Christmas at the Castle Project update
(what we've been working on)
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

Dear friends and family,
Micah and I are proud to announce that we are 50% complete with our "gingerbread castle project": Christmas at the Castle. We're delighted to have your support with this project and proud to involve you in this photo update of the work we have done so far.

The Practice Gingerbread Castle, 1st weekend of August, 2008


The first weekend of August another volunteer made the trip to Deva to help Micah and I bake for two days in my kitchen while the oven temperature reached 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Many cold glasses of water (with ice! were consumed.) Thank you, Anne!

This is what gingerbread looks like when made without molasses or brown sugar. We used honey as a substitute. The dough bakes a lot thicker and we realized we could carve it into the shapes we wanted rather than baking many many tiny pieces and gluing them together with frosting.

Determining the level of detail is difficult. The castle is really approximately 15 different buildings.

This practice castle is 1/2 the size of the complete model we hope to create for the December event. We determined at this practice session that we should try to make arrangements with a professional bakery for the use of industrial ovens. We're working out the details on such and arrangement now. We were still in the process of fund-raising for the greater project when we build the practice castle so the supplies for this phase of the project was not part of our budget.

The Skill Sharing Meeting 24 October, 2008

Micah and our translator Monica, a Red Cross volunteer, ask representatives from Romanian NGOs to get into groups and discuss the state of cooperation between organizations.

More than 27 people attended at least part of our meeting which was held at the Red Cross in Deva. Some people came representing organizations from as far away as Timisoara and Cluj (five hours by bus, but I'm not sure of the time by private car.)

The day was divided into 20 minute workshops on skills NGOs need to acquire or want to improve. We learned what areas were important to our partners through a survey when we invited them to take part in the Christmas event at the castle, then invited those who indicated they were willing to speak to share their organizations best practices and success stories. In the event that no one wanted to speak on a particular topic, we tracked down professionals in the week leading up to the meeting.

Holly, another volunteer in group 22 and a good friend with professional grant writing experience gives a presentation to the members of NGOs. Holly has raised over a million dollars for her community in the USA and gives her advice and basic tips in her presentation.

A presenter from the office of E.U. Integration speaks about the resources available to NGOs from the European Union and how to access those resources. At the end of the project we will collect information from all of our speakers and create a CD of resources for each participating member of the project.
Brindusa, a colleague from the Gender and Development board speaks about planning events for a nonprofit organization and the importance of evaluating events and projects. Brindusa traveled from Turda for the meeting and was a great help to Micah and I with last minute translating. She recently left a well known NGO in her town to start her own animal protection NGO.