I´ve moved!

It´s been a while since i´ve written an entry and i apologize to my faithful "viewers" for this absence.


The latest news is that I´ve moved to a new site! I´m still in the department of Cochabamba (Cbba.) but my job is COMPLETELY different. A little refresher in case you forgot what i did before the move.

I worked with a group of artisan women that knitted clothing items from alpaca. They are a gorup of 18 women (it was 24 when i first arrived Nov. 2006). While i was with them i taught them really basic skills such as:

- how to organize their thoughts for an email to their client(s) in the states
- the importance of punctuality w/ meetings and orders
- web searching
and other REALLY BASIC, BUT IMPORTANT skills to run a small business


I switched sites b/c i realized after a year working with them that they weren´t ready to make the necessary sacrifices needed to grow into a true small business. Most of them women used this knitting group as a means to receive extra money. You see, most of the women already have a main job and it is w/ their animals (cows, pigs, chickens, etc.) and farmland. It took me a whole year to realize that these women and myself DID NOT have the same ideas about the future of the knitting group.
La Imilla (imiya) is the name of the group and i was lucky enough to work w/ them. They are much more organized than most artisan groups of Bolivia in that:
- they hold three weekly meetings where at least 50% of the group shows up
- they have a wonderful accting. system in which they KNOW they aren´t losing $
- they have the skills to use the computer, email, and the web
- they have a bank acct.
- they don´t steal from the earnings of the group
- & most importantly, THEY RESPECT EA. OTHER.
One of their main weaknesses is that they don´t have enough women to complete orders on time. Or better said, they don´t know their true capacity to make certain items. This can be a big problem if you´re only client is an American and she is a wholesaler of your items and needs things to arrive ON TIME.
So my suggestion to them was to recruit more women, make more time to knit, and calculate exactly how many items ea. women can make in a month. These little steps will help to fix this little problem. It sounds simple, but for the women who use La Imilla as extra cash this is a bit of an annoyance. For the women who NEED La Imilla to provide for their families it is no chore at all. Here is the problem. Only 30% of the group wants to work full-time. Do I blame the women for not wanting to log their hours and give more of their time to something that is only part time? No. Am I disappointed that most artisan groups in Bolivia function in this manner. YES.

I left my old site b/c without the full support of the 60% that occasionally feel like working, La Imilla will never be a sustainable, small business. In my last year of service my boss & I thought it would be good for me to take my skills to a place where people are willing to make some sacrifices to become full-time workers of a small business.
I´ve transferred to a orphanage that is funded by churches (mainly catholic and Episcopal) in the states. It house about 60 children ranging from the ages of 2-15 yrs. Old. This is a HUGE transition for me b/c I was working with women aged 50+ ! I´m slowly adapting to the super fast talking children and my new work schedule of about 40hrs/week. I used to work a maximum of 9hrs/week w/ La Imilla.
I´m rounding out my first week of work and i´m exhausted! I´ve not only been working at the orphanage 9am – 6pm i´ve been working in my old site finishing up the first phase of my secondary proj. which is an hour away. I´ve been a crazy person and it´s been really difficult for me to deal w/ me not being in my element and leaving everything that´s been familiar to me for the past year.
But as they say here “poco y poco me voy a acostumbrar” (little by little I will adapt).

Oh and I dropped my digital camera in water and ruined it last week. i almost cried my eyeballs out. So no pics for a while. Sorry!!!!