Work in Site

May 13th-25th, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

Work in Site

These next few months I hope to wrap up all my projects and try to make sure that they are sustainable and ready to pass on to the next phase. The dried fruit business is getting close to completing the formalization process. I soon hope to go on some trips to the capital city and pitch our product to the local grocery stores. I will continue to meet with the jewelry youth group and discuss gender roles and other such topics. It sounds like the artisan consortium is handling the export order well so far.

Unfortunately the primary school never got their act together and I will not be teaching computers there. I heard that the primary school had 10 computers available but no one to teach the kids. So last January, before summer break, I told the director that I would like to teach computers to the 5th grade class when classes began again in April. He seemed excited. Since the director is from Chulucanas and never comes to La Encantada, I had to wait til the first day of classes to reconfirm with the director. He then told me that the parents association would have to approve to pay a security guard to sleep with the computers overnight. A meeting was scheduled and then postponed. And then postponed. And then postponed. I will not be teaching computers these last three months. This is Peru.