For good reason, I am
asked that question by a lot of people, both at home and in Peru. I haven’t given too many details here
about what kind of projects consume my days, weeks, and months, so here’s my
best attempt at a broad overview of my projects and goals in site. I apologize in advance for the length!
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| The cover of the invitations to the Artisan Fashion Show |
Artisan Fashion Show
In January, the 17
year-old girl who is basically Miss Monsefú (Señorita Fexticum, the name of our
annual festival) came to me with the idea to put on a fashion show in Monsefú
with artisan products. I had
wanted to do a similar project for the National Day of the Artisan (March
19th), so we decided to combine efforts to make this happen for Sunday, March 18th. The idea is to promote innovation of
the artisan products (away from traditional dresses and more towards things you
can wear every day), to market the innovative products locally and to Chiclayanos, and to get the youth
interested in artisan work. We
started working in early February, me handling the artisan aspects and her
handling the model aspects. With
my trip to the United States plus a mandatory training from March 6 – 10, it
has been quite a challenge to get the details of this project together (the
stage, decorations, sound, music, matching artisans with models, invitations
and advertisments, etc. and financing for all of that). And working with this 17 year-old
beauty queen (with an attitude and lying problem) has been soooo much worse
than you might already imagine. Thankfully,
a young guy named Luis, who apparently this girl took the idea from, has
appeared in my life to save the day.
The two of us have 7 days to pull together everything that’s missing,
which isn’t very much time considering 1) that I just lost my cell phone and 2)
how long it takes to get things done in my town…
As an example, I tried to
print the 50 invitations before leaving for training. This was supposed to be all done through the Municipality,
who were financing the printing, but they “didn’t have time” to buy the paper
for it. The nice, thick paper for
invitations only exists in my site in posterboard-size, so I had to buy that
and cut it into 50 A4 pieces with a hand-blade and ruler (that was the best
technology my Municipality could offer).
After 3 hours of that, I had to print them out on a regular inkjet
printer that is shared with the whole Public Relations office. Also, my entire Municipality is under
construction, so the “office” was actually just a few desks and a lot of
extension chords in the center of the main auditorium. The electricity was cutting in and out,
so I lost a number of valuable pieces of paper to the printer shutting off
unexpectedly. When I was able to
print both sides of the invitations, almost all were turning out crooked because
of imperfect cutting. So, I got to
about 20 invitations before I had to run home and get ready to leave for
training. I’m hoping the
electricity will be more stable tomorrow and maybe I can print on a Sunday when
there are less people in the office…
Artisan Council
There are about 12
artisan associations in Monsefú, with no central point of communication or
coordination, even though the artisans could achieve a lot in terms of
trainings, participation in fairs, etc. if they worked together more. As part of the goals from my Community
Diagnostic, we are in the process of creating a COLOFAR (Consejo Local de Fomento Artesanal), an artisan council that will
represent all of the formal (legalized) associations (wish it could represent
all but this is mandated by law).
Working with the Municipality I was able to bring an expert from Lima in
January to explain the process to about 40 artisans and the whole Municipality
staff. Since then, the
associations have presented the names of their representatives and hopefully
this month we will officially swear-in the COLOFAR. Working with another Peace Corps Volunteer that lives
close, we might hook up this artisan council with an NGO that wants to help
them improve their production capacity and complete some big orders.
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| My wonderful community bank partners, Susana and Juana, and I in Trujillo for training |
Community Banks
In January I brought two socias (counterparts) to a training on
“Community Banks,” our savings and credit program. The idea is that a group of friends, family members, or
whoever meet every week to deposit a pre-established amount of money into a
small, wooden safe. Starting the 5th
week, the money in the safe can be loaned out to members of the “bank” for 4
weeks, under rules set by the group (maximum amount, interest rate, etc.). The individual returns the loan and
interest to the bank. After a
pre-established amount of time between 6-12 months, the bank is then
liquidated, and everyone gets an equal portion of the interests according to
how many “actions” they have- for example, if the minimum weekly amount is 10
soles (1 action) and someone is depositing 20 soles/week, they have 2 actions
and get 2 portions of the interests.
Hopefully the bank will then start again for another 6-12 months.
This has been a very
successful and sustainable program in Peace Corps Ecuador and Peru, for
developing the habit of saving (which is essentially non-existent in most
communities) and giving access to small, affordable loans for people who
otherwise might not have that access.
Working with my
counterparts, we held a couple preliminary meetings with artisans and asked
them to return with family members if they were interested in forming a
bank. After dragging 4 friends out
of another meeting to attend mine, we had a sufficient number of people to
start the bank (about 11) and we’ve now grown to about 15 members. The members seem very happy so far and
are really looking forward to taking out loans to buy in bulk for the upcoming
high season of tourism in Monsefú (July).
Someone who works in the local market also heard about the bank and wants
to start one with those who work in the market, who also desperately need
access to small-credit, so I am excited about the possibility of starting a
second one!
Youth Entrepreneurship
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| Our transportation to the EcoCenter |
For 8 weeks this summer
(January-early March) I worked with Hallie and Rob, two Volunteers that live
within 30 min of my site, to teach entrepreneurship to a total of about 15-18
kids, 5 being from my site. They
were between the ages of 13-16 and learned about the basic ideas of a
feasibility study, SWOT analysis, mission and vision, marketing, and other
business topics. A lot of the
learning was done through visits to an EcoCenter in Hallie’s site, where they
learned about “eco-bricks” (plastic bottles stuffed with plastic wrappers, that
can serve as bricks), sweet potato products, and harvesting and spinning
organic cotton. At the end of the
program, the kids marketed and operated a movie night in each of the 3 sites,
using a borrowed projector and space while selling entrance and snacks. It’s hard to tell how much the kids
really learned from the program (our post-course conversation wasn’t too
encouraging) but I hope it’s one of those things where they just didn’t realize
they were learning… either way, it was a really fun project, it was GREAT to
work with other Volunteers, and I absolutely love the girls who participated
from my site that I am now very close to.
I just got back from
training for our Somos Emprendedores,
Somos Perú (We are Entrepreneurs, We are Peru) youth entrepreneurship
course and competition. Starting
in April, I will be teaching 9 weeks of this course to youth between the ages
of 16-24, to teach them to fully develop plans for businesses they want to
create in Monsefú. I’ll then
coordinate a local competition to pick the best plan, to then compete in Lima
against all the other Peace Corps communities to win money to start their
business.
Lastly, I might be
teaching entrepreneurship seminars in a newly-created private school… the
director is my host sister’s boyfriend.
I hope to use these seminars for some other topics that would be fun for
me, like international politics.
Organic Fertilizer
In January, my former
supervisor from an internship at CIPE was visiting Chiclayo for business. Through some contacts I made through
him, my name was given to an MBA student in Lima. This guy, Pino, is originally from my area and his family
has land in Monsefú. He is super
interested Muhammad Yunus and the idea of social business, so his thesis
project is just that. He wants to
work in a caserío (outlying area,
almost shantytown) of Monsefú called Santa Rita, to teach the farmers to make
organic fertilizer from animal and vegetable waste. This product would then be sold under one label, but almost
all of the profits would go directly to the farmers. He also wants to accompany the program with various kinds of
trainings, which is where I come in, since he doesn’t live in Monsefú. I’m super excited about the prospects
of this project, and the opportunity to give some trainings on various health
and personal finance topics. I
also hope to create another community bank in Santa Rita.
Museum and Artisan Workshop
As I’ve described before,
my big dream for my second year in Monsefú is to create a public artisan
workshop and museum. I was
originally set on having it in the old Municipality building in the center of
Monsefú, but now I’m considering the possibility of using a comedor (public kitchen) or other
unoccupied space in a more rural area that is still convenient for tourists and
artisans. I haven’t moved much on
this project because I’ve been occupied with other things, but I have continued
to talk it up and am finding a good deal of potential support. I might have university architecture
students willing to draw up the plans and budget, some university tourism
students that would probably help with the marketing, and a political science
professor who would be really helpful on the content of the museum. There is also a government
social-project-fund that might be willing to finance part of it. I would be incredibly content to see
this dream become a reality, but I have to get working soon in order to get it
done!
As you can see, I’ve been
very busy over the past few months, and as a result I’ve been very happy, with
the exception of a very stressful last few weeks, trying to coordinate this
artisan fashion show. After I lost
my phone traveling back from training today, my friend Luis suggested I take
today and possibly tomorrow off to relax, and that we will figure everything
out starting Monday.
Today, I got back to
Monsefú just in time to attend a funeral, the father of my best artisan
friend (Jacky, about 45 year old).
The last few days I have felt almost sick with stress, and today, being
with so many other people waiting outside her house to give their condolences and express their love for the family,
I was brought back to reality about what is really important in this experience
and in life. It also made me
really miss my family, and made me re-think my plan about coming home for
Christmas… while that might sound contradictory, what I mean is that if I come
home for Christmas, I'm not sure I would have the vacation days or the money to come home in case of an emergency, and with my only grandparent being 94
years-old, I don’t feel comfortable taking that risk. And I couldn’t bear not being there
with my family, especially my mom, if something was to happen.
Sorry to end on dark
thoughts… I love you dearly, family and friends! PLEASE come visit me sometime soon, especially if I might
not come home for Christmas!
Lastly, if you're not on Facebook, you can still check out some of my photo albums here:
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