Wednesday, June 16, 2010

La Trinitaria! The Trinity Community Library! Present day!


Here it is! La Trinitaria! Close to the end, just finishing up the final touches! Our last main challenges are:

-getting the education district to transfer my project partner, Pedro's salary to the library so he can work full-time and get paid! He has worked as a volunteer on this project, just like me for over 1 year and truly loves this library. That, I can bet my life on :)

-organizing/catalogging over 1,000 books (mostly NEW)

-finding 4 ceiling fan donations

-finding 4 bateries to run the generator (electricity)

-installing iron gates outside of every window and door

-finding 1 or 2 more computer donations

-finding 1 printer donation

-throwing a BIG party to celebrate this loooong project!

Thanks to everyone who has been supporting this project and following along! My apologies for falling behind in the blogging! Will be in touch!

God bless,

Shilpa


Base Coat & Flower Garden Area





Here are some photos showing the base coat that my project partner Pedro painted. Additionally, you can see the beginning steps to make a flower bed area which will later prove to be quite a site for sore eyes! Also, you can see my best friend Jenie, also a Peace Corps volunteer, visiting my site with her parents!

The beautiful tile floor :)



Back in March I believe, we installed these beautiful tile floors which are a BIG deal to show quality in a building/home. Since my community does not have a public area that is truly of high quality, we felt it imperative to have tile floors that would not only help illuminate the library, but also to provide a quality resource for this forgotten community on the other side of the highway-isolated from the rest of the pueblo.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Stucco!







Here are pictures of the LONG process of finishing the walls. In spanish it is called empanate, in English, I believe it is stucco. One step closer to the completion of the construction of this library!






Happy New Year!

Installing the electricity!



Here are pictures of the installation of the electricity in the floor and walls :)






Finishing the cement roof!



Here we have contractors finishing the cement roof. As you can see they brought their machinery to help move the process along quickly so the cement dries evenly. They were in and out in a few hours!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Preparing the roof with wood!




Here are photos of the wood that we had to rent in preparation of completing the cement roof. It is quite a process and requires A LOT of wood. After setting the wood in place, we had a ray-bar specialist place the ray bars above the wood in order to support what will eventually be the floor of the 2nd floor. We also had an electrician place the tubing and wiring for the ceiling lights. I will soon upload the pictures of the men pouring the cement on the roof. Although it is a 7 meter by 10 meter square room, it is a lot more involved than I originally thought! But little by little, we'll get there!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Working on the columns! 11 in total!!



Here we are preparing the columns. This is done by first nailing the wood in place and later filling it with a mixture of cement and rocky sand. The columns are officially complete. Now we are putting construction on pause until our BIG donation from Fundacion Falcoondo comes through (the local mining company's community outreach foundation).



Monday, October 19, 2009

Putting up the Walls/Cement Wall!


Here are pictures of the workers putting up the cement blocks! It took about a week to get the walls up! We're pretty much finished with the walls and will be working on the roof and finishing the columns in the upcoming weeks!


















We begin on the foundation!

On October 3rd, 2009 we broke ground! Here is Pedro, the President of our Library Committee, a talented elementary school teacher, and is currently studying to become a lawyer, standing in front of our sign next to our construction site that reads, "Help us construct our Library".

Here is a picture of the construction site after breaking ground and digging a few feet deep!




Here is a picture of the construction site at night! Que Linda! How beautiful!

Here are Santo and Pablo working on the foundation-perhaps the most difficult part of construction.









Here is the BIG day where we had 10 guys come and finish the foundation! They began at 7:30am and finished around 1pm! I made a traditional Dominican breakfast for all the workers which included Yucca and scrambled eggs with veggies!








Here is a view of the foundation.
Where the column meets the ground.











Here the guys are installing the columns and working on the columns! We have to dig a very deep foundation because we envision having a second floor dedicated to an Internet center in the future! We have 9 columns inside the building and will be adding an additional 3 more to support the roof hanging over a front porch area.





One day I decided to join the guys to help dig the foundation. Perhaps the most back breaking work I've ever participated in...I was sore for about 3 days after that endeavor...

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Let the construction begin!















Thank you to everyone who helped support this library project! It has finally begun! On Friday, the maestro de constructor, or the engineer in charge of the project came in the late afternoon to "marcar" or mark the area where we will be constructing with wood and this white powder. It was very exciting to see it all marked and outlined.


Saturday, we begun "hoyar" or digging a big hole in the shape of a square outlining the building. I will be sure to upload those photos as soon as I upload them on the computer.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

My neighbor Omar-so cute!


Reforesting the River Yuna!







Here are some of the youth of my community working together from a visiting American youth group planting trees near the River Yuna in efforts to reforest the drying rivers in the Dominican Republic.

Trash Clean-up!


The Environmental Youth Group, Brigada Verde is shown here picking up trash throughout the community and singing their song...


"Nosotros somos, Brigada Verde, Y Protegemos, El Medio Ambiente!"


"We are, the Green Army, and We Protect, the Environment!"

Girls' Clubs!




In the spring of 2009, I led 5 girls' clubs with approximately 10 girls in each club. Every week we would meet for an hour and a half to talk about important topics such as self-esteem, inner beauty, acceptance and tolerance, etc. Additionally, we would begin each class with coloring a strong woman or an intelligent woman and end each class with a arts and crafts. Through this club these girls learned how to make friendship bracelets and tissue flowers.