REDES, COS and BO

It has been a busy few weeks here in Mozambique… so I think that these blog posts will be broken up between a few of them.

I was in Maputo, the capital city from April 20^th, to May 1^st working with the REDES program, and then participating in my COS (close of service) conference with Peace Corps. Afterwards, I traveled to Tofo beach, where I participated in the annual Beer Olympics that we hold between volunteers. Since then it has been a very busy week here at site, lots of work to do, and trying to get things ready for my brothers visit. He will be here on Sunday, around 11am!! How exciting. It has just been a whirlwind of visits from the states, which is never a bad thing.

Ok, so I will start with the REDES meeting and go from there.

Along with ongoing REDES activities, a major initiative this year has been the process of registering Rapariga em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde (REDES) as a formal Mozambican association. And a few weeks ago in Maputo, the Assembléia Geral of REDES the Association held its first meeting! The registration process is still ongoing, but the three-day meeting put REDES well on its way to association status.


At the meeting, the founding board members drafted a constitution and submitted all of the supporting documents to the Ministério da Justiça. Within two to three weeks, we should hear from the Ministério about any changes that need to be made, and after a little more bureaucracy, the provisional estatuto (constitution) will be published in the Boletim da Republica.

Along with drafting and submitting the necessary legal documents, the Assembléia and PCV leaders (myself, Wendy, Lee and Anna) discussed the form that the Association's leadership will take and began to formulate a plan to transfer leadership from PCVs to the Assembléia over the coming year. In order to facilitate the eventual transfer of leadership from PCVs to the Assembléia, it is crucial that we work closely together over the coming year. All future planning calls will include both PCVs and board members, and we ask that both sides of the leadership work in pairs in all planning activities.

the ladies, hard at work at the office- revising our constitution 

In reflection of the multiple structural changes REDES has gone through this year, we have decided to change the structure of REDES leadership a bit. The REDES project is in the midst of transforming itself into a Mozambican-led association and PCVs that are interested in becoming part of the REDES team must be willing to work with 11 HCN founding board members (composing the Assemblea Geral) to support the process of “legalization.” Despite these new mudancas (changes) towards official association status, PCVs will continue to play an important role in the management and growth of REDES. Each leadership position will have new responsibilities to coordinate with their HCN counterpart on the Assemblea Geral.

Members of the Assembléia will also participate both in voting for the coming year's PCV leadership and in June's leadership handover in Nampula.

We are all very excited for the many benefits this new form will bring to REDES in terms of financial sustainability, stability of leadership and organizational learning. Three of the founding board members have been with REDES since its inception in 2005 and all have a shared vision of a stronger organization that will continue to grow and touch more young girls lives.

a group shot!

It was a very exciting week, a bit stressful at times, but overall VERY successful. We stayed at Base Backpackers in Maputo, and held all of our meetings at the Peace Corps office in their conference room. Cooked all of our dinners at the backpacker, and ordered our lunches from a local place that makes good but cheap food. Moral of the story? We were able to pull off this incredible feat, without spending insane amounts of money! GO REDES!