Hey all,

So I’ve been intentionally vague about work in my previous entries. I think I was waiting for something to be successful before I talked about it to my followers at home, but where is the learning experience in that?
So here is my recent activity. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the past few months working with an organization who raises chickens for meat, and wants to expand into egg production. The group, especially their president, is pretty great. They understand the problem in The Gambia’s economy, in that they import EVERYTHING, and export very little. So wanting to produce food locally is their attempt at fighting the problem, at least on the small scale to begin with. They are very hard-working and committed. So I’ve spent a lot of time writing a grant proposal with the group’s president. Overall, I’m lucky. Given a little extra time, he reads and writes English, has some computer experience, and is a very very hard worker. I know that even when it makes me want to pull my hair out(oh jesus, it would be so much FASTER if I could just do it myself), writing the grant together is a good learning experience for him, and hopefully I’m transferring skills that will be left behind when I leave.
But also, it’s a good learning experience for me. I don’t know anything about chicken farming. What is a de-beaking machine? (it cuts the beaks off all the chickens)Do you really need one? (yes, because sometimes they peck each other to death) What are the risks and benefits of imported versus locally-produced feed? (imported is of much higher quality, but it is expensive and will sometimes be inexplicably unavailable. Locally produced feed will always be available, but is difficult to mix correctly, may cause inferior eggs, or cause the chickens to stop laying).
But the real problem I’m encountering, is now that we have written and re-written drafts and drafts of this document, is that I don’t think that the project can be sustainable. After crunching the numbers on the cost-benefit analysis, from how many eggs they can be expected to collect, to how much they will sell for, the group stands to make only a minimal profit if everything goes according to plan and nothing nothing goes wrong (and of course something will go wrong. That is life and this is The Gambia). These chickens just can’t compete with the imported gacked-out-on-steroids chickens.
So what to do? If I could just will it into being, I would love this project to be successful. I trust that my counterpart will do everything in his power to make it so, but I just don’t think it will be enough. And its irresponsible to put money into something that is bound to fail, no matter how much you like the person you’re working with. So do I tell them, and try to convince them to change tactics? What if they don’t want to? Do I continue to write this proposal with them, and when it gets rejected, blame it in the grant committee? Will my counterpart lose all of his idealism and quit?

Suggestions?