Here at The Ladybug Project, we pride ourselves on visiting all of our project sites at least once a year. By recruiting volunteers in our targeted countries, we save the cost of expensive international travel, and are able to get objective, but culturally knowledgeable, opinions on the state of our local projects.

This year's visit to our Diego Suarez school project in Madagascar was completed by Megan, a peace corps volunteer. Amazingly, and despite the fact that she spends weeks working on development projects, she volunteered to give her vacation time to help us.

Using our Project Assessment methodology, Megan reported the following:

The "tables and desks for the children (donated by the Ladybug Project) have been very useful. I saw the desks in the classrooms (but) the school still needs desks, chairs...books (math, English), barbed wire for the top of walls, and
paint (for the classroom and the school)."

"I see no evidence of other charitable support. Ladybug is their only support from America."

When asked is there are any unsafe or dangerous buildings at the school site, Megan reported:

"There is no outer wall. It exists in bits and pieces. The whole school needs to be looked over for repairs. The locks on the classroom doors, and the doors themselves, need to be replaced. Also, the school wants to build another wing so that the classrooms are less crowded. I think the outer wall needs to be fixed first, from a safety standpoints, especially since there is crime in the area."

Since Megan's report, The Ladybug Project Inc. has initiated grant writing projects to secure funding to renovate the school and provide a safe learning environment for the students. We expect to begin the first renovation projects in the summer of 2012.

As part of our policy to visit our project sites at least once per year, Deme (on our volunteers) visited one of the schools and the clinic which we sponsor in Equatorial Guinea to assess the state of the programs and if the aid is being used appropriately.

Unfortunately (and as sometimes happens when working overseas), both the nurse and the school headmaster were unavailable, but Deme did get some pictures of our project sites. Enjoy!

Nguere, a long-time volunteer, visited our schools and clinic in Moka, Equatorial Guinea twice and even delivered 500 USD of supplies!
 
Check out the pictures!