your interest and support.


*My home state is listed as Florida because that is where I currently hold residency. Dont be fooled, I was raised in Ohio and am very much a Midwestern gal. Go Bucks!