It's Been a While...

Well, well, well, I bet you all thought that I had either given up on my blog, or I had given up on the Peace Corps. The truth is neither.

My life as a business volunteer has cycles. Moments when I am searching for projects to work on, and moments when I am so busy, I can’t even make it to my favorite coffee shop, let alone to use their internet and write my blog. The past two months have been busy for some very good reasons. Let me fill you in on my life…

About a month ago there was a 7.9 earthquake off the coast of Costa Rica (luckily casualties were virtually nil) and then one of the bigger volcanoes in Chinandega, Nicaragua erupted spewing ash over a large part of that department (luckily casualties were also nil, perhaps a cow or two). Interestingly enough, I cannot blame either of these events for my not writing my blog as I live in the center of the country in Matagalpa, and did not feel the earthquake nor did I see the ash cloud. My life continued as normal, and as busy as always.

It is getting to be the end of the school year here in Nicaragua; in fact, we just started the fourth quarter. With that being said, it means that business plan competition season is upon us, and I am busily trying to get my students ready for them. I am now working with them both Tuesdays and Thursdays at the local library for two hours in the morning, and then continuing with classes as normal. I am also working with an NGO in my rural community to promote their café so they can raise money to support their programs. We were able to design and implement a market study and then created a flyer that we will distribute to hopefully bring more people to the shop and bring in more revenue.

Explaining how the business plan is assembled

Starting the "Stock Selling" exercise compete with fake certificates and money!

My most recent project and one I am most proud of is a teacher’s workshop (that had to be rescheduled twice) that I held for 22 teachers from the city of Matagalpa. We were able to do some great activities and I even designed a puzzle to be used as a teaching tool. Unfortunately, a teacher’s budget is very tight here, and schools do not do much by way of providing materials or books, so I have been working on creating inexpensive, replicable tools that I can use in teacher trainings and they can use in their classes. We had a full day workshop, and then had a follow up session with the teachers at the monthly all district teachers meeting (Tepce). All of the teachers had been assigned to groups and were assigned a topic they needed to prepare a short class for. The goal was to see how well the teachers had learned and accepted the tools I shared with them at the first training. I am ecstatic to report that almost all of them were able to successfully use the tools, and it made for a very interesting and interactive meeting (which is normally very dry).

A few teachers working on the Business Plan Puzzle

The completed puzzle

That’s my news for now! I will try to do better and make sure I post more regularly, but the month of October is going to be crazy as well. Be patient! Keep making good choices! Love you all!