Sundays in Susuma

So I as wrote many many moons ago, I am working on Sundays to give financial management workshops in a community near the Matagalpa dump. We have done several that have been quite well attended and have even moved on to other topics such as nutricion, sexual and reproductive health, women's rights, and now we are going to do a special workshop for mothers to learn how to incorporate soy into their families diets... despite the flack that bean has been getting, it is still a cheap source of protein and milk. We have been able to hold the workshops in the evangelical church, which is run by one of my previous student's grandmothers. I have been really enjoying this project because even though it is business related, I have been able to get other volunteers involved and we have all felt very rewarded and welcomed in this community. Here are some pictures!!!!

Anna starting the Nutrition Charla with a Dinamica

The very attentive class

Eating my super healthy bean soup... shhhh don't tell them there are veggie in there!!!

Yummy!

My former student and the person who started this project... Sarahi

A board game to help participants understand their financial choices

We played in pairs with those who can read could help those that couldn't!

Team building while we waited for our snack to be ready!!

Back to the Isla de Ometepe for the Business Incubator 2013!!!

I recently headed back to the Island of Ometepe as part of Team Emprende, the small group of Small Business Volunteers that are responsible for the National Business Plan Competition, Congress, Fundraiser, and now the Business Incubator...

We spent three nights at Charco Verde, a resort on the Island that has hiking trails, a lake, kayaks, and obviously enough space to hold a conference for 32 people, 22 of which were small business owners from around Nicaragua. In a way, this year's incubator was a follow up to the National competition as we had both the second and third place teams in attendance, and were able to see what had been done in their business since finishing high school and starting out in the big scary world. It was nice to see that one of the groups, a young man from a rural community in Boaco, had continued his business, improved packaging, and was looking for distributors. The other group from Esteli had not done much as they had moved on to the university and were not sure of the direction they wanted to take their business.

As a whole, the workshop focused more in building brand image, low-cost marketing, managing employees especially as family businesses, accounting, and production. We had great participation by all and will continue to work with the small business owners back in their home towns via the volunteers that nominated them. (I bet a lot of small business owners in the US would be jealous of the experience these lucky and hard working folks had!)

Enjoy the pictures, and of course, make good choices!!!!

Traffic on the Island is BRUTAL

My happy little cabin

Not a bad place to work right

Yes that's a volcano back there

Even on the Island Natali didn't stop working

Production Workshop

Mapping their production process

Team Building at night

My little friend

We didn't know that they charged for the use of the kayaks until afterwards... oops!