The Latest on Our Project in Sumba

We have wonderful news to share with you! The proposal that we prepared during our first few weeks here was accepted. That, in itself, involved many steps, starting with meetings with the local government and our local partner to assess the most urgent needs, visiting the targeted villages to confirm this information, narrowing down the number of beneficiaries to fit the available budget, and deciding on the appropriate food commodities to best meet their immediate needs.

We praise God for this answer to prayer, but also know that our work is not done yet. After approval, there are many things that must be lined up to implement a project. Here are just a few:

• Find accommodation
• Locate and rent an office
• Rent a vehicle (with a driver)
• Hire employees
• Establish a good working relationship with our partner
• Issue tenders to local suppliers for the food commodities
• Award contracts
• Organize the distributions in the villages
• Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up

Try doing this in a country where you are totally dependent on a translator. Remember, there is very, very little English spoken here.

Fortunately, we have been able to hire Indri, an English teacher. Indri has been a true blessing to us.  She translates the many documents, forms and contracts that we pump out in English. She also interprets the frequent conversations we have with the various partner staff and makes phone calls on our behalf as needed (e.g. negotiating our house rental issues with the owner, helping us find a solution to our visa renewal challenges, assisting us in obtaining some required medical attention). On top of that, she has been a tremendous resource to us as she explains how this culture works and reminds the local people why we have so many strange ways of doing things. Without her we would be truly ineffective!

One of our tasks has been to come up with a survey to help us measure the success of the project. Donors deserve to know that their contributions are well spent. The baseline survey that we have designed is intended to interview the heads of 33 percent of the households in our project. It will determine the number of meals each household eats per day, the food composite score of these families (indicating the nutritional content of their diets) and the coping methods people have had to resort to in order to survive (e.g., eating very small portions, borrowing money to buy food, going to the neighbors to ask for food, adults skipping meals in order to feed their children etc.). Similar surveys will be done mid term and at the end of our  project to measure the changes that the food distributions have made in the lives of these villagers.

This week, we trained eight enumerators on how to conduct the survey. Each of the people that were chosen live in or near these villages. This gives them the advantage of understanding the effects of the drought situation and enabling them to get the most accurate information. Two of these young people are village evangelists and two are part time teachers. One is a local farmer while the three others are capable local people who are currently unemployed.

We spent time practicing the surveys by asking each other the questions and filling in the answers. Accuracy is important! The enumerators will spend four days going from home to home through the communities.

We are desperately hoping to be able to do our first distribution next Friday, February 26. We are receiving messages from many communities that are begging us to come sooner as they are already urgently in need. With rains now coming more regularly and affecting some of the roads, however, there may be obstacles. We have also been informed that there may be a problem with shipping the mung beans from Surabaya as there are storms on the sea. Challenges persist and so do we, in spite of oppressive heat and some lingering illness for both of us.

Please continue to pray for us and for a successful, and timely, first distribution. We look forward to sharing some of the beneficiary stories and some photos of this event in our next blog.