A bit of CARE

I thought I’d write a little update. Things are going much more smoothly and actually quite quickly lately. I’ve settled into a comfortable routine in Lima, and this city is growing on me. A quick recap – I am working with CARE Peru’s Climate Change division, and we are working on a research-based advocacy project to gather information that would allow for policy recommendations permitting public investment in parcel-level, improved-irrigation projects. The thrust of it is that such evidence will provide the foundation for advocacy that will result in the effective promotion of improved-irrigation projects for poor Andean farmers with market access, and address their vulnerability to adapt to climate change.

The Climate Change team (minus me) is now in Huaraz, coordinating with CARE’s Ancash office. I’ll be joining them tomorrow on the overnight bus. At this stage we are working on developing a concrete methodology for the research, by developing research tools for the data collection component of this project, and they will include an investigation protocol, key-informant interview guides, focus group guides; case study guides for improved irrigation projects, household-level case study guides, and guidelines for the systematic analysis of field data. We will be piloting these during this field work in order to collect more relevant data from the field, as well as to refine the research data collection tools. The themes of the questions we have drafted include: Agriculture and Irrigation; Environment and Climate Change; Governance, Community and Organization; Economy and Market; and Gender and Marginalization. It’s interesting to note how environmentally-dependent field work is in the Andes, as this will be our last field outing until after the rains. The rainy season has already started, in spurts, but December is supposed to be really heavy! It will also be a good opportunity to see how decision-making in terms of agriculture and water management is made during this time of the year. I am really happy to be going back out in the field, as the information you get from being on the ground is invaluable compared to working distantly at the national level. Here are some pics below of some of us in the Climate Change team.

methodology and pre-field session with the climate change team

Climate change crew

And tomorrow, I am presenting at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru on both my Master’s research and this research project. I am kind of nervous about presenting entirely in Spanish, but am really lucky to have the support of one of my Master’s supervisors at the university, Dr. Earls. He’ll be there to undoubtedly save me countless times from linguistic missteps and frightened pauses of panic. I think it’s an Anthropology class and the theme is on climate change adaptation, so very relevant. Immediately after I’ll have to run home, and head to the bus station for the overnight bus.

Huaraz will be until the 20th, and then on the 22nd I am going to fly out to Cusco to do Machu Picchu (finally after being here since June!!), and wrap up interviews with my case study community there. Then it’s back to Lima on the 26th, pack, and heading out the night of the 27th!!! I’ll be working from Canada for the CARE project for 2 more weeks, and then can re-focus on my long neglected thesis work. Neglected only in the sense of I haven’t been able to write anything!

I will definitely do another post sometime with field work pictures, although I can include one of Mullak’as-Misminay taken during my last fiend trip session in here.

Campesino women in Mullak-as Misminay

Category: On location, Peru // Add Comment »