This morning I woke up warm and alert. I laid in bed thinking about the trip down to Asuncion, and the task in front of me. When we arrived here last night the other interns described their parts in the organization. Their are interns working on micro finance, English teaching, web page teaching, an
d education promotion. We are staying in a large home owned by the fundacion that has plenty of room and beautiful plants. There are still bars on all the windows, even the windows to the back courtyard area. My favorite part of our place for the next few days is the awesome hea
ted shower. I love these shower heads, because if you turn them down low enough, they drip out flaming water droplets, the are so hot. :-)
This morning it rained a muggy drizzle, but I am feeling so tired of sitting that I am going to find a park to go running in. The interns assured me that Nobody works on Saturday, so there will be nothing going on at the fundacion here in Asuncion, and nothing happening at the school in Cerito. We will be heading out to the school in Cerito on Wednesday after we watch them sell the produce that the school makes on Tuesday here in Asuncion. This town is not all that large when compared to every other capitol city I have been to. It is surrounded by undeveloped land, used, I suppose, for agriculture.
We have been tasked with getting out into the city to understand what kinds of work are happening and what is going on to make the city tick. We are going to use that in our (Andrea Cordani's and mine) work in Cerito on the school there. Our job is to come up with some expanded uses for the business plan that has been working at the school. We are going to try to build a couple of value chains that the people there can run. I will be interested to meet more people. So far, the poorest people seems to have no significant path to be actively engaged in work that will lead to something long-term. I see hundreds of people pushing carts around for travelers, pedaling soap or crackers in the streets, begging, sitting around and wondering about their future. The government recently released a 1000 guarani coin that has made it more profitable for children and adults to beg for money because more people are now handing out a larger sum of money in each donation. They can make as much money begging as they can working all day, so the incentives are backwards.
We went to the supermarket last night, and I was impressed that the store was full of western products. We bought our food for our time here and walked home. Remember that the cars don't stop for peds and there are no crosswalks (or stop lights, or stop signs). We came home late and the rest of the interns were having a great Friday night party.
I hope today brings good info about the current state of business here in Paraguay. Maybe I will find a business owner that can tell me about trends here. Let's go see...
We have been tasked with getting out into the city to understand what kinds of work are happening and what is going on to make the city tick. We are going to use that in our (Andrea Cordani's and mine) work in Cerito on the school there. Our job is to come up with some expanded uses for the business plan that has been working at the school. We are going to try to build a couple of value chains that the people there can run. I will be interested to meet more people. So far, the poorest people seems to have no significant path to be actively engaged in work that will lead to something long-term. I see hundreds of people pushing carts around for travelers, pedaling soap or crackers in the streets, begging, sitting around and wondering about their future. The government recently released a 1000 guarani coin that has made it more profitable for children and adults to beg for money because more people are now handing out a larger sum of money in each donation. They can make as much money begging as they can working all day, so the incentives are backwards.
We went to the supermarket last night, and I was impressed that the store was full of western products. We bought our food for our time here and walked home. Remember that the cars don't stop for peds and there are no crosswalks (or stop lights, or stop signs). We came home late and the rest of the interns were having a great Friday night party.
I hope today brings good info about the current state of business here in Paraguay. Maybe I will find a business owner that can tell me about trends here. Let's go see...
3 comments:
This is worth a comment...I lost the first one. Let's see if this works.
mom
Yea, it works! We are soooo interested in what you are doing. The challenge is tofind work thatcan lift them out of poverty and give the people hope. Begging may feed you for a day, but not forever, and it is degrading to the individual.
mamacita
Jeff - what an adventure. I think like mom says . . . it goes back to that saying, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime." I'm excited to see how things continue on for you!
Bec
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