For ICA Japan, beginning of October started by participating in Global Festa 2015. This is an annual event in Japan for international cooperation and variety of non-profits, embassies, companies, agencies participate. This year we had booth with photos pinned up from our projects in India, Cote d’Ivoire, and Fukushima, Japan. We were very happy to share about our projects and to learn what other organizations are doing in this field.
Fukushima
Our director and one of the participants from Fukushima horticulture activity presented at International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Conference in Fukui prefecture on Oct5-6th. Also in November, three villages are planning to plant flowers with their residents.
India Bihar
Second stage construction for the two community centers are almost finished. The third village has just settled the land dispute, and the contractor has just begun on the ground work for the third multi-purpose center. When completed, we will have finished 8 centers and done a variety of trainings in each village.
Cote d’Ivoire
Community Development and Action Planning were held in all 6 villages of the project. After learning the Economic Principles, the villagers changed their minds, and build big plans that they could implement themselves, including raising enough more crops to fund building pre-schools in three villages.
The structures of the vinyl house for growing vegetables are done in a couple of villages. Most of the participants sold their chickens locally, and some already started their second raising of the chicks.
In parallel to these activities, the first ICA West Africa Regional Conference was held for six ICA’s and Associate ICA’s in September. They had workshop reports for Sustainable Community Development, Advanced Agriculture Technology, and Transformed Education, with plans they are sharing across Western Africa.
Nepal
Our government has officially approved a new project in Nepal. We plan to restore the community center that ICA built years ago but has been damaged due to the earthquake this year.
This center will be used to support the victims of the earthquake, especially women, children and elderly by several activities. Shown is the inauguration in 2003, and we will both restore the building to its former greatness and also add many new facilities to care for children.
This post was written for ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz, November 2015.