Sorry for the delay. I was unable to access Blogger all weekend.

Last week I discovered a wonderful beach called Bojo Beach. It is a narrow sandbar, accessed by boat, less than an hour from Accra. It is one of the cleanest beaches in this country, and is the only one with lifeguards. I ended up going back again this past Sunday, and I hope to have pictures up shortly.

I am still working on GIM advertising and the waste management conference. We still have yet to have any access to an advertising budget, so the advertising campaign has not been started for the most part. A couple of local entrepreneurs offered to include GIM as part of testing for their mobile text messaging marketing service. We gave them a short message about the competition and a listing of phone numbers to send the message to. While they were successful in sending a message to all of the phone numbers (a couple hundred in total) they decided to reformat the actual message. They managed to NOT mention how to apply to the program, and put the wrong due date in.

Awesome.

Regarding the conference: we have put together a program with a series of panels and exhibitions over the course of two days regarding waste management practices and government policy. We hope to have panels/exhibitions focused on challenges & prospects of waste management, the role of media in initiating behavioral change, financing options to the sector, technological innovations in both for-profit and non-profit ventures in West Africa, and current & future waste management plans in each of the major cities.

The conference is on November 11th. We have not been allowed to send out any invitations to any of the panelists or to any potential attendees. Last week uur original budget was slashed by 60%. It will be a miracle if this conference actually happens.

This weekend I am staying local while the other volunteers go on a 2-day, 64km cycling trip. I will probably take advantage of this rare time alone to start working on grad school applications.

Last week I had my first pangs of homesickness. It started with my reading of restaurant reviews in Brooklyn, continued with hearing of my friends plans for Halloween, and was capped off with the annoucement of this year's SantaCon. SantaCon is occuring on December 12th, a mere 5 days before my return. Boooourns!